I'm writing this review based on bullet points from my notes app, because I'm a slacker and am just now getting around to writing reviews for a bunch of books.

I was not expecting to love this as much as I did, but I LOVED it! Not only did it make me feel seen, but it provided me with some understanding of why certain things in my brain seem to work the way that they do, and what I can do to kind of work with those things, and make it to where it isn't so.... detrimental. I feel like this book had a lot of impact on why such these self-destructive behaviors can easily become a way of life, and how it can sometimes start as something small, and turn into something that just takes over your whole life.

I'm not always the biggest non-fiction reader, but when I find something that clicks, it CLICKS, and this was a sure-fire click for me. Definitely recommend if you (like me) struggle with a lot of internalized self-critiquing and have a tenancy to be a bit of a "perfectionist."

I really enjoyed How to Be Enough by Ellen Hendriksen. It's a compassionate, practical guide that for anyone who struggles with perfectionism and self-criticism. I found it to be very insightful.

Delayed Review!

This book took me a little bit to get through BUT only because it had a lot of information I was trying to take in. This book made me realize a lot of things about myself and my thinking. I highly recommend this to anyone who feels like they are not enough, are overly critical of themselves or are perfectionists. Reading it made me realize that some of my thinking or reactions are due to this self-criticalness I have and give me some ways I can help myself or some background on why I may react or think that way at times. Definitely worth the read if any of this applies to you!


Thank you NetGalley and St. Martin's Press | St. Martin's Essentials for an e-ARC of "How to be Enough" by Ellen Hendriksen, available now!

I absolutely loved How to Be Enough by Ellen Hendriksen. It's a compassionate, practical guide that speaks directly to anyone who struggles with perfectionism and self-criticism. Hendriksen offers seven actionable shifts—like moving from self-criticism to kindness and from comparison to contentment—that help you quiet your inner critic without sacrificing your high standards. Her writing is warm, relatable, and backed by solid psychological insights. If you're looking to embrace self-acceptance and let go of the constant pressure to be perfect, this book is a must-read.

A quick nonfiction that was easily digestible and not overwhelming. Actionable tips and interesting analysis.

A wonderful read!
Very helpful! Highly recommend!
Many thanks to NetGalley, the author, and the publisher for my ARC. All opinions are my own.

I'm still working my way through How To Be Enough, but I wanted to write my review so more people can find this book sooner. This is a slow read because, as a "recovering" perfectionist, every few pages I want to stop and reflect on the author's words. This book is chock full of advice, anecdotes, and strategies to find balance and self-compassion without sacrificing on high standards and attention to detail. It's well organized so if you have a specific area you want to focus on, you can jump to that chapter. I would recommend this book for anyone who wants to find freedom from their own self-imposed standards and rigid rules for life.

As a perfectionist and self-critic, I found this a very helpful way to improve things by taking tiny steeps in the right direction.

A practical guide with concrete suggestions for reframing and adjusting ingrained habits and patterns. Written by an expert with a warm, compassionate voice.

Insightful, quick read! Good for young adults and for full adults still sorting out their place in this world!

There was some good nuggets of wisdom in this book, but overall I just couldn’t connect with it as well as I was hoping to. Thank you NetGalley for the eARC.

I DNF'd this at 20%. I tried to relate to it but the people and concepts presented just felt unrelatable. I tried to push through but it just didn't hold my interest.

"How to Be Enough" addresses the roots of perfectionism and offers seven practical shifts to help readers move from self-criticism to focusing on values and enjoying the moment. The book includes examples and exercises to support these changes, aiming to help perfectionists find joy and redirect their standards toward what truly matters.

This was a very inciteful read that offered a lot of good information for the "Type A" person and perfectionist. I am walking away from this book with new ideas on how to implement the things that I have learned using both new to me tools and some tools already at my disposal. I can't say that I won't still have perfectionistic tendencies after reading this, but I am glad to have some ways to redirect those into useful actions.

Thank you NetGalley, St Martins Press, and Ellen Hendrikson for this ARC. All thoughts are my own.

I'm a recovering perfectionist and this book was illuminating in many ways. I appreciated Hendriksen's writing style and I feel like this will be a reference book for me to refer to when my perfectionist tendencies crop up.

This was the book that destroyed my will to touch another self-help title again. I've already had a bad feeling about it when the preface told us we should be relating to Walt Disney and how much he suffered due to his perfectionism because everything in his movies had to be the way he envisioned it - all the while mentioning him overworking his employees to the bone in one off-handed sentence.

No, I do not relate to the cultish attitude towards "suffering geniuses" who climbed to wealth and fame upon backs of millions of nameless workers who aren't getting credit for anything. They're the ones overworked, underpaid, permanently stressed, criticized over every irrelevant detail, easily fired or laid off and never appreciated for their contribution. It's always the person on top - usually a white man - who hoards all the glory. He doesn't need my sympathy on top of all his other gains.

But that's the "myth of great people" and mentality of individual exceptionalism - to tell you to sympathize with Walt Disney and see yourself in him, not sympathize with the worker and their plight under greedy, obsessed tyrants.

To this day we're supposed to look up to figures like Musk, Zuckerberg and Bezos and wish to mimic them, rather than support the people they're exploiting.

But I thought, maybe that's a one-time oversight, maybe the book will get better.

And then I arrived to the passage about Steve Jobs. Another man who made his career and riches upon backs of abused workers. The chapter about him triggered and disgusted me. No, this is not "perfectionism". This is an image of a narcissistic despot.

There is a scene describing him as he was dying of cancer and his daughter came to visit him and his words to her were "you smell like a toilet". Most people when on their deathbed try to reconcile with their family, get a closure on the Earthly matters and if they're religious, be remorseful about their mistakes so they may peacefully pass into the afterlife. Not Steve Jobs. I don't know what he did or didn't believe in, but I got an image of a man who would hurl abuse even with his dying breath.

And then, that is compared to perfectionism and "being strict towards not just yourself, but also others". Sorry, but telling your daughter her perfume stinks like toilet isn't being strict. It's rude and derogatory. It has nothing to do with perfectionism. Is this book for sociopaths? So they can excuse their derision as "oh, it's just my perfectionism!"

At this point I couldn't continue the book. I've put it aside, hoping my feelings toward it would change so I could look at it with a fresh eye, but 1.5 month after the publication date I'm still outraged at the suggestion perfectionists should see themselves in those abusive figures and sympathize with them. Just because someone became rich, famous and successful doesn't justify their callousness, and especially not towards their own family.

There's a difference between "high standards" and "the world revolves around me and must cater to me" attitude.

Even the book title talks about "self-acceptance" and nothing about giving yourself a pass to hurt others, especially deliberately in a way "end justifies the means" or "they're beneath me so they don't deserve any better treatment".

If there's one thing I can't abide in a self-help book is bad advice or glorifying bad attitudes. Self-help is supposed to give us guidance and help us become a better version of ourselves. It's often used by people whose past experiences gave them a distorted sense of reality and who often can't afford a therapist to tell them what's normal and what's abusive or pathological. So presenting abusive behaviors with sympathy and not calling them abuse just because they were committed by people the society perceives as successful and aspirational is perpetuating misinformation and double standards in the society where people on top get a pass for everything, while people on the bottom beat themselves up for "not being good enough" and wondering why don't they get the same credit of sympathy as the former group.

I can't believe nobody called this out. Nobody. That's how deeply runs the double standard in the society that nobody sees anything odd or wrong in it.

Perfectionism isn't about being a tyrant or an egomaniac. And these shouldn't be conflated.

Thank you Netgalley and St. Martin's Essentials for the ARC.

This wasn't very helpful for me. I'm not sure if that's because if I'm in therapy already.
I can say there is some good information in this book. Especially about family life in teh beginning and certain exercises that super helpful (even to me in therapy!). There were certain chapters that turned me off. While perfectionist hold others to their same high standards and we need to be nicer in that regard, there is a chapter that treated us almost like sociopaths who can't empathize with others. That was demanding.
Overall, I think this book can definitely help some people but this was not a book that was really helpful for me.

This was a good January read with tips and info that will help even those who aren't perfectionists.

Real Rating: 4.25* of five

I was the youngest child of my parents. My older siblings were more like aunts than siblings...we were two presidencies apart, almost three...and as adolescents lumbered with a toddler they didn't want in their ambit, weren't any more careful of word or deed than one would expect from members of a toxic system at a terrible passage in human life. In other words, not kind, not loving, not supportive. Add that to parents who didn't model those things and...well.

This book understood me.

So much of the world is based on conditionality: if you want this thing/state/privilege, you must give that thing/service. Conditionality and capitalism are deeply intertwined, I venture to suggest inseparably so. One's self-worth in a capitalist system becomes imbued with that transactional conditionality: I'm not working hard enough to deserve this or that bauble. Far worse is the knock-on of that, I'm too "poor" to afford this thing/service so I must be lazy/undeserving/unworthy.

It enters one's bones and imbues all one's relationships: I'm not getting this thing/behavior/feeling I need so I must not deserve it...if I work harder/behave better/give more of this or that resource I have, maybe then I will deserve or even get it.

The internalization of perfectionism is thus complete and the transactional relationship template is frozen into immobility. As are many of us who got this message. We're frozen into immobility because then the desired whatevers *not* being ours makes sense. We don't deserve whatever. Therefore the world makes sense because we don't have it.

A book like this one that makes the pathology plain does a huge service to the sufferer from the condition. It's wonderful to be told plainly and baldly that: "Pretty much every high achieving person experiences a gravitational pull to feel left out. Meaning we reflexively look for signs and signals that tell you you’re being excluded or not wanted." It's a balm to know the roots of this awful paralysis are there in multitudes of us, then be told how that: "What perfectionism neglects to tell us is that getting it right doesn’t make us part of a community." Ultimately, we've bought the bullshit and not the bull himself; we paid for the bull, and now here's a way to get him.

The author is, I suspect, an excellent therapist in practice. In writing she is clear, concise, and manages to be evocative in her phrasemaking. No small feat! I don't tthink this book is for those who struggle to see their own pathologies, there are more effective tools to break walls of denial. I think most readers are some way into the process of denial-busting, but again the <u>best</u> audience for the read are those who already see their perfectionism, have an idea it's a problem, and would like some help building coping strategies for its dismantling.

This book is a wonderfully useful tool for that purpose. I can't offer a full fifth star because there is just that soup&ccedilla;on too little interlinking of strategic implementation: How, after this insight hits home, the reader should look for that and the other one to arise.

As cavils go, it's really pretty minor. As self-help books go, this one belongs on far more bookshelves/Kindles than it doesn't.

As a perfectionist, I thought this was a very interesting and helpful book! I don’t typically read self-help books, but I was drawn to this one and I’m glad I gave it a try. Definitely going to be revisiting this one for reminders down the road.

How to be Enough is a really good book and how perfectionism is so heavily tied to things like anxiety, self esteem and procrastination. It is full of real world examples, tips on how to improve, and thought provoking questions. If you have ever been in CBT you will recognize the concepts but it will be a good refresher. I plan to read again when I need a reminder,