"I am enough"- Salsa

“I am enough”- Salsa (By Maxine Benny)

Being average is something that I’ve internally been struggling with for the longest time. Am I doing enough? What would they think about me doing this? Do they see the progress I’m making?? These are just some of the questions that I’ve asked myself on a daily basis.

Am I really stuck, or am I stuck on the mindset that they are constantly looking for a reason to bring me down or criticize the steps that I take when I’m the only one who knows about the benchmarks that have been set.

A few years down the line and the “they” that I’ve been referring to, has been me. I’ve unconsciously placed pressure on myself. Pressure that was supposedly outside pressure which eventually led to internal struggles. We judge ourselves so harshly when in reality no one has ALL of their shit together. We’re all trying to get from one point to the other without it appearing to be a struggle. We try our best to make our movements appear seamless.

For me, nothing has been seamless or easy. Everything has been a challenge, that when faced with, I ask myself, “What do I do here?”. How am I supposed to get over this mountain of problems that just never seem to give me a break. The most frequent question was: “Why me? Am I not strong enough already?”.

But as we all know, there are certain answers that lie within us. Answers we have already probably seen, but the fear of being average has overshadowed it.

The answer that I really needed not so long ago was that we all move at our own pace. We all have our own timeline that for the most part is not even determined solely by us, but by outside factors as well. Yes, we’ve set goals and want to achieve certain things at a certain age, but most times those things just don’t work out how we’d like them to. And that doesn’t make us average or any other degrading term that you give to yourself. It makes you human.

Sitting with yourself and doing some deep introspection is something that we all need to do, more often than not. We judge ourselves harshly and don’t allow people to enjoy who we are at our core. We build up walls by putting up a façade, or creating an overly relaxed persona, or whatever we think the next person wants us to be. But all of this is unnecessary. Maybe we all need to be little bit kinder to ourselves and towards others.