Edwina ings chambers biography channel

‘I am enough’. Ok, I realise that there are those who might say that I’m far too much. But, personal insults aside……. Those three words have become such a self-esteem marker in recent years. It’s the bold and succinct battle cry for don’t go changing to try to please them, the mantra akin to the famous Bridget Jones ‘I like you just as you are’ moment. They have regular starring appearances on Instagram tiles, get spoken meaningfully by influencers into the camera for their social media feeds, and chirruped by well-meaning wellbeing gurus. You’re worthy of everything – all the good stuff -exactly as you are. It's a good mantra. Go forth, with confidence and believing you warrant happiness, love, success without the need to change a thing about you. But is it right?

Because for about 48 hours or so I’ve been pondering this question thanks to Demi Moore and her acceptance speech at the Golden Globes for her role in The Substance (well deserved, if you ask me, and the costumes too were award-worthy). She’s thrown a very glamorous little spanner into the enoughness of it all. There she was, talking about how a producer had once told her she was no more than a ‘popcorn actress’ (lesson in how not to talk someone up), how she’d believed that diminishing comment and how it had corroded her over time. Put downs can do that, even when we know they shouldn’t. Make us feel that we can never be enough and, worse, don’t deserve to be. But then the universe stepped in, and even when was at ‘kind of a low point’ a great script was sent, a director believed in her, and here she is, all these years later finally proving that producer – and those mis-held beliefs she’d carried - wrong. But it isn’t just a ‘you never know what’s around the corner’ positivity point that I’ve focussed on. It’s what she said next that has made me really stop and think.

“In those moments when we don’t think we’re smart enough or pretty enough or skinny enough or successful enough … “ her sentence began, and I expected the now customary ending. But, then Demi threw a curveball. “I had a woman say to me ‘Just know you will never be enough, but you can know the value of your worth if you just put down the measuring stick’.”

(Image : you can see the speech in this link to her Instagram)

Oh, Demi. Demi. What are you doing to me? So, now I’m not enough? None of us is? Never will be? Do I have to have a positive thinking rethink? Because however Demi is thinking it’s clearly working. She’s careering down the super success highway of life. But also, it makes sense, doesn’t’ it? After all, what is being ‘enough’? It’s probably a very relative thing. One person’s enough is another person’s boo-hoo why am I not this/do not have that etc. And if you’ve managed to find peak enough does that mean that there’s nowhere to go? No improvements to be made, no emotional expansions to be big-banged? Then again, if you’re having confidence issues how do you figure out the value of your worth? Ah, well, she gave us the answer didn’t she. Put down the measuring stick that we can so easily and repeatedly beat ourselves over the head with. Cut the circuit on the negative self-talk that has so often been kickstarted by someone else anyway. It’s easier said than done, I know, but it’s also a necessity to try. And I’m finding some meditation is helping with it - but more on that another day.

It's about more than that, too anyway. As Demi also said upon accepting her award, she was ‘celebrating this as a marker of my wholeness and of the love that is driving me’. Wholeness is one of those words I thought would have gained far more traction in the wellness world by now. It isn’t wholly absent, but it also isn’t exactly buzzing with topicality either. Still, it’s a good aim, I think, and one that is perhaps better than a general state of ‘enough’. Whole is nurturing, celebrating, and exploring all the elements that make you YOU. Parts that can become disparate and disconnected as you tackle other issues in life. And, with more than a dash of kismet, it’s what I’ve decided to do more of in It’s time to get back to the business of being me, regardless of whether others might consider some of that to be ‘popcorn’. Time to learn to tune out the self-judgement as well as the unkind and corrosive judgements of others. Not that a bit of well-intentioned feedback isn’t a good thing, but when you’re sure of who you are, when you do know your worth, it’s easier to listen to it and decide whether it has merit rather than to sway with the opinion of others and people please and bend yourself like a pretzel to what you think others want.

So perhaps we do need to let go of the idea of being enough. Maybe it’s time to be more unapologetically ourselves, to know ourselves – and, crucially, our worth and feel able to state it. And in that space, in that fertile soil, perhaps we’ll become so much more than enough, perhaps we’ll become so much more than we could ever have imagined. Either way, that’s enough from me for one day.