123. The Enoughness Problem: How to Stop Building Your Life From Lack
We all have some area of our lives where we’re wondering if we have enough. Enough time, enough money, enough energy, enough support, or enough of something else. But constantly focusing on what’s missing can actually make it harder to create the life we want.
In this episode, I explore what I call the enoughness problem and why it can follow us into every area of our lives, including entrepreneurship. I share stories from my own life and coaching, including a client who felt like she didn’t have enough time with her kids and my own experience of feeling like I wasn’t doing enough at home or wasn’t supported enough. I help you see how focusing on lack can affect the way you experience the life you already have.
This doesn’t mean giving up on your goals or pretending that difficult circumstances aren’t real. Instead, I want you to consider what might change if you started building from a place of enoughness and abundance. You can want more while still recognizing that what you have today is enough.
Ready for clarity and a simple action plan to get your business started? Schedule a free 1-hour consultation with me here!
What You’ll Learn from this Episode:
What the enoughness problem is and how it can show up in different areas of your life.
Why focusing on what is missing can create a scarcity mindset.
Why changing your external circumstances may not solve an internal enoughness problem.
How to build from a foundation of enoughness while still pursuing the changes and goals you want.
How shifting from scarcity to abundance can create more energy, creativity, and possibility.
Listen to the Full Episode:
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Full Episode Transcript:
This is one of those episodes where I look back and can't believe that in the two-plus years that I've been doing this, I haven't already covered this topic. I find that the juiciest topics are usually the ones that I nonchalantly skip.
Today's episode is so important, not just because it matters to living a more fulfilling life, but because when we set out to change our life, especially if it's that new career as an entrepreneur, if we are building that new life from lack, from parts of our current life not being enough, we will bring that lack with us into entrepreneurship.
But this is not just a business topic. This is a topic that weaves its way into all parts of life, and it's likely holding you back from being the best version of yourself. So we're going to clear that up today.
Welcome to How to Quit Your Job, the podcast for moms ready to ditch the nine-to-five and build a life and business they love. I’m your host, Jenna Rykiel. Let’s go.
Hi, mom friends. This episode should have happened two years ago, but better late than never, of course. I was in a session with a client the other day. She's a stay-at-home mom who has had her business for a number of years but is now wanting to get serious about systems and growth and all those fun things. She has four kids, and the youngest is two, and she was struggling with this idea that we all know so well: our time with our kids is limited. This is a mom who is with her kids the majority of her days, and she was crushed thinking about only having two years left before they're all in school.
And like I said, this is a story we all know so well. If you're a parent of older kids, you know it. If you're a parent with younger kids, you hear other parents preach it nonstop. They grow up so fast. We've all heard it, we all know it, we're experiencing it. And for my client, there was this very real feeling that she didn't have enough time with them. It's interesting, right? This stay-at-home mom doesn't feel like she has enough time with her kids.
Similarly, I've worked with plenty of moms in corporate who want to start their own business so they can have more time with their kids. They want to be there for pickup and drop-off. They don't want to take phone calls during dinner or bedtime. It's really easy to think that we don't have enough time, enough time with our kids, that we're running out of time. But this isn't a time problem. This is actually an enoughness problem. That's what I want to talk about today. That six-letter word that every single person struggles with in some way, shape, or form: enough.
We all have some enoughness problem to solve, and our enoughness problem is ever-evolving, right? Not enough time, not in shape enough. I'm not present enough. I'm not young enough, not smart enough, not brave enough, not extroverted enough. We all have some part of ourselves or our lives that feels like it's not enough. And sometimes our enoughness problem, it gets projected onto our kids and our partners. He's not helping enough. They aren't listening enough. She's not present enough. They aren't getting along enough. They aren't nice enough to each other. You don't call enough.
So what does this enoughness problem really mean? It means that in some area of our life, fill in the blank with whatever your enoughness problem pertains to. I want you to think about it for yourself. I know that you've said it probably today or thought about it today of like something that's not enough. But whatever your enoughness problem pertains to, we're operating from a scarcity mindset. There's never enough time, energy, money, opportunity, help, attention, whatever it is.
When we are operating from a scarcity mindset, we are fully focused, intensely focused on immediate lacks and all the things we don't have. And this can leave us feeling really unsteady because we're worried about the gap. How do we fill that gap? How do we fix that gap? How do we get more? We might even feel jealous or threatened when we notice other people who don't seem to be experiencing the same gaps or scarcity. Scarcity feels really stressful. It feels really bad.
And here's the worst part. When we are focused on the lack, the limited resources, all the time we don't have, all the money we don't have, when something is not enough, we feel it, and not in an energized, excited way. We feel it in a depleted, hopeless, discouraged, disconnected, dreadful kind of way. If we jump back to my client for a second, the one who was feeling like she didn't have enough time with her kids, she felt truly distraught when she was focused on only having two years left. She was visibly upset. She was crying.
And when we are feeling distraught, we are distracted. We are judging every moment. I think she even said, "Am I wasting time?" She was worried about wasting time. We're trying to decide if we're making the best use of our time. We may also check out or shut down from the stress of it. And when we do any of these things, we aren't present. And what does a mom with only two years left before her youngest goes to school want more than anything? She wants to be fully present and in the moment with her kiddos.
Do you see the problem here? The thought, "I don't have enough time with my kids," creates the exact opposite experience of what she desperately wants from the time she does have. Believing we don't have enough time or enough anything, for that matter, creates results in our life that we don't want. In fact, the exact opposite of what we want.
I did a whole episode on this recently, Episode 120, Are You Creating Results You Don't Want? This is such an important example of that. And it applies to every enoughness problem. When we see lack in our life, when we see lack in ourselves, in our partners, in our kids, in our friendships, in our relationships, focusing on lack makes it exponentially bigger. Not just in our heads, although that is true too. It makes it bigger because our actions actually perpetuate it.
I used to call my grandmother every week, sometimes multiple times a week before she passed away a few years ago. She was truly someone I talked to about almost everything. I called her every week, and every time we talked, she said, "Jen, you don't call enough." And so you know what sometimes happened? If time was tight and I was struggling to fit in a call, especially once kids came into the picture, I would say to myself, "Well, I guess I just won't call. It's never enough anyway."
What she wanted more than anything was for me to call more. But since when I did call, it was just not enough, it led me to call less. She created the exact opposite results that she wanted. We project that lack onto other people. We project that onto our kids. We project that onto our businesses, which I'll talk about in a second. And if we are constantly showing our kids that we are not enough, how do we expect them to learn that they are enough?
I have another person I love dearly in my life who says she doesn't see me enough. And instead of truly soaking in the moments we are together, I'm always reminded of how it's just not enough. If we are people who really struggle with enoughness, I promise you, there will never be a moment when suddenly it's enough, suddenly all of our cups are full, because enoughness becomes a habit. Focusing on the gap or the lack becomes a habit. So even when effort is made to create more time, more energy, more resources, more phone calls, more exercising, more help, more listening, more pounds loss, it still will not be enough. There will always be something. There will always be lack.
And this is ever-present and so important, especially for anyone wanting to start a business because life currently doesn't feel like enough. You don't have enough time, enough flexibility, enough autonomy, enough purpose, enough meaning, enough time with your kids. These are all things that I support clients to cultivate in their life, more of these things. The piece that is really important, though, that I've talked about before on this podcast, is that when a client comes to me and they want to create change in their life, in their career, in their availability for their kids because something is not enough, we work on life feeling enough first.
Though this podcast is called How to Quit Your Job, I'm always going to give moms tools and support to look internally to solve any enoughness problem before we tackle changing the external environment. Why is this important, you might be wondering? Because if we don't start from a foundation of enoughness in all areas of our life, if we don't build the skill of truly feeling like life is full before we start running away from our problems, our problems will follow us.
A perfect example of this is every mom I've ever worked with who comes to me after they've built the business, the ones who've left corporate because they were burnt out. If they haven't worked on the enoughness problem internally, I guarantee they are coming to me because they are now feeling burnt out in their business. They just traded one form of burnout for another. The people who leave corporate because they don't have enough time or flexibility in corporate end up running themselves into the ground in entrepreneurship. They work late, they work weekends, they miss events with their kids in the name of building a business because they're building from lack.
There are things we have to unlearn and develop as internal foundations before we go building something new, before we go externally solving our problems. And trust me, this doesn't take long, actually. It's usually a few conversations, a few new ways of looking at work and life that get us feeling lighter, more gratitude, more fulfilled with nothing changing externally. And from there, we can go on to build from abundance instead of scarcity. Building from abundance creates more abundance. Building from scarcity creates scarcity.
I have my own enoughness problem that I want to share. I broke through two of them at once. It was beautiful. And I want to share this because I think it's likely relatable for many moms. There were moments in my life and marriage and parenting where I felt like I wasn't doing enough. I felt like I could be doing more, contributing more, helping more. My husband and I try to be a 50-50 household. We're both entrepreneurs with flexible schedules, and he's always been an entrepreneur, so he's always had a flexible schedule. And when I'm not stepping into that 50%, it can really feel like I'm not doing enough. Or if I have a low month in my business financially, it can feel like I'm not contributing enough. I felt like I wasn't doing enough at times. There were moments, for sure.
And then there were other moments in my life, I would say more often, where I felt like I was doing it all. I felt like I'm not supported enough. My partner isn't helping enough. And I was oscillating between these two, not knowing that that is what was happening. And then one day, I decided that maybe this is an enoughness problem that actually wasn't a problem at all. Maybe I was contributing enough and I was supported enough. Even though moment to moment, some of it might feel out of balance, it might not feel like enough, there was suddenly an awareness and an acceptance for that pendulum that swings.
The enoughness problem I was experiencing, it was swinging from I'm not doing enough to I'm not supported enough, and maybe reality on the whole is somewhere in the middle, that both were just enough. Now, maybe enough doesn't mean perfectly equal in every single moment. Enough can include seasons, enough can include imbalance at times. Maybe enough can even include, of course, wanting something to change, which I'll talk about in a second.
But we need that baseline of being and experiencing enough. It doesn't mean our brains don't linger on lack sometimes, but we need to get to that lighter feeling that we are enough, that different elements of our life are enough. I've talked about this before on the podcast when we've talked about time, but years ago, I found myself always feeling busy, always talking about how busy I was, always feeling like I didn't have enough time, always saying that I didn't have enough time, and it was exhausting. The lack of time was absolutely debilitating.
We did this again when we had kids. We decided that time is always moving at exactly the right pace. There are moments in parenthood that feel like they are moving way too fast. We don't have enough time. There are moments in parenthood, especially during one of those epic tantrums or when our kiddo just won't fall asleep, that time feels like it's moving too slow.
So we decided that instead of talking about or complaining about how fast or slow time was moving, how much time we didn't have or what was not enough and it's not moving fast enough or it's not moving slow enough, or how we don't have enough time at certain ages or stages of our kids' life, we decided to always talk about how time is moving at exactly the right pace, a pace where we can celebrate the next milestone and feel ready for all the goodness that it will bring, and we can honor the stages that our kids are moving out of.
Similar to the example I gave of oscillating between not contributing enough and not supported enough, this is the same. When our kids are growing up fast and slow in different moments, we can just decide that they are growing up at exactly the right pace. This shift in how we see our kids growing up has made us more present to each stage. It has made us feel more gratitude and reflection. We soak in each milestone, and we feel like we've slowed time down in a lot of ways by deciding not to focus on lack, but instead focus on the abundance of the time we do have, which is just the right amount of time.
The opposite of scarcity mindset is an abundance mindset, the belief that there are enough resources. There's enough money, enough time, enough opportunities, enough success in the world for everyone. There's enough to go around. There are plenty of pieces of the pie for everyone. If a scarcity mindset focuses on what is missing or lacking, an abundance mindset focuses on possibility and growth and all that you do have.
There's a really great book that my coach recommended me that I think unlocked so much of this earlier this year. It's called The Having, and we'll put it in the show notes, jenna.coach/123. It pertains to money, but it pertains to everything, right? It's like this focus on what we do have, this abundance mindset of what we have, not about what we don't have. I think we are all hardwired for scarcity, honestly. Hoarding resources and being careful helped us survive when resources weren't as easy to come by. I will say that resources have always been abundant, but they weren't easy, and a lot of times now, maybe they're not easy, but they are abundant.
But it's within an abundance mindset that we can actually step into a life we love right now, a life where we have enough with nothing changing externally. We have enough time, we have enough money. And I know some of you want to immediately push back on me here. But I'm in credit card debt. But we're barely making ends meet. But I only get two hours with my kids at night. But I really don't have enough help. And I'm not asking you to pretend those circumstances aren't real or valid. I want you to recognize that even when we're in the negative, we can still see our life, ourselves, our people, our kids, our career as enough, as abundant.
Because abundance leads to abundance. Abundance leads to creativity. It leads to taking better actions, actions that help create more results and ultimately more abundance. When we decide that we have enough time with our kids, even if we adamantly want to leave our jobs to create more time and flexibility, it doesn't mean that we suddenly become complacent and forget our goals. It means that we start seeing the time we do have as precious enough to be present, to be creative on what we want to do, to not be stressed out and worried about wasting time.
When I was coaching that client through her enoughness problem, immediately my brain went into creativity mode. And I said, "Wow, you have 24 months with your kids. Maybe there's a list of 24 memory-making activities you can do with them once a month, going and doing something absurd or exciting or memorable, 24 unforgettable outings that feel abundant." Our brain can't tap into that when it's stuck in lack.
When we decide that our body is good enough or that our body is strong enough or toned enough, skinny enough, it doesn't mean that we become couch potatoes and never work out again. It means that when we step into that gym, in front of that mirror, we are excited to be there. We're proud of ourselves. We don't avoid the workout. I just coached a client on this yesterday. She was struggling with enoughness in postpartum, not strong enough, not as strong as she was before the baby. The workouts weren't challenging enough or hard enough.
And you know what? She struggled to get up in the morning and create a routine around moving her body. This is because she had an enoughness problem. It's not because there are problems with the workout or with her body or with time. When she sees herself as not enough, she will not feel motivated or energized to do what needs to be done at the gym to start building strength.
When we decide that our job is enough today, even with that boss, even with those demands, even with that stress, it doesn't mean we stop trying to start or build a business. It doesn't mean that we throw away our exit strategy. What it means is that when we talk to people about our business ideas, they know that we are running towards something, something to be excited about, not because we're trying to escape a miserable life, but because we are going towards something that is exciting and brings us joy.
They feel the excitement and joy radiating off of us because they can feel our intentions are wholeheartedly based on the impact we want for others, the value we want to put out in the world, not a quick fix for escaping the nine-to-five. Our conversations become abundant, and people feel that. Potential clients feel that.
If you feel like you don't have enough money and you want to fill that void with a client, this is the most challenging way to create clients because potential clients can feel that desperation. And I know you have bills to pay. I know you need to make more money, but they can feel that lack. And that energy repels clients. Enoughness and abundance will always attract clients.
There's a huge difference between, "I need to change this because what I have is not enough," and, "What I have is enough, and I'm excited to create more." One is fueled by scarcity, one is fueled by possibility and abundance, and trust me, they feel completely different. Because here's the thing, there will always be more, more money to make, more time that we wish we had, more things we could do, more ways we could show up for the people we love. If we're waiting until we have more to finally feel like we have enough, we'll be waiting forever. The goalpost keeps moving.
So why not decide that we are enough right now, that our lives are enough right now, and that everything we're working toward is simply more of a life we already love? We are enough exactly as we are, and we are actively creating more. I want to challenge you, even though you may be motivated to change your life, your career, because there's a lack or a gap that you want to fill, I want to challenge you not to change your goals by any means, but to change how you see yourself and your life right now in this moment.
I want you to step into that next chapter from a place of enoughness. I want you to notice how different it feels, how much better it feels. I want you to love your job before you leave it. I want you to love your body before you sculpt it and get stronger. I want you to love the time you have before you create more because if we keep trying to change our external environments to create enoughness in our life, we are never going to get to a place where we are enough.
We will change jobs, and then a few months later feel like it's not enough. But if we look internally and we solve the enoughness problem right now for good, we will be energized and excited to create more because we're building from abundance, from enoughness, not from lack. And building from abundance and enoughness always feels better.
Okay, moms, I love you all, even and especially those of you I've never talked to. Please remember that you are enough, you're doing enough. Follow the podcast so I can remind you of that in different ways each week, and I can continue to support you stepping into that next version of yourself in a way that is honoring the enoughness of your life and stepping into wanting more, but not necessarily needing to escape.
And if you're feeling ready for a business coach to support you, to hold your hand, to metaphorically hold you during the heaviness of creating change and starting something that feels super scary, come talk to me. I offer a free one-hour consultation, and that is the next step. Okay, keep listening. Episodes are released every week. The link to find the resources I talked about, the link to get the transcript, and to schedule a consultation if you're ready for that is in the show notes. Go to jenna.coach/123. Okay, I'll see you next week.
Thanks for listening to this week’s episode of How to Quit Your Job: A Mom’s Guide to Creating a Life and Business You Love. If you want to learn more about how I can help you stop making excuses and start making moves, head on over to www.jenna.coach. I’ll see you next week.
Today's episode is so important, not just because it matters to living a more fulfilling life, but because when we set out to change our life, especially if it's that new career as an entrepreneur, if we are building that new life from lack, from parts of our current life not being enough, we will bring that lack with us into entrepreneurship.
But this is not just a business topic. This is a topic that weaves its way into all parts of life, and it's likely holding you back from being the best version of yourself. So we're going to clear that up today.
Welcome to How to Quit Your Job, the podcast for moms ready to ditch the nine-to-five and build a life and business they love. I’m your host, Jenna Rykiel. Let’s go.
Hi, mom friends. This episode should have happened two years ago, but better late than never, of course. I was in a session with a client the other day. She's a stay-at-home mom who has had her business for a number of years but is now wanting to get serious about systems and growth and all those fun things. She has four kids, and the youngest is two, and she was struggling with this idea that we all know so well: our time with our kids is limited. This is a mom who is with her kids the majority of her days, and she was crushed thinking about only having two years left before they're all in school.
And like I said, this is a story we all know so well. If you're a parent of older kids, you know it. If you're a parent with younger kids, you hear other parents preach it nonstop. They grow up so fast. We've all heard it, we all know it, we're experiencing it. And for my client, there was this very real feeling that she didn't have enough time with them. It's interesting, right? This stay-at-home mom doesn't feel like she has enough time with her kids.
Similarly, I've worked with plenty of moms in corporate who want to start their own business so they can have more time with their kids. They want to be there for pickup and drop-off. They don't want to take phone calls during dinner or bedtime. It's really easy to think that we don't have enough time, enough time with our kids, that we're running out of time. But this isn't a time problem. This is actually an enoughness problem. That's what I want to talk about today. That six-letter word that every single person struggles with in some way, shape, or form: enough.
We all have some enoughness problem to solve, and our enoughness problem is ever-evolving, right? Not enough time, not in shape enough. I'm not present enough. I'm not young enough, not smart enough, not brave enough, not extroverted enough. We all have some part of ourselves or our lives that feels like it's not enough. And sometimes our enoughness problem, it gets projected onto our kids and our partners. He's not helping enough. They aren't listening enough. She's not present enough. They aren't getting along enough. They aren't nice enough to each other. You don't call enough.
So what does this enoughness problem really mean? It means that in some area of our life, fill in the blank with whatever your enoughness problem pertains to. I want you to think about it for yourself. I know that you've said it probably today or thought about it today of like something that's not enough. But whatever your enoughness problem pertains to, we're operating from a scarcity mindset. There's never enough time, energy, money, opportunity, help, attention, whatever it is.
When we are operating from a scarcity mindset, we are fully focused, intensely focused on immediate lacks and all the things we don't have. And this can leave us feeling really unsteady because we're worried about the gap. How do we fill that gap? How do we fix that gap? How do we get more? We might even feel jealous or threatened when we notice other people who don't seem to be experiencing the same gaps or scarcity. Scarcity feels really stressful. It feels really bad.
And here's the worst part. When we are focused on the lack, the limited resources, all the time we don't have, all the money we don't have, when something is not enough, we feel it, and not in an energized, excited way. We feel it in a depleted, hopeless, discouraged, disconnected, dreadful kind of way. If we jump back to my client for a second, the one who was feeling like she didn't have enough time with her kids, she felt truly distraught when she was focused on only having two years left. She was visibly upset. She was crying.
And when we are feeling distraught, we are distracted. We are judging every moment. I think she even said, "Am I wasting time?" She was worried about wasting time. We're trying to decide if we're making the best use of our time. We may also check out or shut down from the stress of it. And when we do any of these things, we aren't present. And what does a mom with only two years left before her youngest goes to school want more than anything? She wants to be fully present and in the moment with her kiddos.
Do you see the problem here? The thought, "I don't have enough time with my kids," creates the exact opposite experience of what she desperately wants from the time she does have. Believing we don't have enough time or enough anything, for that matter, creates results in our life that we don't want. In fact, the exact opposite of what we want.
I did a whole episode on this recently, Episode 120, Are You Creating Results You Don't Want? This is such an important example of that. And it applies to every enoughness problem. When we see lack in our life, when we see lack in ourselves, in our partners, in our kids, in our friendships, in our relationships, focusing on lack makes it exponentially bigger. Not just in our heads, although that is true too. It makes it bigger because our actions actually perpetuate it.
I used to call my grandmother every week, sometimes multiple times a week before she passed away a few years ago. She was truly someone I talked to about almost everything. I called her every week, and every time we talked, she said, "Jen, you don't call enough." And so you know what sometimes happened? If time was tight and I was struggling to fit in a call, especially once kids came into the picture, I would say to myself, "Well, I guess I just won't call. It's never enough anyway."
What she wanted more than anything was for me to call more. But since when I did call, it was just not enough, it led me to call less. She created the exact opposite results that she wanted. We project that lack onto other people. We project that onto our kids. We project that onto our businesses, which I'll talk about in a second. And if we are constantly showing our kids that we are not enough, how do we expect them to learn that they are enough?
I have another person I love dearly in my life who says she doesn't see me enough. And instead of truly soaking in the moments we are together, I'm always reminded of how it's just not enough. If we are people who really struggle with enoughness, I promise you, there will never be a moment when suddenly it's enough, suddenly all of our cups are full, because enoughness becomes a habit. Focusing on the gap or the lack becomes a habit. So even when effort is made to create more time, more energy, more resources, more phone calls, more exercising, more help, more listening, more pounds loss, it still will not be enough. There will always be something. There will always be lack.
And this is ever-present and so important, especially for anyone wanting to start a business because life currently doesn't feel like enough. You don't have enough time, enough flexibility, enough autonomy, enough purpose, enough meaning, enough time with your kids. These are all things that I support clients to cultivate in their life, more of these things. The piece that is really important, though, that I've talked about before on this podcast, is that when a client comes to me and they want to create change in their life, in their career, in their availability for their kids because something is not enough, we work on life feeling enough first.
Though this podcast is called How to Quit Your Job, I'm always going to give moms tools and support to look internally to solve any enoughness problem before we tackle changing the external environment. Why is this important, you might be wondering? Because if we don't start from a foundation of enoughness in all areas of our life, if we don't build the skill of truly feeling like life is full before we start running away from our problems, our problems will follow us.
A perfect example of this is every mom I've ever worked with who comes to me after they've built the business, the ones who've left corporate because they were burnt out. If they haven't worked on the enoughness problem internally, I guarantee they are coming to me because they are now feeling burnt out in their business. They just traded one form of burnout for another. The people who leave corporate because they don't have enough time or flexibility in corporate end up running themselves into the ground in entrepreneurship. They work late, they work weekends, they miss events with their kids in the name of building a business because they're building from lack.
There are things we have to unlearn and develop as internal foundations before we go building something new, before we go externally solving our problems. And trust me, this doesn't take long, actually. It's usually a few conversations, a few new ways of looking at work and life that get us feeling lighter, more gratitude, more fulfilled with nothing changing externally. And from there, we can go on to build from abundance instead of scarcity. Building from abundance creates more abundance. Building from scarcity creates scarcity.
I have my own enoughness problem that I want to share. I broke through two of them at once. It was beautiful. And I want to share this because I think it's likely relatable for many moms. There were moments in my life and marriage and parenting where I felt like I wasn't doing enough. I felt like I could be doing more, contributing more, helping more. My husband and I try to be a 50-50 household. We're both entrepreneurs with flexible schedules, and he's always been an entrepreneur, so he's always had a flexible schedule. And when I'm not stepping into that 50%, it can really feel like I'm not doing enough. Or if I have a low month in my business financially, it can feel like I'm not contributing enough. I felt like I wasn't doing enough at times. There were moments, for sure.
And then there were other moments in my life, I would say more often, where I felt like I was doing it all. I felt like I'm not supported enough. My partner isn't helping enough. And I was oscillating between these two, not knowing that that is what was happening. And then one day, I decided that maybe this is an enoughness problem that actually wasn't a problem at all. Maybe I was contributing enough and I was supported enough. Even though moment to moment, some of it might feel out of balance, it might not feel like enough, there was suddenly an awareness and an acceptance for that pendulum that swings.
The enoughness problem I was experiencing, it was swinging from I'm not doing enough to I'm not supported enough, and maybe reality on the whole is somewhere in the middle, that both were just enough. Now, maybe enough doesn't mean perfectly equal in every single moment. Enough can include seasons, enough can include imbalance at times. Maybe enough can even include, of course, wanting something to change, which I'll talk about in a second.
But we need that baseline of being and experiencing enough. It doesn't mean our brains don't linger on lack sometimes, but we need to get to that lighter feeling that we are enough, that different elements of our life are enough. I've talked about this before on the podcast when we've talked about time, but years ago, I found myself always feeling busy, always talking about how busy I was, always feeling like I didn't have enough time, always saying that I didn't have enough time, and it was exhausting. The lack of time was absolutely debilitating.
We did this again when we had kids. We decided that time is always moving at exactly the right pace. There are moments in parenthood that feel like they are moving way too fast. We don't have enough time. There are moments in parenthood, especially during one of those epic tantrums or when our kiddo just won't fall asleep, that time feels like it's moving too slow.
So we decided that instead of talking about or complaining about how fast or slow time was moving, how much time we didn't have or what was not enough and it's not moving fast enough or it's not moving slow enough, or how we don't have enough time at certain ages or stages of our kids' life, we decided to always talk about how time is moving at exactly the right pace, a pace where we can celebrate the next milestone and feel ready for all the goodness that it will bring, and we can honor the stages that our kids are moving out of.
Similar to the example I gave of oscillating between not contributing enough and not supported enough, this is the same. When our kids are growing up fast and slow in different moments, we can just decide that they are growing up at exactly the right pace. This shift in how we see our kids growing up has made us more present to each stage. It has made us feel more gratitude and reflection. We soak in each milestone, and we feel like we've slowed time down in a lot of ways by deciding not to focus on lack, but instead focus on the abundance of the time we do have, which is just the right amount of time.
The opposite of scarcity mindset is an abundance mindset, the belief that there are enough resources. There's enough money, enough time, enough opportunities, enough success in the world for everyone. There's enough to go around. There are plenty of pieces of the pie for everyone. If a scarcity mindset focuses on what is missing or lacking, an abundance mindset focuses on possibility and growth and all that you do have.
There's a really great book that my coach recommended me that I think unlocked so much of this earlier this year. It's called The Having, and we'll put it in the show notes, jenna.coach/123. It pertains to money, but it pertains to everything, right? It's like this focus on what we do have, this abundance mindset of what we have, not about what we don't have. I think we are all hardwired for scarcity, honestly. Hoarding resources and being careful helped us survive when resources weren't as easy to come by. I will say that resources have always been abundant, but they weren't easy, and a lot of times now, maybe they're not easy, but they are abundant.
But it's within an abundance mindset that we can actually step into a life we love right now, a life where we have enough with nothing changing externally. We have enough time, we have enough money. And I know some of you want to immediately push back on me here. But I'm in credit card debt. But we're barely making ends meet. But I only get two hours with my kids at night. But I really don't have enough help. And I'm not asking you to pretend those circumstances aren't real or valid. I want you to recognize that even when we're in the negative, we can still see our life, ourselves, our people, our kids, our career as enough, as abundant.
Because abundance leads to abundance. Abundance leads to creativity. It leads to taking better actions, actions that help create more results and ultimately more abundance. When we decide that we have enough time with our kids, even if we adamantly want to leave our jobs to create more time and flexibility, it doesn't mean that we suddenly become complacent and forget our goals. It means that we start seeing the time we do have as precious enough to be present, to be creative on what we want to do, to not be stressed out and worried about wasting time.
When I was coaching that client through her enoughness problem, immediately my brain went into creativity mode. And I said, "Wow, you have 24 months with your kids. Maybe there's a list of 24 memory-making activities you can do with them once a month, going and doing something absurd or exciting or memorable, 24 unforgettable outings that feel abundant." Our brain can't tap into that when it's stuck in lack.
When we decide that our body is good enough or that our body is strong enough or toned enough, skinny enough, it doesn't mean that we become couch potatoes and never work out again. It means that when we step into that gym, in front of that mirror, we are excited to be there. We're proud of ourselves. We don't avoid the workout. I just coached a client on this yesterday. She was struggling with enoughness in postpartum, not strong enough, not as strong as she was before the baby. The workouts weren't challenging enough or hard enough.
And you know what? She struggled to get up in the morning and create a routine around moving her body. This is because she had an enoughness problem. It's not because there are problems with the workout or with her body or with time. When she sees herself as not enough, she will not feel motivated or energized to do what needs to be done at the gym to start building strength.
When we decide that our job is enough today, even with that boss, even with those demands, even with that stress, it doesn't mean we stop trying to start or build a business. It doesn't mean that we throw away our exit strategy. What it means is that when we talk to people about our business ideas, they know that we are running towards something, something to be excited about, not because we're trying to escape a miserable life, but because we are going towards something that is exciting and brings us joy.
They feel the excitement and joy radiating off of us because they can feel our intentions are wholeheartedly based on the impact we want for others, the value we want to put out in the world, not a quick fix for escaping the nine-to-five. Our conversations become abundant, and people feel that. Potential clients feel that.
If you feel like you don't have enough money and you want to fill that void with a client, this is the most challenging way to create clients because potential clients can feel that desperation. And I know you have bills to pay. I know you need to make more money, but they can feel that lack. And that energy repels clients. Enoughness and abundance will always attract clients.
There's a huge difference between, "I need to change this because what I have is not enough," and, "What I have is enough, and I'm excited to create more." One is fueled by scarcity, one is fueled by possibility and abundance, and trust me, they feel completely different. Because here's the thing, there will always be more, more money to make, more time that we wish we had, more things we could do, more ways we could show up for the people we love. If we're waiting until we have more to finally feel like we have enough, we'll be waiting forever. The goalpost keeps moving.
So why not decide that we are enough right now, that our lives are enough right now, and that everything we're working toward is simply more of a life we already love? We are enough exactly as we are, and we are actively creating more. I want to challenge you, even though you may be motivated to change your life, your career, because there's a lack or a gap that you want to fill, I want to challenge you not to change your goals by any means, but to change how you see yourself and your life right now in this moment.
I want you to step into that next chapter from a place of enoughness. I want you to notice how different it feels, how much better it feels. I want you to love your job before you leave it. I want you to love your body before you sculpt it and get stronger. I want you to love the time you have before you create more because if we keep trying to change our external environments to create enoughness in our life, we are never going to get to a place where we are enough.
We will change jobs, and then a few months later feel like it's not enough. But if we look internally and we solve the enoughness problem right now for good, we will be energized and excited to create more because we're building from abundance, from enoughness, not from lack. And building from abundance and enoughness always feels better.
Okay, moms, I love you all, even and especially those of you I've never talked to. Please remember that you are enough, you're doing enough. Follow the podcast so I can remind you of that in different ways each week, and I can continue to support you stepping into that next version of yourself in a way that is honoring the enoughness of your life and stepping into wanting more, but not necessarily needing to escape.
And if you're feeling ready for a business coach to support you, to hold your hand, to metaphorically hold you during the heaviness of creating change and starting something that feels super scary, come talk to me. I offer a free one-hour consultation, and that is the next step. Okay, keep listening. Episodes are released every week. The link to find the resources I talked about, the link to get the transcript, and to schedule a consultation if you're ready for that is in the show notes. Go to jenna.coach/123. Okay, I'll see you next week.
Thanks for listening to this week’s episode of How to Quit Your Job: A Mom’s Guide to Creating a Life and Business You Love. If you want to learn more about how I can help you stop making excuses and start making moves, head on over to www.jenna.coach. I’ll see you next week.
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