The Not Good Enough Disease

How many times a day do you compare two things and find one lacking?  How often is it YOU that you’re comparing to someone else?  If you’re anything like me (and nearly every woman I know) it happens far too often.

When did it become stylish to focus on what’s not good enough?  When did my brain click into a mode that encouraged me to ignore the positive and focus on the negative?  My studio rule of not saying anything negative about ourselves goes out the door when I’m thinking about myself.  (Thanks, Kristen, for pointing this out!)

I have so much to be grateful for, so much I take for granted.  I am a happier person when I focus on what I have, versus what I don’t have. It’s insidious, this not good enough disease. It affects my appearance, my home, my job, and almost every other aspect of my life. 

My business gets this too!  

I get asked all the time, “Why don’t you have any before and afters on your website?”  I understand why people would want to see them.  It’s hard to visualize what we might look like with hair, makeup, vintage outfits, and a killer smile.  But I am dead set against them.

There is no way that I can take a before and after picture of someone and put them up next to each other without your mind choosing one as “not good enough”.  It’s the same person before and after, so why would I want to show their day to day beauty as lacking?  I think these type of photos are visually effective to give someone who wasn’t there a peek into a pin-up day.  However the person in the pictures doesn’t need to see a before and after.  They’ll know how beautiful they felt, and that’s the whole point of what I do.

The only cure for this disease to be aware of it and fight it with gratefulness for what you do have.  Whether it’s your family, your job, your hair, your lips, counting what you have will always be a more worthwhile list than dreaming about greener grass.  

So find ONE thing today that you’re grateful for, and brush aside that niggling little list of don’t-haves.