Am I good enough?

My contribution for the work project had been turned down ... again. I felt defeated. And the nagging question “Am I good enough?” raised its ugly head. It’s a question that can plague anyone struggling with self-doubt and fears of others seeing you as inadequate.

This question used to hit me frequently. But over time, I’ve learned that an effective way to combat this pesky question is by turning it around – not focusing on what I’m lacking, but instead asking, “What am I being?”

For me that question is best answered by exploring the nature of God and our relation to God. In that light, each of us is spiritual, capable, and resilient. We are good enough because God is good enough, and God’s goodness is expressed in all His children.

Christian Science teaches that God fills all space. God is the source of all love, and imparts throughout creation the intelligence of divine Mind, the substance of infinite Soul, and the purity and power of Truth. The Bible instructs us to “acquaint” ourselves with God, “and be at peace” (Job 22:21). By discovering more of God’s all-inclusive love, we can be at peace and freely love all that God creates, and that includes ourselves as well as each other.

God, our Father-Mother, loves His creation thoroughly and has created us in His image. Our oneness with divine Love, God, is the key idea that helped my thought shift from doubt to confidence. I reasoned, Can a ray of light be separated from its light source? Likewise, it is impossible for us to be separated from the divine Love that created us.

Christ Jesus had such a clear awareness of his oneness with God. He knew God’s love and supreme power. His constant communion with God gave him his healing authority and conscious worth. He said: “I know where I have come from and where I am going” (John 8:14, New Revised Standard Version). He also said, “I and my Father are one” (John 10:30). He made it clear that we should all understand ourselves to be at one with God. He proved that we are inseparable from the Divine – as Soul’s representative, with Soul’s resources of beauty, honor, intelligence, and grace ever at hand.

Knowing ourselves in this way also means loving ourselves as God loves us. Discerning our spiritual origin and God-given purpose wipes out feelings of inferiority stemming from a sense of identity based on personality, fears, and doubts. The pull to unhelpfully compare oneself to others is replaced when we realize that God’s children are not limited in their access to God’s goodness, nor do they clash, compete, or take away another’s light. As God is Love, we are created to be loving. As God is Soul, we are capable. As God is Mind, we are intelligent.

Turning the question “Am I good enough?” to “What am I being?” and considering all that God knows about me flipped a switch in my approach to the work project. I was able to resume working on it, inspired and refreshed. Anxiety was replaced by a holy curiosity about how Love would inspire me to express the right ideas and complete the project successfully. I realized I had all the spiritual qualities needed to do whatever is my duty to do. And soon my part of the project was accepted by the rest of the group.

In my life, I’ve found time and again that whatever the demands, these same spiritual ideas about our oneness with God are constant, fundamental, and true. They are here to rescue us from being duped into believing that we are less than we are, or becoming preoccupied with compensating for a perceived fault.

There is a way out of the ruminating cycles of self-doubt. When the nagging question “Am I good enough?” comes, we can answer, Yes! We are always enough. God has created us that way. We are children of God, equipped with the infinite resources of Soul, forever in the embrace of God’s love and exacting care.