You Don’t Have to Do More to Be More. You’re Enough.

A lesson from my 28th birthday

Photo by Brooke Cagle on Unsplash

I turned 28 a few days ago.

Here are some highlights of my 27:

• Became a permanent resident of the UK (waited 10 years for this!)
• Quit a corporate job just like that
• Started freelancing
• Created a dating course I’ve always wanted to share and enrolled many awesome clients
• Pivoted from Medium to journalism
• Found a better corporate job in Marketing at a prestigious investment bank
• Got married to the love of my life

Wow. It might feel slow at times, but looking back, it was truly an eventful — dare I say successful — year for me.

I hate to write this kind of list because I don’t need a pat on my shoulder and I don’t want anyone to make comparisons — it’s not healthy or productive.

I wrote it down this time because, honestly, I needed it.

As usual, I’ve been incredibly hard on myself and feeling like I wasn’t doing enough, so it’s helpful for me to take a moment to register and celebrate all the things I’ve done this past year.

To be honest, I’m still working through why I have such high expectations of myself, but a good place to start is probably remembering my starting point.

I came to the UK ten years ago with nothing but a suitcase, a scholarship, and school-grade writing ability — not to mention loneliness, crippling anxiety, and a toxic, now-estranged parent looming over all my experiences.

Yet, here I am, living a life my younger self could only dream of, having everything I could’ve asked for.

This gotta be enough.

I need to quiet the fear and scarcity mindset screaming at me I need to do more and be more at all costs.

I need to tell myself again and again this is enough.

I’d be enough even if that highlight list was empty.