Foreign Concepts in the 21st Century - Episode 1: Enoughness

Having no limit on the potential for what we might achieve is exciting, right?

I’m not so sure anymore.

Beginning a journey towards an undefined destination, but more a feeling or emotion, can feel liberating. Moving towards freedom, love, self-actualisation, wealth, whatever it may be allows us to dream without a ceiling.

I began my personal development journey back in 2018 when I first discovered the “self-help” section of the bookshop. Entranced by the idea that I didn’t have to settle for the life I had, but that I could take matters into my own hands and reach for more, filled me with a fire I’d never known capable of existing within me. I suddenly had desires I’d never allowed myself to consider given my expectation for life to be determined by the life I’d already led.

Something in me drastically changed and I was never the same again.

Over the years I’ve invested in books, courses, webinars and coaches who have helped me level up consistently. I changed my finances, my appearance, my relationships and my outlook on what’s possible for me. There was nothing I couldn’t do with a little discipline and determination.

That was until I reached burnout. I hit a little bit of a rock bottom.

6 months later, I’m reading my first personal development book in a long time (I had a self-imposed ban), and came across this concept of “Enoughness”. The book is “The Psychology of Money” by Morgan Housel and he discusses the concept of having enough in relation to money, greed and financial investments. Upon reading it through the lens of general desires like love, freedom, validation (likes and followers) and non-finance related themes, I came to realise that even personal growth, when taken too far, has the same psychological foundations as risking one’s life savings for the sake of more money: there is no inner barometer for when enough is enough.

Housel discuss the fact that the most difficult part of wealth accumulation is to understand how to get the goal post to stop moving. “If expectations rise with results there is no logic in striving for more because you’ll feel the same after putting in extra effort.” When one gets a taste of what it’s like to make money, or in my case, “improve”, it’s hard not to want for more, and so the ambition will always win in a race against satisfaction. This is especially the case if you’re using it to fill a gap, to compensate for a lack somewhere else, or a feeling of scarcity, anxiety or insecurity.

Going deeper on a psychological level, we realise that a sense of being in constant desire is a failure to find gratitude and feel content with the present. We cannot be happy with where we are now because we feel that in order to deserve or be worthy as a human being is to constantly be striving for more, at every level. More money, more love, more validation, more clothes, more compliments, more likes, more followers, are the only solution to an existence that feels persistently empty in the present moment.

I used to think that “one more book” “one more podcast” “one more TikTok” would give me that hit, that buzz, that same high that I felt that first time I discovered the likes of Tony Robbins, Joe Dispenza and the gurus of the personal development space but they never did and they never filled that gap that I kept chasing. I kept chasing an illusory idea of being this enlightened version of me, this end goal which has ended up being more and more distant the more work I continue to do. Ironically, I now feel less satisfied with where I am now than I did when I was ignorant of my ability to change in the first place.

So… How does one go about feeling satisfied without stripping away the strive for more attitude? How can we implement a strategy to check ourselves when we start setting new goals, that we don’t do so until we’ve sat in gratitude for what we have now, where we are and whether reaching is worth risking it? Do we actually want what we say we want or are we looking up at a mountain of people with varying levels of success and achievement, and using the comparison as our measure of worthiness? Are the goals and dreams I have coming from a place of self-acceptance and compassionate self-improvement or from a place of insecurity and not enoughness?

I’m still figuring this out. The idea that I can develop an intuitive sense of when enough is enough is also about trusting, and building a muscle that has not been used in a long time.

My parting question is simple, yet confronting:

“How do you know when enough is enough?”