Who Are You?

We all have those days. Those days when we feel like we are not good enough…

Someone else gets that one thing we wanted so badly. We receive a rejection email from our dream job. We feel like we’ve accomplished so much yet no one else seems to care.

Maybe… maybe we simply just feel, whether for a good reason or not, inadequate.

For people like me, like most of us, that feeling stems from having unrealistically high expectations for ourselves and all that we do.

I will be the first to admit I hold myself to incredibly high standards. Expecting myself to keep my 4.0 GPA as a master’s student while holding three paid jobs and multiple volunteer positions and trying to be a yogi and a runner and friend and sister and daughter and citizen of the world. You could say, sure, I put a lot of pressure on myself.

I do not say this to brag, not in the slightest. I willingly choose to assume the responsibilities that come with each of those obligations, and happily so. Because I love what I do. 

But no matter how much I try, sometimes I just feel like it’s not enough. I’m not enough.

And before I get too deep into this — let me say I know that’s not true.

I know and recognize that me, in my simplest form, is beyond good enough for what the universe expects of me.

But, I have accepted the fact that I am capable of more. I have accepted the fact that I am meant to make a difference here. I have accepted the challenge to utilize my talents — my brain, my heart, my soul, my passion — to contribute all that I can to making this world the slightest bit better.

So, yes, I get down on myself. I see other people succeeding in a way I have yet to and I think, “Where did I go wrong?”

I see other people falling in love, one thing I have so brutally failed at, and I think, “When will it be my turn?”

I see others close to me receiving things they by no means, in my opinion, deserved; and I think, “When will it be my turn to receive something I did not work for?”

Perhaps I am selfish for thinking these things but in my heart I think we all have these moments. These moments of insane questioning. Insane doubt.

We cannot always be 100% confident in ourselves. I preach self love and happiness as much as the next life-loving person, but I also falter. I veer off the confidence-laden path. I forget.

When we live with ourselves day in and day out it is easy to forget our capabilities, our qualifications, what sets us apart. It is easy to forget that we are unique and special and incredibly able to conquer those vast dreams we’ve set for ourselves. It is easy to want to fall into a picture, a mold that society has attempted to convince us we should become.

But. We. Are. All. Intensely. Unique.

That is something we can never forget.

And so I tell myself tonight, with a bottle of wine and a carton of ice cream sitting empty at my bedside: You. Are. You.

And, You. Are. Enough.

In these next days, months, years, I will ask myself the question, “Who am I?” a million times over. I know I will continue to second-guess my place in this world as I see others’ success continue to happen around me.

But I cannot, we cannot, continue to second-guess our own successes.

We will never see our accomplishments as big or as bold as we see others’. We can only try. 

But know — you are as big and bold as that person you are jealous of right now, perhaps even bigger and bolder, braver, stronger. You are exactly who you will yourself to be. There are no limits to who you will become.

And even better: who you are today, in this minute, is not who you have to be when you wake up in the morning.

Be your own person. Your own hero.