You are Enough

I know Valentine’s Day can bring a lot of pressure to find the perfect partner and perfect relationship and I personally think…(wait for it…) it’s 100% dumb. There are no perfect partners or relationships. There are plenty of amazing partners and relationships but each have their own unique challenges and should never define your worth.

We often value ourselves and our worth based on our relationship status when really the relationship we have with ourselves is the one we should be putting the most time and largest investment into. You can be in a loving and supportive relationship but still be unhappy because you don’t love yourself. You can be with a partner that finds you drop-dead gorgeous but if you don’t love your body, you may not feel beautiful. When you love and value yourself, you treat yourself better and you hold others to a higher standard for how they should treat you.

When I was finishing yoga teacher training, we all had to write mantras for ourselves and almost every single one of us wrote that we are enough or that we were worthy of love. I, personally, have forgotten this several times and have come back to repeating it to myself often. One of the tendencies of the mind is to cling to the negative and doubt the positive. This mindset only causes us to doubt that we are worthy of love or that we are enough.

It’s been almost a year since I completed yoga teacher training and scribbled down my mantra. I’m still practicing believing that I am enough but I know that it’s work worth doing. The more I work on recognizing when my mind is clinging to the negative and doubting the positive, the better I will get at noticing those negative thoughts, releasing them, and then reminding myself that I’m enough. I always ask my students to take care of themselves and to be kind to themselves so it’s only fair that I practice what I preach.

I’ve been trying to write down all of my negative thoughts weekly. I write exactly what I’m thinking of in the moment; most of which are personal fears and self-doubt. Then I look at all of the negative thoughts (which is the majority of them) and write below them why they’re not true. It’s been therapeutic and helpful. It’s a really great reminder of my mantra: that I am enough.

This Valentine’s Day I hope you remind yourself that you are worthy of love and truly believe that you are enough because you absolutely are.

My name is Anna VanAgtmael, and I am a certified yoga instructor with a passion for yoga, travel, and connecting with others.

I believe in trying everything once. My values lie in collecting memories over things. Though we desire adventure and authentic experiences, naturally our fear holds us back.

My ambition is to inspire and encourage you to unmask your fears and jump into the unknown.

Anna VanAgtmael | Yoga Enthusiast | Travel Designer