That I would be good

That I would be good, even if I didn’t know a thing.

That’s the first line of an Alanis Morissette song from a lifetime ago, and I listened to it in a moment of nostalgia on my drive to work the other day.

I remember listening to the song on the Alanis Morissette Unplugged album – from her live MTV concert.

It was back in the days when cars still had cassette players, but everything was on CD so you had to buy the cassette attachment for your CD player that you shoved in the console of your car, but if you hit a bump or slammed on the breaks the CD would skip and wow we’ve come far in how we listen to music these days, haven’t we?

I digress.

The song hit home for me back then, and I guess I wasn’t surprised that it still hit home, despite the additional 20 years of life experience and, dare I say, wisdom I’ve amassed since then.

Because worthiness.

I’m not sure that a day goes by that I don’t either question my own worthiness, or have a conversation with a client who is struggling with their own. It’s one of the biggest challenges I see with goal setting for so many people.

Because while the conscious or surface level goal might be to lose 20 pounds, I think the underlying goal is often the search for a feeling:

That I would be good even if I gained 10lbs.

Which is another line from the song.

Thanks to people like Brene Brown, and the work of so many others who are willing to bring attention to their own vulnerability, we are having more conversations than ever around worthiness.

Because the reality, as difficult as it might sometimes feel to accept, is that you are good. You are worthy. You are enough.

I know. I write about that often. I try to say it to people in my life often. I try to say it to myself often.

It takes work to really take that kind of message in. But it's worth the effort.