Daring Greatly, Chapter 1: The "Never Enough" Problem

Welcome to my Daring Greatly book club! This is week one, covering chapter 1. Enjoy, share, and add to the conversation by commenting.Last week, Mary and I took Elijah to a fabulous art studio for kids. The people who work there are creativity curators; the art table where the kids work is a banquet filled with glitter and stickers and paint and scissors and paper and possibility.There were a few other parents there with their kids, and Mary and I both noticed that the conversation between the parents regularly swerved towards subtle comparisons between the kids who were sitting right there. One parent commented how another child was so good at cutting, and then the child’s parent down played it, saying it’s only because the child is in “O.T.” and has a great teacher. Another parent casually mentioned how “this one” had a tantrum last night, but also slept in past 7am. It was innocent, but there was a tone and quality to the conversation that felt like everything was a contest, and everyone was losing.And I kept wondering if what everybody was really asking was, "Am I O.K. as a parent? Because I feel like I'm failing."In this chapter, Brené Brown writes that our culture is fueled by a pervasive feeling of scarcity, or what she calls the “never enough” problem. She writes, “We spend inordinate amounts of time calculating how much we have, want, and don’t have, and how much everyone else has, needs, and wants” (p. 26).I can fill in the blanks with my own personal fears of being never ________ enough.I feel like I’m never decisive, successful, thin, relaxed, or - wait for it - perfect enough.Recently, my team has had to make a series of very difficult decisions, where what we could see was cloudy and complex. As I look back, I notice that in every one of them, I expected us to not only make good decisions, I expected us to make perfect decisions, where the outcome was always a win/win. I am beginning to see that not only is this an unrealistic expectation, it’s also soul sucking and incredibly exhausting.Do you ever do that?The result of this kind of thinking (where we can find the perfect solution if we just think or work hard enough) quickly compounds, and before we know it, the interest we thought we had accrued by carefully mapping everything out turns up on the balance sheet as a terrifying deficit.I loved this quote from Lynne Twist's The Soul of Money: “Before we even sit up in bed, before our feet touch the floor, we’re already inadequate, already behind, already losing, already lacking something” (quoting Lynne Twist, on page 26). Scarcity, according to Lynne Twist, is "the great lie."Waking up feeling like I’m not enough, day after day, might be as damaging to my soul as two packs of cigarettes a day would be to my lungs.But the piece de resistance for me was what Brown wrote near the end of the chapter. The first time I read it, I paused, exhaled, took the next exit, and have been sitting with it ever since.“The counterapproach to living in scarcity is not about abundance. In fact, I think abundance and scarcity are two sides of the same coin. The opposite of “never enough” isn’t abundance or “more than you could ever imagine.” The opposite of scarcity is enough, or what I call Wholeheartedness” (p 29).I think we’re afraid of abundance, because we think that if we were awash in abundance, then there really would be no excuse for not getting it done perfectly and doing it all. Ask any lottery winner: we don’t know what to do with abundance.But enough is different. Enough means that I can show up vulnerably, engaging with exactly what is and exactly what I have, and I can offer what I have, and do it imperfectly. And I can be O.K. with not getting it all done.Some of us might be wondering, “Wait a minute, doesn’t God bring abundance?” And sometimes, the answer seems to be yes. But my experience (after long nights of doubting it's true) is that God brings, and is, enough (and that alone is a kind of abundance, if you really think about it).As you review on the three components of scarcity found on pages 28 (shame, comparison, and disengagement), reflect and comment on the following questions:Is perfectionism an issue for you? What affect is it having on your ability to make decisions and live with them, even if they’re not perfect?Are you measuring your unique way of being against some ideal way of being? If so, whose voice is in your head telling you what the ideal is?What one step can you take this week to move from scarcity to enough?Extra: Download a free Daring Greatly badge from Brené Brown's website. Comment Disclaimer: Please add to the conversation by sharing what you think & feel! But if your comment is mean-spirited, overly preachy, or critical of another person's comment, it will be deleted. Let's keep it civil, peeps.