Three Steps for Owning Your Enoughness
My new definition of a productive day is doing a few of the following things for 20-ish minutes each:
going for a walk
reaching out to friends/family via technology or snail mail
practicing flamenco footwork patterns
meditating
brushing paint onto something
doodling, journaling, or doodle-journaling
writing a few paragraphs or jotting a page of notes related to my book
reading something that I can call “research” for my book
doing an online yoga class
dancing up a sweat
Yep, one cumulative hour of extracurriculars, mas o menos, now meets my standard of Good Enough. I barely know where the rest of the day goes, but suddenly it’s 10 pm: time to meet Mark on the couch for a few episodes of “Scandal.”
It’s not a hard and fast rule, this a-few-from-the-list formula. (Today I did just one thing for many hours: write!) I didn’t even have a list until I conjured this one up by reviewing my past few days. There’s no chart for gold stars, although that could be fun—sounds like a great coronavirus project. It’s just an estimation of what I need in order to go to bed feeling satisfied that I took care of myself. It’s where I am in my eternal quest for Enoughness—for this week, anyway. Next week might be different, so I’ll recalibrate then if I need to.
By the way, my pre-Covid-19 bar was only slightly higher: maybe one hour each of several of those things, rather than 20 minutes. I’ve been in Enoughness Training for a while now, slowing down the pace, figuring out how a writer works and lives.
We Do It All the Time
Whether we’re conscious of it or not, we’re evaluating our Enoughness every day.
Did we get enough sleep?
Did we do enough work?
Was our work thorough enough?
Is the house tidy enough?
Did we give our family enough attention?
Was that meal healthy enough?
Did we earn/save/donate enough money?
During this pandemic, we can add:
Have I washed my hands well and often enough?
Are the fridge and pantry stocked with enough food?
Have I checked in with enough loved ones?
Is this particular item necessary enough to risk going out for?
Am I doing enough to help those in need, or to get what I need?
Is that surface disinfected enough?
Do we have enough toilet paper?
Those are all ways of asking, “Am I good enough at being human right now?”
If you feel like you’re coming up short, ask yourself this one:
Have I watched enough Pluto Service Announcements? Answer: probably not! ;)
Who Designed the Measuring Stick?
Coronavirus prevention measures aside, grounding ourselves in our own Enoughness is a subversive, counter-culture act. It’s a rebellion of the highest and deepest order. It takes guts and persistence and resilience and daily reminders-to-self as we're bombarded by forces working around the clock to convince us of our Not-Enoughness.
Recent example: the Zumba video I watched yesterday, published by my now-closed gym which is part of a national chain.
What I was hoping for/expecting: an enthusiastic teacher demonstrating simple moves on videotape from her or his living room.
What I found instead: an over-produced dance/music video featuring a pair of Barbie-and-Latino-Ken-looking instructors baring ridiculously chiseled abs above their jeans, while the female lead flipped and swished her long blonde hair with nearly every move; a troupe of racially-diverse back-up dancers, some perched in a high vertical grid reminiscent of Hollywood Squares; strobe lights and changing camera angles.
Question: Who exercises in jeans? Another question: Why didn’t she put that sweaty hair up in a ponytail? Also: What’s going on here? Oh, right: aspirational goals. We’re supposed to take more Zumba classes so we can look like her, or get ripped like him, and move like them when we go out clubbing. (Brown and Black role models also provided, if you can pry your eyes off of the Blonde.)
I just wanted to dance up a sweat, not be dazzled and distracted and reminded of my belly fat and awkward hairdo. Eventually I turned it off and free-styled to my little heart’s content. Their standard wasn’t working for me.
As a Recovering Good Girl, I’ve Learned a Few Things
For the past three years I’ve been unpacking my baggage around Being Good. This is my personal version of Enoughness, and the motivation that shaped nearly all of my behaviors and choices from about age six to when I got a divorce at age 40. (It still wields more influence than I care to admit.) Wow, did I have a lot of stuff crammed into that proverbial suitcase! I’ve been unfolding the neat creases of my childhood and smoothing the fabric so that I can see the patterns. I’m shaking little memories from all the pockets and discovering secret compartments where the shame is still hidden. (Found a new one just this week!)
It’s the D.I.Y. project of a lifetime (if you’ll allow me to continue with this metaphor). I’ve been examining the scraps of my experience and my personality, piecing them together with matching snippets of family history, and combining it all into a crazy quilt that helps me see how I became who I am.
Here is the blessing of middle age: I’m not embarrassed by it anymore! I’m no longer tempted to fudge the details so that my story will look more like that other family’s story—the one that seems so normal. Sure mine’s got holes and snags and worn-out parts, but this patchwork collection has given me a new sense of being wrapped, held, warmed. We’re stitching each other together with Love (my story and me) and stuffing ourselves with Enoughness.
My story, my life—I declare us Enough. I’ll say it again tomorrow and the next day and the day after that, until I fully believe it. I’ll say it many times a day if I need to, because it’s so hard to remember. Too many voices have tried to convince me otherwise, so I need the repetition.
I’ll remind you, too: You are Enough. Your story, your experiences, your motivations, you’re exactly where and what and who you need to be, right now.
Here are three steps that have helped me learn to own my Enoughness. Maybe they’ll help you, too.
Step One: Become the Decider
Notice that I did not send my quilt out to be tailored by someone else, no matter how “expert” that someone may be. This is my project. Let your Enoughness be your project. (Maybe your Covid-19 project? Kidding/not kidding.) That’s the only way it works, anyway. It has to be an inside job. We have to stop looking outside ourselves for approval.
Start by appointing yourself The Decider. Take charge of both the measuring tool (how much is enough?), and the things being measured (what do I actually care about?). It sounds easy, but for me this piece has been really hard.
Our culture trains some people to be bosses (mainly men), but I wasn’t one of them. I’m a small, highly sensitive introvert, born the youngest of three daughters in a family of pastors on my dad’s side. I inherited a life-or-death fear of getting in trouble from my mom’s side. That means I had an instinctual need not just to be Good, but to be Ultra-Good, beyond reproach. It wasn’t the praise I wanted, either. In fact, as a child I was mortified by positive attention almost as much as I feared negative attention. Being Good was a survival mechanism, so I excelled at obedience. I understood what was expected of me, and was highly motivated to live up to those expectations.
You know—the ones other people set for me. Even well into adulthood.
Now in Good Girl recovery mode, I still like to gather insights from others and hear from the experts. I read like a sponge, ask people’s opinions, and binge on podcasts and interviews. Then I get quiet and see what resonates with me. I write in order to understand what I think and feel about things. I’m learning to trust myself as the Boss of Me. The only boss. It’s still hard sometimes.
If you have trouble being the Boss, deciding for yourself what “success” means, and defining Enough, I get it. Being the Decider does get easier with practice, and the struggle is worth it. Keep taking small steps to claim your territory.
Step Two: Flip the Script
The capitalist credo we’ve been handed in the U.S. says More = Better. Making more money means you are more important (better). Having a bigger house means you are more successful (better). Having more followers on Instagram means you are more influential (better). You can choose to agree with this credo, or you can write your own.
Danielle LaPorte has a method for flipping the script that I’ve found to be insightful and useful. She calls it Desire Mapping. (Note: I absorbed messaging as a young person that desire = greed/lust, so I had to work on giving myself permission to have desires first!) Rather than asking yourself, “What do I want?” she suggests starting with “How do I want to feel?” The idea is that the things we are trained to strive for (big house, good job, handsome partner, fancy car, etc.) do not actually bring the feelings of satisfaction that we expect. Unfulfilled, we keep grasping for more of the things we’re trained to want (More = Better, right?), perpetuating a cycle of materialism that often spirals into addiction, debt, or depression.
By identifying the feelings you want (hint: “happy” isn’t it; you gotta dig deeper), you can then work backward to figure out what conditions brought on those feelings on in the past. That can inform your daily life and career choices as you work to create more of those situations.
Word nerds will love this process, too, because she encourages you to pull out the dictionary and thesaurus and be particular about choosing just the right words for you.
I did a deep-dive through the process (again) about a year ago, and I still love my choices. They form an acronym: CLEEAR, which helps me recall them when I forget where I truly want to be headed. Here they are:
Connected to Spirit
Light-hearted
Embodied
Expansive
Abundant
Resonant
I could explain why I chose each one, but these are my Core Desired Feelings. You can get your own! :) I recommend spending some time journaling or doodling or noodling around with words to see which ones feel juiciest to you. You can look Danielle up and find more Desire Map info on her website.
Another script our culture hands us is “No pain, no gain.” If we’re not bleeding, gasping, or sleep-deprived, we must be slacking off. Harder = better. Force, yell, push, strive.
Science is now interrupting that harmful messaging. The research of Kristen Neff and others shows that self-compassion is more effective than self-criticism for reaching goals and coping with adversity. Whether the aim is mastering the piccolo or recovering from a face plant in your job interview, there are simple steps to help you persevere, improve your skills, and build resilience. They include naming what you’re feeling, acknowledging that your struggles are the exact thing that connects you to all of humanity, and treating yourself with the kindness you would offer a close friend. Of course whole books and courses are written about this, but that’s my nutshell version. Look up Kristen Neff for more.
No more self-flagellation, ok?
Step Three: Call In Your Team
Finally, because we need Wonder Woman-like defensive skills to repel the evil forces of Not-Enoughness (raise your golden wrist shields—ping! ping! ping!), it’s important to surround ourselves with people who will remind us of our innate Enoughness. I use a combination of real-life friends and family members, plus a slew of online experts and mentors that I feel like I know. Honestly, I rarely go a single day without tuning in to some form of supportive messaging. It’s just too easy to get dragged down into the muck otherwise.
Gather a few friends in a group text (or be gathered—thanks, Patti!), call your grandma, tune into one of Oprah’s Super Soul Conversations, or Brené Brown’s new podcast (I listened to her 70+ minute interview with Glennon Doyle twice in a row the other day, and I’ll probably queue it up again soon). If you’re a lay scholar of psychology like I am, check out Nicole LePera (the.holistic.psychologist on Instagram) or Terri Cole. Seriously, there is so much life-affirming stuff out there on the interwebs, there is no need to suffer your bouts of Not-Enoughness alone. Get in touch with me if you want more recommendations.
One more resource: Woo-woo as it sounds, once I ditched the stern, judgmental-yet-grandfatherly God of my Lutheran upbringing and embraced a nebulous team of swirling goddesses instead, I felt a whole lot more cared for by the Universe. Their eyes twinkle with mischief, reminding me not to take everything so seriously.
What about you?
Is it time to recalibrate your Enoughness Meter? Did somebody else set the scale of success for you, and decide what should be measured? Or maybe you set it pre-coronavirus, and now it’s obsolete or temporarily irrelevant. Remember that as The Boss of You, you have the power to reset your Enoughness scale as often as you need to. Own it! You can always change it again tomorrow. ;)
Sheltering in Place will force a lot of issues to the surface—the kind that I’ve chosen to study intently and on purpose for three years, but maybe you haven’t. Please be kind to yourself as you navigate what comes up. Remember that you’re held by a benevolent Universe; surrounded by a tribe of light-hearted, bad-ass goddesses; and have the support of internet helpers, real-life friends, and your own inner light.
You know the mantra by now, right? We’re all in this together.
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If you found any of my words helpful, I’d love to hear about it! What resonated with you? What do you have questions about? What would you like to add?
And as always, please share this post with someone who might like to hear it!