Mary Jelkovsky - The Gift of Self-Love

Do you ever find yourself caught in a negative thought spiral that tells you youre just not enough?

Not skinny enough. Not pretty enough. Not fit enough.

Not smart enough. Not accomplished enough. Not confident enough.

Not a good enough mom or wife or daughter or sister or friend.

Do you ever feel like you cant shake these thoughts, no matter what you do?

Despite knowing better, do you find yourself mindlessly scrolling through Instagram, comparing yourself with all those super gorgeous lifestyle bloggers and wondering what they even do for a living? Or maybe to that popular girl from high school whose life still looks perfect? Or to those moms who manage to always look rested, put together, and dress their kids in the cutest outfits? If your answer is yes to any of those, I have one thing to say: I feel you, babe.

I used to struggle with these feelings all the time, and to be honest, sometimes I still do. I think we all do. Sometimes these thoughts are short lived, slipping away as fast as they came. But other times, the feeling of not being enough can linger for days or even weeks. Sometimes you get so used to feeling bad about yourself that you dont even notice that its been a few years since you actually felt good. That critical voice inside your head constantly reminds you that you arent enough and then tells you that youll never be enough until you

Lose those last 10 pounds, get rid of your baby weight, or tone your arms some more. Get a promotion, a raise, or a bonus. Cook a delicious, yet healthy, meal for your family and pack perfect lunches for the kids, preferably the night before, because thats what good moms do, right? Learn another skill that will let you change your resume from intermediate to proficient. Do your makeup and get your eyebrows waxed, eyelashes filled, and nails done. Find a significant other and get married, plan the perfect wedding, and then throw the perfect cocktail parties, just like your exbest friend from high school (thanks, Facebook, for throwing those photos in my face!). After that, buy a nicer car and a bigger house, and after that

Look, I get it. For years, I thought the solution to not being good enough was to simply have more and do more. I thought if I just worked harder on myself, then I would have more to be happy about, which would eventually make me feel better about myself as a whole.

But the trick with this kind of thinking is that it never ends. And guess what? No matter how much weight I lost, how many nice things I bought, or how much I accomplished, that underlying feeling of not being enough didnt go away. If anything, it got worse over time.

Eventually, I had to find another way.

As a first-generation American from an immigrant home, I did everything I could to become the person my family wanted me to be: a girl who checked all the boxes, met all of societys expectations, and looked perfect while doing it. And on the surface, thats exactly what I appeared to be. I was an ambitious, high-achieving, and self-motivated student with a full-ride scholarship to college, and I had the kind of looks that rarely left me without a date. Some would say I was the perfect girl.

Nevertheless, I was fighting a war inside my mind: never feeling good enough. Not smart enough. Not thin enough. Not pretty enough. Not accomplished enough. Simply not enough. I honestly thought that I didnt feel like I was enough because I wasnt doing enough. So I kept pushing myself to the limitand past the limitin a desperate attempt to feel better. On top of my academic achievements, I started competing in bikini fitness competitions, thinking that if I had the perfect body and won a trophy to prove how dedicated, disciplined, and determined I was, then I would finally be happy with myself. But no matter what I did, there was still that critical voice inside my head.

Despite having an average-sized body, I still worked to lose weight, but it was never enough. (Hello, body dysmorphia!) I was good at school, but not as brilliant as the girl sitting next to me in calculus. (Hello, comparisonitis!) I constantly sought validation from men and women alike and did anything and everything I could to get everyone to like me. (Hello, people pleaser!) But no matter how many people liked me, I never felt lovable, because I couldntlovemyself.

Self-love was a foreign concept to me. I thought it was just for people who were either born super pretty, confident, and popular or achieved very little and used self-love as an excuse to give up on themselves. But my big secret was that I envied anyone who looked like they loved themselves, because that kind of happiness felt totally out of reach, like one more thing I wasnt good enough at.

It never clicked in my head that the weight loss, compliments, and attention were not helping me. If anything, they were adding fuel to my self-destructive fire. All of it made me feel good in the moment, but then the feeling would quickly fade away, and I would find myself back in a cycle of self-loathing and striving all over again.

Have you ever thrown newspapers into a firepit? The fire gets very big, very fast from the paper burning but then dies back down a few seconds later. Well, weight loss, compliments, and attention were the newspapers to my internal flame. It was easy to throw them in there and start a fire, but it would die out quickly and ultimately leave my light dimmer than it was before.

I call this the self-loathing cycle. For example, many people think If only I could change my body, then Id be happier with myself. So you go on a diet, the diet fails you, and you get into this terrible cycle of restricting your food losing control and binge eating feeling ashamed hating yourself bingeing a bit more starting again on Monday, swearing this time will be different and doing it again from square one. Even if you do lose weight, youll find something else about your body that needs to be changed, because its never enough.

Or maybe you think that if only you had more money, then you could afford a nicer house or that fancy vacation. So you work harder and buy those nice things, but the satisfaction is so short lived because its never enough. And if youre anything like me, you may have fallen into the trap of thinking that once you achieve that career milestone or life goal, youll finally feel successful. But then you see someone else who seems to be doing so much better than you, so you set another goal, create another plan, and add more things to your to-do list, because its never enough.