YOU ARE ENOUGH: Just Do the Best You Can With What You’ve Got

Am I enough? Photo by Karsten Winegeart on Unsplash

I suspect many of us struggle with "enough-itis" - "Am I doing enough, being enough, AM I ENOUGH?"

(Or maybe it's just me - hahaha...)

It's a disease that runs rampant in our culture.

Symptoms include feeling like you're somehow failing at life (because obviously some celestial being is scoring your progress) and that you're just not doing enough (compared to what or whom we don't know, but it's always and most definitely NOT ENOUGH.)

Enough-itis is exacerbated by all social media, which very clearly shows you how everyone else is not only enough, but they're more than enough, and as you see the clear evidence of you and your life's inadequacies, you wonder "Why the f*** can't I just get my s*** together already...!!!"

As someone guilty of the occasional doom-scroll session, I understand.

Which is why I'm here to tell you (and myself) that all you need is to do the best you can with what you've got.

That's enough.

Seriously, it really is.

Now, unless you've been living under a cozy little rock (scratch that, rocks aren't cozy for anyone but lizards), then I know you've heard this platitude so many times that it's absolutely lost it's meaning.

So, let me revive it for you.

What does it really mean to do the best you can with what you've got? How does a person (you in this case) apply that in a practical way?

Let's start with BEST:

FACT: Your "BEST" changes from day-to-day.

Ask yourself only if you did your best according to the version of you that you are TODAY.

Maybe yesterday you were able to run for an hour, and today a meandering walk is all you can manage.

But yesterday you got a great night's sleep, and today you spent the night tossing and turning. (Must have been those extra-spicy tacos fighting back.)

Maybe yesterday you were able to sit down and write for two-hours; your thoughts flowed freely and it was so easy to put the words down.

But today you're mentally swimming through a lake of molasses and you've forgotten how to spell. (Is it vaccum or vacuum, zucchini or zuchinni?)

BEST = The variables change, which means the outputs change, which means "your best" changes from day-to-day.

I don't know if I can do it. Photo by Karsten Winegeart on Unsplash

Now let's move onto the WHAT YOU'VE GOT part:

As stated above, the outputs change according to the variables.

This is where you have *some* control over what you're working with - aka what you've got.

If you know that spicy tacos give you a restless night's sleep, then you don't eat those spicy tacos on a night when you know you have important things to do the next day. 

(You would never stop eating spicy tacos altogether though because they're your favourite; you just make well-informed decisions on when you will and won't eat them.)

Pay attention to the variables in your life, and you can affect the outputs in a positive way.

And if you know you could do more if you had more, then get more - e.g. if you could do more with your life if you were healthier, then go get more health.

WHAT YOU'VE GOT = controlling variables for positive outputs.

I CAN do it! Photo by Karsten Winegeart on Unsplash

We all know that we shouldn't measure ourselves against the progress of others. (Right...???)

But by the same token, we can't always measure ourselves against our own past performances, because we aren't static beings.

Life changes, and we change, and we gotta roll with the reality of where we're at in any given moment.

So what I'm saying here is... if you're doing the best you can with what you've got, then that's enough.

YOU are enough.

I AM enough. Photo by Karsten Winegeart on Unsplash

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You might be asking yourself "How does this topic relate to recovery from binge-eating?" What I found is that - for me - finding new ways of thinking about life and its challenges helped me to stop stress-eating, and has been a very big part of my ability to stop binge-eating.

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