Best For:
Individuals struggling with self-worth, readers interested in emotional journal entries, writing advocates in search of useful daily journal applications, and people who are passionate about mental health through self-help.
The Vault:
- Reflections from a daily journaling practice using Storia: Future-Self Coach
- How gratitude & guided journaling can support emotional wellness
- A personal response to the prompt: “What is the fear that no longer deserves space in your life?”
- Hiking & nature as reminders of resilience and belonging
- Friendship, vulnerability, & learning to stop trying to earn acceptance
- Lessons from working as an STNA in long term care
- Creative work, self doubt, & building a small business anyway
- Advocacy, publishing, & creating opportunities for marginalized communities
- Letting go of the fear of not being enough
My Daily Journaling Ritual:
Recently I have been holding myself accountable for actually completing my daily journal. I have been doing this by building a daily journaling routine with an app called Storia: Future-Self Coach. I aim to focus a little more time daily on the things I have to be grateful for and the ways I am building my emotional intelligence.
This iOS-only app combines guided journaling prompts, mood tracking, gratitude features, voice journaling, progress tracking, multiple journals, and personalized reflection tools designed around helping users better understand themselves and connect with future goals.
Storia also includes community prompt areas, privacy-focused features, and encrypted journaling spaces, which is important when you want some of these thoughts to stay your own.
As a person who enjoys reflective writing already, guided prompts often become an interesting way to uncover thoughts I probably would not have sat down and explored on my own. There is something powerful about being asked a question and realizing the answer reaches much deeper than expected. This app is able to do this time and time again.
It is also important that I mention that daily gratitude journaling and reflective practices have become connected to mental health conversations. When we take the time to intentionally process emotions, recognize patterns, identify fears, and acknowledge moments of growth, we also create space for greater emotional awareness.
Do note that though many find it to be a helpful tool, journaling does not magically solve your problems of difficult periods of life. This tool can help you to organize your thoughts that may have otherwise felt tangled together. Sometimes writing creates a pause that exists just long enough for us to hear ourselves.
The Storia Prompt: “What is the fear that no longer deserves space in your life?”
Today, one of my prompts asked, “What is the fear that no longer deserves space in your life?”
Initially, my answer felt simple.
The fear of not being enough.
Once I started writing, I realized that fear had roots extending into some of my hiking trips, friendships, full-time job, creative endeavors, and advocacy efforts.
This journal became something less focused on the fear itself, transforming the answer into what looked more like the evidence I needed to finally dismantle the fear altogether.
Upon reviewing my response to today’s journal prompt, I knew the realization was one worthy of being shared.
The Journal Entry:
The fear of not being enough.
For a long time, I carried this feeling that I had to constantly prove my worth. That I had to somehow earn my place or earn someone’s love. I felt I needed to work harder to earn success. As well as the feeling that I could never earn belonging.
For some reason I believed being enough was something I had to achieve and that I couldn’t have just been born enough. I thought it was waiting somewhere ahead of me, at the end of some impossible checklist.
Life, however, has slowly but thankfully shown me something different. I learned that my achievement of becoming enough was never waiting at a finish line. It was already within me.
I simply had to learn how to see it.
Hiking Trails:
Hiking became one of the places where this realization started to take form. The trails have an unmatched ability to strip everything down and remind me what really matters.
Out there, ridges, gorges, trees, and flora do not care about titles, accomplishments, appearances, the price of your gear or expectations. They only ask us to keep moving.
I have hiked through rain, knee-deep snow, after the overnight shift exhaustion, uncertainty, steep inclines, droughts, fog, and moments where I genuinely doubted myself.
There were times I questioned whether I could keep going, but every summit reached, every muddy pair of hiking shoes, and every mile completed became proof that I was capable.
Hiking taught me that I do not need to move at anyone else’s pace.
I do not need to be the fastest person on the trail or even reach the end in some extraordinary way. I only have to keep showing up and continue forward.
Nature has repeatedly reminded me that I belong exactly where I stand.
Friendships:
New friendships challenged that fear in a different way. Opening yourself up to people can feel terrifying when you carry the belief that who you are might never be enough or may equally be too much.
There is always the possibility of being misunderstood, rejected, or left behind. Yet I am grateful to have met people who stayed.
People who accept me, care for me, and connect with me for me. These people replaced the fear that I held that I would only be enough when transformed into someone else.
For once I allowed people to know the real me. It is these relationships that pushed back against old narratives and helped me continue to outgrow fears.
I found in these people the knowledge that meaningful connection is not built through perfection. It grows through honesty, vulnerability, and authenticity. The acceptance I found here became a reminder that I never needed to earn my right to belong in anyone’s life.
Caregiving:
My work as an STNA specifically in long term care facilities also shifted the way I view worth. Caring for others demands a lot physically, emotionally, and mentally. As well as the fact that a lot of what caregivers do happens quietly and often without recognition.
Here I learned that value is not always measured through praise or attention. Value can exist in the smaller moments like sitting beside someone when they need comfort.
When you act in a way that helps someone preserve their dignity, make another person feel seen during difficult moments in their life, or even provide end-of-life care, your value doesn’t need to accompany a loud act of praise.
This work showed me that I do not need to achieve something extraordinary every day to matter. My presence, compassion, and effort matter more to my residents than most people will ever know until it is their time to know.
Small Business:
Building my small business and pursuing creative endeavors brought an entirely different set of challenges as well as a new set of ways to see my worth. Creating something born of your own ideas while confronting self-doubt over and over again is not an easy feat.
There were, and still are, moments where I question whether my ideas matter, if anyone is listening, or wonder if what I create is good enough. Comparison has a way of creeping in and sinking in its teeth. Working to convince creative people they are falling behind.
Working in spite of this, I keep creating. Every article written, project completed, risk taken, and idea pursued became evidence that fear does not get the final word here. Though growth does not happen through perfection, we know and have seen that growing happens through persistence and continuing to show up.
Creativity & Advocacy:
By advocating and creating opportunities for marginalized communities within publishing and creative spaces I have gained a deeper understanding of my worth. Advocacy work can feel overwhelming. We understand that there is always more work to do and more people who deserve support. So it becomes easy to feel like whatever you contribute will never be enough.
I have wrestled with that feeling over and over again. I have also questioned whether small indie-driven actions will ever create meaningful change. Over time, though I have come to realize that change is never built through massive movements or grand gestures alone. Change happens through creating space, opening doors, and helping someone feel seen when they have spent too long being overlooked.
I do not have to carry the entire burden of changing the world. I only have to continue contributing where I can.
My Worth:
Feeling that I am enough was never about proving myself or reaching some level in life. The evidence of my true worth had been there all along.
My worth exists in every trail I have finished, person I care for, friendship I built, creative risk I took, and opportunity I tried to create for others. The fear of not being enough no longer deserves space in my life; when life itself is a constant reminder to me that I already am enough.
Final Thoughts:
Sometimes fear survives because we do not stop long enough to see it let alone to challenge it. I know at least when it comes to myself, I allow old narratives to stay in my mind as facts, even when my life consistently provides evidence against them.
As I looked back through this prompt, I quickly began to realize the fear of not being enough did not disappear because of one life-changing event, but over time it slowly lost the ability to take up space through my real lived experiences.
When reflecting on my hiking trips I found proof that persistence mattered more than perfection. Doing the same with my newer friendships allowed me to discover that authenticity creates stronger connections than pretending ever could. I have begun looking at more aspects of my life under different lights to see the truth hidden throughout my layers of trauma and personality.
I have noticed that growth rarely arrives all at once. More often it decides to show up in my life as muddy hiking boots, difficult conversations, emotional exhaustion, unfinished projects, or moments where we choose to continue anyway.
When I look back often I am able to see that I have been carrying evidence of my worth much longer than I realized.
TLDR:
Today’s Storia journaling prompt asked me what fear no longer deserved space in my life. My answer became the fear of not being enough, as well as the reality behind why I have clearly outgrown this fear.
Reflecting on hiking, relationships, my work as an STNA, my small business, creative endeavors, and advocacy efforts reminded me that my worth was never waiting at a finish line.
The evidence of this had been there all along.
Sometimes growth is not about becoming enough; sometimes growth is realizing you always have been.
Continue Your Journey:
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Read My Emotional Mothers Day Journal Entry
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