Enough Said

“Treat yourself as if you already are enough. Walk as if you are enough. Eat as if you are enough. See, look, listen as if you are enough. Because it’s true.” Geneen Roth

“Acknowledging the good that you already have in your life is the foundation for all abundance.” Eckhart Tolle

I am a true linguaphile. I absolutely LOVE language and all things to do with etymology and word smithing. I adore how well crafted words can seep through the mundane aspects of our life and spark curiosity, knowing, and add depth and wisdom to our experience walking this earth. Every so often a word attaches to my soul in such a way as to change the way I am living. That has been the case with “enough.”

Dictionary.com defines “enough” as “adequate for the want or need; sufficient for the purpose or to satisfy desire.” As in “the car has enough gas to drive home” or “the song was loud enough that I could hear it.” Simple enough (ha!). But, in the context of our lives, a wee bit more complicated.

I didn’t know it at the time, but I came into adulthood with a massive sense of scarcity in my life. The after effects of childhood illness and trauma left me fearful and worried ALL the time. Having chronic health issues meant my body never felt at ease and I was always pushing and striving just to stay awake or drive to a doctor’s appointment. My entire nervous system was built on a foundation of tension, lack, want, deficit and need. When I was stressed I would distract myself with my cell phone, a snack, a phone call, an organizational project or just zoning out. Anything to keep busy and not feel the depth of the deficiency.

I spent the better part of my adult life working harder and hoping that all my efforts would eventually add up to the critical mass for healing to take place. If you are a regular reader of this blog then you will already know that it didn’t quite happen that way. In fact, the constant striving for more made things much worse. It kind of makes sense if you think about it because the very act of looking for “something else” is telling our systems that we are lacking what is necessary to feel well now. There is an innate sense of desperation and need. Like how a waiter will come around to refill an empty cup with more beverage, but will pass you by if your cup is already full. You don’t require more when there is already plenty. It is a bit more complex in our nervous systems because there is no easy way to measure how much is already present and where there might be gaps in the structures. We can’t view it like we can our glass on the restaurant table. We can, however, gauge a general sense of our internal state of being by how we approach our lives. Are you generally calm and able to spend quiet time and find rest? Can you accept where you are at in life, even if it isn’t exactly what you would choose? Or alternately, are you always rushing to the next thing and just trying to get through the day? Do you feel agitated, nervous and stressed a lot of the time? No judgement here. I completely understand those feelings and they are 100% legitimate and valid. And they also provide us with valuable information about the internal state of affairs. Scarcity and insecurity may be ruling the day.

When we consider this feeling of “lack” and “need” in light of internal safety, it becomes obvious that we are highly unlikely to feel a sense of goodness in our deepest places when there is an ongoing message that we don’t have enough. Safety starts with trusting in the moment and believing that we can handle whatever comes our way, which allows the openness of presence and diminishes the need to fret and worry. This in turn, allows our bodies to relax (yay), let go of some of the tension and holding and potentially feel better. I know from experience that when I calm down, I can sense a lessening of gripping in my body and my pain decreases. It is a little bit like a toddler having a tantrum and clinging desperately to mom’s legs with a fierce hold that even a MMA star could not break apart. Everything is clenched, tight and painful! But, when he or she finally calms down, the grasping naturally slackens off and the child is easily moved on to something else. The only way to do it is to help the child cool down that nervous system. Same principal goes for us as adults.

One day, after doing some nervous system practice with a partner, I felt the word “enough” just seep into my system like a whisper or a gentle breeze. I had obviously thought about it before, but never in such a quiet, calm, non-demanding way. It seems funny now to think that my past way of relating to “enough” was to demand more (obviously kind of counter productive). The feeling of “enough” passed by almost as soon as it came those first few times, but it kept moving its way back into my consciousness. I would be outside in the sunshine and something inside me would just feel like this moment is enough. The warmth, the trees, the fresh air. Then I might be stressing out about a project I had on the go or something I needed to do and I would sense enough, it is good to be here, now, rather than worrying about what will happen in 5 minutes or 5 days or 5 years. It would last for maybe 30 seconds and then disappear. The feeling was fleeting, but it was coming into my life more and more often and I was taking notice.

A wise mentor in my own life mentioned to me one day that all scarcity is rooted in the past. The present moment has all I need. Maybe not every single thing that I want, but everything that I require here and now, to be alive in this world in this second. When I think about my anxiety or fear, it is almost always about things that happened before, and have left a negative imprint on my system, or things that I am afraid will happen in the future and not go well. So in a sense I am either reliving pain or borrowing trouble. Very rarely is the dis-ease in my body about something happening right this very moment… no past or future strings attached.

The sense of enough is still growing in my system. It isn’t a permanent fixture just yet and I still lose my way from time to time. I go back to striving and pushing and the familiar feeling of lack. But part of enough is accepting that I have enough regulation in my system to handle when things go a bit wonky and that I can, and will, get back to a more neutral space down the line. Rather than pressuring myself even more, I can relax back and know that I am enough even when I am not quite where I would wish to be. When enough doesn’t feel like enough. It still is. I can’t begin to tell you the number of times this realization has brought calm to my system in the midst of chaos. KNOWING I AM ENOUGH when I am doing well or not so great, when I got it just right or totally missed the boat. My core, who I am, what I stand for, my character, my soul, my relationships, my life… is safe, fine, good, plenty.

Enough really is enough.

Thank you Tara for all your wisdom. You are a gem!