There isn’t one defining moment when you suddenly decide that you’ll never be good enough in business, or in life. When you grow up around narcissism, it’s a slow breakdown of your entire sense of self over years and years, and for me, it was thirty years of it. I’m not going to share all thirty years here (there isn’t enough tape in the world for that, honestly), but I want to share enough for you to understand where the belief came from, what it turned into, and how it rippled into every single corner of my business. It’s really easy to believe that who we are and what we’ve lived through won’t touch our business, as if it will somehow stay untouchable, and I’ve come to see that as the biggest lie of all.
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Where Does the Belief That You’re Not Good Enough Come From?
My parents divorced when I was two. The moments that shaped me weren’t dramatic headlines. They were small, ordinary moments that happened over and over until they became the lens I saw myself through.
The Drive Home
I was maybe six or seven, and my stepmom was driving me back to my mom’s house. I was missing my dad so much, and I was crying in the car because I didn’t want to go. When she noticed, she told me that crying was for the weak, that this wasn’t a big deal, and that I needed to get over it. I remember trying to suck those tears back in so hard. That was the moment I learned that my feelings weren’t safe, that I needed to be a big girl and a good girl who followed the rules, and that nobody really cared about what was going on for me. That was just one drive home, and there were so many more like it.
The Journal
When I was fourteen, my stepmom read my entire handwritten journal and told me she thought it was a book. I call BS. I was the rule follower and the golden child who tried so hard to get everything right, and that journal was the one safe place where I could let my feelings out. I’d written about going to bed hungry and not being allowed to make myself a snack, and having it read felt like a complete betrayal. It’s also a big part of why journalling is still in my life today.
Now, it’s something I invest in doing once a week with a clear intention. I focus by first asking myself, “What’s on your mind?” and then I actually go through the series of questions that I ask my 1:1 clients each week as if it’s a mini coaching session with myself.
The Stairs
If I had to name the biggest moment of my life, it would be this one. I was fifteen or sixteen, sitting at the computer playing RollerCoaster Tycoon and drinking way too much Pepsi, when my stepdad sat down on the stairs and told me I was a spoiled brat who lived in a bubble and thought the world revolved around me. He said the world revolved around money and I needed to give my head a shake. My mom sat on the stairs behind him and did absolutely nothing. Yes, I was a teenager, and yes, I could be a brat, but I wasn’t the person he said I was. After living with narcissism since I was three, though, it was so easy to take that on and believe I was wrong and bad. A few weeks later, I moved out.
Those are just three small memories out of hundreds. Underneath all of them was one sentence that hardened over thirty years: you will never be good enough. And the house I grew up in wasn’t the end of it, because at twenty-six I entered a seven-year relationship with a narcissist. That’s a story for another time, but I want you to know it happened, because it’s part of how thirty years became thirty years.
What Does It Mean to Feel Like You’ll Never Be Good Enough in Business?
Feeling like you’ll never be good enough in business is a deeply held belief, often formed in childhood or in harmful relationships, that who you are right now falls short and that you have to keep proving your worth. In business, it rarely sounds like those exact words and usually shows up as “I’m not experienced enough,” “I haven’t been doing this long enough,” or “I’m not ready enough yet.” The common thread is that the sentence always ends with the word enough and your business isn’t the problem here, it’s the amplifier of your personal patterns.
How Does “Not Good Enough” Show Up in Your Business?
Here’s what nobody tells you. That sentence doesn’t stay in your childhood, and it doesn’t stay in a relationship either. It becomes part of you and follows you into your business, where it simply changes outfits. You probably already know how it shows up for you, but these are the patterns I see most often in myself and in the women I coach.
Hiding Right Before Your Visibility Pays Off
Self-sabotage often hits right before visibility is about to pay off. It sounds like “Who cares that I did this?” or “My life is boring, nobody wants to see it.” That’s wrong, because they absolutely do care.
Struggling to Trust Yourself and Others
It also shows up as not being able to receive help or delegate, pivoting chronically, and changing your pricing again and again. Underneath all of it is a lack of trust, both in yourself and in the people around you.
Moving the Goalposts the Moment You Hit Them
One of the biggest patterns I see with the amazing women in my F-YES Mastermind is that they can’t enjoy their wins. The second they hit a goal, the goalpost moves, and they never take a moment to recognize that they’re the one who made it happen. I don’t mean opening a bottle of wine and running a bubble bath. I mean truly reflecting, so you can rewire the synapses and neural pathways in your beautiful brain to see yourself as the catalyst and the reason for what is happening in your life.
Why Social Media Tools Won’t Fix a “Not Good Enough” Story
On a recent mastermind call, one of my clients told me that social media was really hard for her because it felt like nobody cared. I’ve gotten to know her really well, and she also had a narcissistic ex. As we talked, she started to uncover the layers underneath, and I told her that I could give her all the social media tools in the world, but that wasn’t what was really happening here.
Showing up on social media isn’t inherently hard. We push a button and we talk. The emotional story and mental game behind it are what make it hard. For years, someone in her life had told her she was unimportant, so making herself the centre of attention never felt safe. Putting herself on camera felt like putting herself back in front of the person who told her she didn’t matter.
That’s what I mean when I say life problems ripple into business and our business amplifies our life patterns, whether we like it or not. It’s truly not a metaphor. It is so real.
How Can You Start Rewiring the Belief?
There’s no quick fix here, but there is a place to start, and these are the steps I come back to with my clients and in my own life.
- Listen for the word “enough” in your thoughts, because this belief rarely announces itself directly and almost always hides at the end of a sentence about your experience, your timing, or your readiness.
- Notice where the pattern shows up in your business, whether that’s going quiet online, redoing your pricing yet again, or holding onto tasks you know you could hand off.
- Ask yourself whether the problem is really the tool or the story underneath it, since the strategy is rarely the hardest part.
- Pause after every win to reflect on what you did to make it happen, so your brain can start building new pathways that see you as the reason for your success.
- Get support from someone who can see what you can’t, because a belief that took decades to form is incredibly hard to untangle on your own.
If you want to do this work alongside other women who get it, The Evolving Entrepreneur gives you the strategy and the space to look at what’s really going on beneath it. If you’re craving deeper, more personal support, 1:1 coaching lets us look at your specific story and how it’s showing up in your business right now.
The Inner Work Is Most of the Work
I’m still working through this, and that’s kind of the point. We’re always going to be working on ourselves as human beings. A lot of my clients can’t stand that. One told me she just wanted to check emotional healing off her list, but it isn’t a box we can check, because we’re humans, not robots. Our narratives, our stories, and who we believe we are all ripple into our business, and that’s why rewiring our brains is most of the actual work.
Thirty years of narcissism undermining my sense of self is a really long time. It’s most of my life, since I’m thirty-six now. But in the years since I started truly working on myself, I have come so far in such a short amount of time, and having my own coach has been a huge part of that. There’s no chance in hell I could have done it alone. It’s also a big reason I do what I do as a business coach for female entrepreneurs, because I know firsthand how much of the business work is really this work.
I want this to give you hope. The inner narratives, the stories you tell yourself, and the way you were raised can all shift, often faster than you’d expect when you’re taking the tangible steps. I’ll still be doing the work when I’m ninety-nine, because it isn’t one or the other. It’s both, and.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why do I feel like I’ll never be good enough in business even when I’m successful?
Success doesn’t automatically rewrite a belief that formed long before your business existed. If you never pause to recognize your role in your wins, your brain keeps moving the goalposts and treats every achievement as proof that you still have more to prove.
Can childhood experiences really affect how I run my business?
Yes. The beliefs you formed about safety, visibility, and your own worth come with you into every decision you make. They often show up as avoiding visibility, struggling to delegate, or second-guessing your pricing.
How long does it take to change a “not good enough” belief?
It isn’t a one-time fix, and most people keep working on it throughout their lives. Meaningful change can still happen in a surprisingly short amount of time when you’re consistently taking tangible action with the right support.
Should I work with a therapist or a business coach on this?
They serve different purposes, and many women benefit from both. A therapist is the right support for healing trauma itself. A business coach helps you see how those old stories are showing up in your business decisions and gives you the strategy to move forward anyway.
A Final Word on Being Enough
Honesty is one of my core values. To me, it means being willing to look at what’s actually happening, tell the truth about what isn’t working, and make decisions from reality rather than from an old story someone handed you years ago. If you’ve spent years believing you’ll never be good enough in business, the most honest thing you can do is question where that belief came from and whether it was ever true. Listen to the full episode above, and if something in it stirred up a knot in your stomach, I’d love to help you untangle it, whether that’s inside The Evolving Entrepreneur, The F-YES Mastermind or 1:1 coaching.
