How to Be Enough

ARE YOUR HIGH STANDARDS INTERFERING WITH YOUR HAPPINESS?

If so, a lot probably goes well in your life. High standards and hard work pay off. You may get flattering compliments: on top of everything, accomplished, successful.

But privately, you might feel like you’re falling behind, incompetent, or different from everybody else. Despite your eagle-eyed inner quality-control inspector ensuring you do things well and correctly, there’s a fear of being judged or criticized and a sense of chronic dissatisfaction, disconnection, loneliness, or burnout. In short, you may look like you’re hitting it out of the park, but you feel like you’re striking out. This is perfectionism. And for everyone who struggles with it, it’s a misnomer: Perfectionism isn’t about striving to be perfect. It’s about never feeling good enough.

Dr. Ellen Hendriksen, clinical psychologist and author of How to Be Yourself, is here to help. In How to Be Enough, Hendriksen charts a flexible, forgiving, and freeing path, all without giving up the excellence your high standards and hard work have gotten you. She proposes seven shifts—including from self-criticism to kindness, from control to authenticity, from procrastination to productivity—to find self-acceptance, rewrite the inner rulebook, and, most of all, cultivate the authentic human connections we’re all craving.