Dear Friend,
What a white wintery week this has been! First in NYC and now here in OKC, the snow has shown up in full force. I love it! I have sooooo many great memories growing up in Ohio when the snow would fall and stick around for weeks. Even when my kids were younger and we would venture back to Ohio for the holidays, the lasting snow was so fun.
Last week I was in NYC for a mastermind group. I had spent time with this group in Tampa, the first of December. I had written you about my time there. This time was a full day of discussion around the speaking business that was pure gold! I heard ideas I had not heard before. I saw things from a different perspective. They gave strategies of which I was entirely unaware.
It was a day that impacted me and my thinking. The diversity of characters and how they thought was inspiring. Their business models and approaches are each very different. Even how they saw what they were doing varied immensely. I was both challenged and encouraged. Also, I laughed a lot. It takes an interesting breed of human to have the audacity to navigate life as a “professional speaker.”
Phil Jones was our guest facilitator. He lives in NYC and walked the eight blocks to where we were meeting. I was familiar with who he is, but had never interacted with himpersonally. In a word, he’s fabulous. In a lot of words, he is gifted at weaving disparate strands of thought into a cohesive conversation that blows minds. He started off the day with a profound question:
Have You Defined Enough?
We had all just gone around the room and offered the top three things we wanted to discuss in our time together. Of course there was overlap in our expressions. He summarized with “It sounds like you all want MORE in your business.” Ding Ding Ding, we have a winner! Yes, we all want more than what we’re currently achieving.
Don’t you?
It was humorous when he said it because, duh. It’s baked into our American Culture. Certainly in business the general understanding is we want to continue to grow. Who wants to stay the same?
Instead of doing a “word for the year” I decided to do a different word every month in 2022. CONTENTMENT was my January word. It seems very fitting for the direction of this dialogue. Defining enough wasn’t an exercise I had practiced before. It legitimately tilted my brain. I tend to think more in terms of goals, reaching and aspiring, as if it’s a never-ending pursuit.
Enough
Satisfied
Sufficient
Plenty
Content
We don’t tend to use that word in the most positive of ways:
“It’s good enough.”
“Have you had enough?”
“That’s enough.”
Do any of your goals, visions or hopes for the year have the word “enough” in them? Ironically, enough doesn’t seem like enough, does it? Yet, once you create the formula for when enough IS enough, it offers clarity in our endeavors and provides peace in our pauses.
Instigating Ideas…
1. How are your goals coming along, now that we’re into February?
2. I dare you to define “enough” in the different areas of your life.
3. Who can you help achieve their “enough”?
4.Have you put yourself around people who will challenge you?
When we crafted the algorithm for calculating our financial enough, it still stretched me enormously. I’m not sure if it’s semantics, or there is something else going on. If it were simply a “goal” pursuing it is motivating. When it’s articulated as “enough” it feels different, sorta more deeply fulfilling. It’s challenged my thinking, for which I’m grateful.
On the flip-side, insecurities mantra is “you’re not enough.” Lacking enoughness hinders us from attempting pursuits.
Here we are already in February. Have we done enough? Made enough? Saved enough? Tried enough? Given enough? Been enough? Maybe? Maybe not?