Will we ever feel good enough? Not if the wellness industry can help it.
Like most women my age, I have an uncomfortable history with not feeling good enough.
Truth be told, I still feel it. Every time I stand in front of an audience, or push ‘publish’ on a blog post, or send my kids off to school with mismatched socks (if they have socks on at all) the voice in my head pops up, like an unwanted facebook ad, ‘who are you kidding? You’re not good enough.”
And it’s not surprising, given our cultural obsession with ‘fixing’ ourselves.
In a quick scroll of the internet, we can see a long list of attributes…
…our skin
…our health
…our fitness
…our sleep
…our habits
…our hormones
…our relationships
…our jobs
…our houses
…our incomes
…our children
…our fertility
…our spirituality
…that if we get under control, we’ll feel better, sexier, more worthy. You know the story, do this thing and viola, life will start. We’ll arrive into the land of good enoughness and everything will be peachy.
It’s the best marketing tool in the book. If you do this for a few weeks, you’ll finally get that thing you’ve always wanted and you’ll land at that magic place we all want to be.
Have you noticed how that never happens?
The industry that I’ve noticed uses this tactic above and beyond all others is the wellness industry. The challenges, the detoxes, the diets, the lifestyle changes are almost always paired to a promise of thinner, better, smoother, sexier? I saw a yoga class the other day selling Younger, Taller, Slimmer. I just about spat out my tea. I bet they had a bunch of sciency sounding higglydipigglidee to ‘prove’ it, too.
Can you see, though, how with all these promises and messages, our culture has normalized the belief that how we are is totally not good enough? That we’d better get onto fixing ourselves.
And can you also see that while we are so focused on what’s NOT working, that we miss out on seeing what’s already working brilliantly?
While we are striving for thinner, we forget how beautiful the sun feels on our skin.
While we’re lamenting menopause we forget that music can still bring us to tears.
While we’re doing our 30-day detox we forget that our words can make our best friends day.
We literally forget there are a million things that don’t need fixing. That by and large, we are far and away, good enough.
If you’ve spent enough countless hours feeling less than enough, I have a few ideas.
Get yourself one of these bracelets. Every time you go on the internet, look at the bracelet first.
Book yourself into my Master Healthy Body Talk and Raise a Happier Family seminar on Sept 9. You’ll learn how to talk with your kids so they grow up feeling like their body is good enough (and it will make a difference to how you feel about yours too).
Hop on a free 30 min Body Confidence Coaching call. Clients are often moved to tears because, for the first time in their life, they experience themselves as good enough, just as they are. It’s a privilege to witness. I’d like to give you that experience too.
Emma x
The Body Confidence Coach
Like what you’ve just read? Sign up below for the free 10 Principles of Raising Body Confident Kids PDF, plus weeklyish coaching emails.