Maybe This Time It Will Actually Be Enough

You and I won’t ever feel like we’re truly enough until we accept that we need to find the happiness within ourselves.

By

woman wearing white top
Photo by Kate M on Unsplash

Every single day, I’ll question what I’m saying or doing. I want to make the people surrounding me proud. I want to make sure that what I’m doing is good enough for them or that I’m someone they will be proud of. It’s impossible to keep everyone in the world happy, or even just a few people in my life. Not everyone is going to be happy with the decisions I’ve made. Not everyone is going to be proud, and they’re not always going to think that I’m perfect.

There is no such thing as perfection, yet we all strive for it. We’ll push ourselves to the limit and look to the people around us for approval. Their approval is what we hold onto—it’s what we’re actually striving for. We want the people around us to approve of everything we do—we want to be enough.

When will it ever actually be enough? Is there such a thing as enough? I try harder every day to become something I’m proud of. For them. Who am I really doing this for? When I look back, I don’t know if I’m doing this for myself. When I get up every day and look in the mirror, I don’t know if I like what I see, inside or out.

I don’t know if I’m enough for people. I don’t know if I can make you happy – I don’t know how to make myself happy. There’s never a direct answer on what to do. If I go through every person I’ve ever met and asked them how I can make them proud of me, or how I can make them happy, there won’t be a direct answer. All the answers will be different.

Everyone has different stipulations for happiness. Why should I spread myself to try to make everyone else happy? There’s no point to it. It’s walking into frustration and there’s no possible way to make everyone happy. There’s no way I can make everyone feel good about themselves. There is no point in stocking my happiness in everyone else.

I think I’ve finally found a way to be enough, though. I need to focus on myself. If I make myself happy, then that could be enough. The best advice I can give to anyone is to stop searching for happiness in others. Your happiness isn’t in other people, it has to come from within.

I can think about myself and I can do what I want. It’s not selfish to think about loving yourself. There’s nothing wrong with caring about what others think. There’s no sense in hurting others to keep your happiness.

But maybe this time it will be enough. I’ll feel like enough when I find myself. I was never lost, I just got a little distracted in trying to be enough for everyone else. When I go back to the root, to the core of the issues, I’ll find that it’s in myself. My issues aren’t because I’m not making others happy, they’re because I’m not making myself happy.

You and I won’t ever feel like we’re truly enough until we accept that we need to find the happiness within ourselves. That’s my new plan. Instead of trying to be enough for everyone else, I’m going to be enough for myself. When I’m enough for myself, the people still surrounded around me will see it as enough.

If they’re worth keeping in my life, then my happiness should matter to them as much as their happiness matters to me. With the plan to make myself happy and to become enough for myself, it would be enough for them.

Maybe this time, finding my happiness and finding what matters most to me and staying true to myself instead of changing into what I think everyone wants to see will actually be enough.