I’ve noticed it recently, creeping up through my insides when I’m not paying full attention. The intense need to do, to accomplish, to achieve. I can feel myself take a step back and judge myself and my day. “What have you done so far?” I ask. “What can you cross off your to-do list? How can you prove your worth?”

That’s what underlies these questions – proving my worth. I get caught in old beliefs that I have to be busy. I have to be doing and achieving. That somehow just being isn’t enough. It doesn’t move me, my business, my family, my memoir, or my day further along, so how can it be enough?

I feel these questions and this judgment condemning me. I feel myself begin to believe this judgment as true. I feel an urge to shame myself for sitting still, for taking time to go slowly, or for having coffee with a friend.

I feel myself begin to believe this judgment, and then I feel myself rising above it. I search for the part of me that knows it’s not true. I consciously call out these voices and questions – I call them out as lies.

I’ve heard, and shared before, that a belief is simply a thought you keep thinking. At some point I was taught that I must accomplish something to earn my keep. I adopted that thought and now it’s a belief that can creep into my consciousness. But it’s a belief that no longer serves me or guides me to lead my life in the way that I now want to. It’s a belief I’m choosing not to believe anymore.

I am a human being, not a human doing. It’s a phrase and a new belief that I’ve worked to adopt for years. But it’s okay when I slip into old habits, as long as I don’t stay there. It’s okay that, for some reason, today the old beliefs came back. It’s okay that I questioned myself for not doing and accomplishing. And it’s even more okay that I reminded myself of my new beliefs and my new truth – that I am a human being, not a human doing.

I am a human being, not a human doing. There is nothing I have to do to prove anything. There is nothing any of us have to do to prove our worth. We are all worthy, just by being here. And being here is enough.