Recently, I’ve found myself asking some uncomfortable questions.
Am I doing enough?
Am I achieving enough?
Am I contributing enough?
Am I enough?
And, rather confusingly, sometimes the opposite:
Am I too much?
It’s a jumble of tricky emotions, but when I took some time to notice and reflect on them, I realised that a lot of them seem to stem from guilt.
Am I doing enough?
I feel guilty that I’m not doing enough, working enough or struggling enough to deserve the freedom and space that I have in my life.
It is too easy to compare myself with people who have conventional jobs, salaries, job titles and visible achievements. Someone asks, “So, what do you do?” and there is a very easy answer for many people. There is a job title. A place they work. Perhaps a promotion or a career they have built over many years.
I don’t always feel that I have an equivalent answer.
I am building a business, but it is one that is evolving naturally over time as I explore and discover what feels right. It isn’t a conventional business with a business plan, quarterly targets and predictable growth. Sometimes that makes it difficult for me to know how to measure it.
Is Verbena Wave working?
Am I doing enough?
Does what I’m creating actually matter?
Then something happened
Recently, I heard from someone who had been using one of my Gratitude Journals.
She told me that when things felt overwhelming, she initially couldn’t face using the journal. Instead, she simply read the introductory pages. Something about the gentleness of those words made her feel understood.
Over time, she began using the journal, and hearing how much those small words and pages had meant to her moved me deeply.
Not simply because someone had bought and used something I had made, but because it reminded me how easily I can overlook the small signs that my work matters.
Something I created is making a difference to someone.
That is a powerful and beautiful thing.
Looking for evidence in the wrong places
It made me realise that I had been looking for evidence in very particular places.
I had been looking at sales, followers, reach and growth and using those things to decide whether my business was “working”. And when those numbers weren’t where I wanted them to be, it was very easy to turn that into a judgement about myself.
But what if I had been measuring my business in the wrong way?
Or perhaps, more accurately, what if I had only been seeing part of its value?
And then I realised I was doing something similar in other areas of my life too.
I was using measurable things to judge something that is much more difficult to measure.
My value. My worth. Whether I am doing enough. Whether my life is enough.
What really counts?
It made me think about the things we tell our children.
We tell them that assessments and exam results only quantify a small part of who they are and what they know on a given day. A grade or test result tells us something about how they performed in that particular test. It cannot tell us who they are as a whole person.
It cannot measure their kindness, compassion, humour, curiosity, creativity or the way they make another person feel.
It cannot tell us whether they are someone others feel safe with.
It cannot measure how deeply they love, how thoughtfully they listen, how they notice when someone is struggling, or the difference they might quietly make in someone else’s life.
Tests measure what they are designed to test.
There is little room to show more.
And yet, as adults, we seem to forget this.
Our society tends to place a lot of value on things that can be measured and quantified, probably because they are easier to track. We can measure salaries, qualifications, promotions, house prices, follower numbers, sales, steps, weight and achievements.
But what about the things that are much harder, or even impossible, to quantify?
How do you measure the comfort you give someone?
The laughter you bring to a friendship?
The feeling of belonging within a family?
The courage it takes to begin something new?
The creativity that makes you feel like yourself?
The kindness you offer when nobody is keeping score?
The person who feels understood because of something you said or created?
These things don’t come with a number.
They don’t appear on a spreadsheet.
And perhaps because they are so difficult to quantify, we can overlook them.
These things count too
Perhaps that is what I have been doing.
I’ve been finding evidence in very specific areas, but missing the less measurable indicators.
The conversation about my journal didn’t suddenly make all my worries disappear. I still want Verbena Wave to grow. I still want to make sales. I still want to reach more people. I still want to build something meaningful from the work I’ve created.
Those things matter to me.
But perhaps they cannot be the only evidence that what I am doing has value.
And perhaps the same is true of the rest of my life.
I can be grateful for the freedom I have and still want more.
I can love being at home and still want to grow something of my own.
I can love my family deeply and still need time and space for myself.
I can be proud of what I have created and still have ambitions for what comes next.
I can be struggling with my sense of worth and still be someone who has worth.
Perhaps I don’t need to stop wanting more.
Perhaps I just need to become better at noticing what is already here.
The people who love me.
The things I have created.
The moments I have been present for.
The things I have learned.
The small ways I have helped someone.
The things that make me feel like myself.
The life I am already living.
These things count too.
And perhaps that is what I want to carry with me into this next season: not a determination to become more productive or to prove that I am doing enough, but a little more willingness to notice the evidence that I am already contributing, already creating, already making a difference.
Because maybe we don’t need to prove that we are enough before we allow ourselves to believe that we are.
So I wonder
What evidence are you using to decide whether you are (doing) enough?
And what might you notice if you looked somewhere else?
If this has made you think about the evidence you might be overlooking, I have a little something for you.
My A Little Book of Noticing is a free printable designed as a gentle invitation to pause and notice some of the ordinary things around you that might otherwise pass you by.
You can download it here.
If you’d like to explore this a little further…
My 31-Day Gentle Gratitude Journals were created for exactly this kind of pause — a little space each day to notice, reflect and recognise the things that matter.
Explore the Gratitude Journals here.