When will I finally feel like I've made it?
When will I finally arrive and when will things feel safe and enough? When I see creative and impact-led entrepreneurs, heart-led leaders, and others who are seeking work-life harmony in therapy and coaching, this question comes up a lot.
But first, let's name the billionaires in the room.
Many of the people I see are exploring alternative ways of measuring success than promotions, material wealth, or status. In the strange treadmill of capitalistic striving, we are taught that there there is always our next achievement, our next raise, our next purchase, next goal, or keeping up security (financial or otherwise) to focus on. Capitalism can offer us many shiny or convenient things, but contentment or finally feeling that what you have is enough and safe is not something we can achieve through hustle.
Our model of capitalism in the US depends on us remaining restless, striving, and struggling. A disempowered labor force is a cheaper one. Exhausted workers are impulse-buy consumers. We chase comfort and relief, rather than wholeness and lasting contentment. And let's call this out for what it is - a harmful system designed to exploit the many for the needs of the very, very few.
Anti-capitalist practices such as appreciating rest, cultivating community care, and being present all radically disrupt the lie that we're only as good as our productivity or purchases.
Enoughness isn't an all or none thing.
Let's talk about would "enough" looks like for you. Think of it less as a milestone (e.g., once I've achieved X) and more like a sensation or a moment in time (e.g., settled in at home reading a good book unrushed, eating a home cooked meal, laughing with loved ones as they tell a silly story). There is a lovely, creative, gentle sort of magic in our everyday lives. If we can slow down long enough to feel it.
I acknowledge of course that our suffering, fears, and lack of safety can be devastating. Poverty, collective trauma, and state violence can live in our minds and nervous system as an ever-present threat, for instance. Finding moments of enoughness even before we feel safe in that greater sense is not at all meant to minimize the pain we may be facing (e.g., health crises, political and environmental crises, food scarcity). It may actually be critical for helping us through it.
So regardless of how things are overall, I hope you will remember that enoughness is not all or nothing. Even in our hardest points, we can tap into small moments - small bits of magic - in the human experience.
An example from one of my amazing clients:
In my work as a therapist, I've seen people experiencing enoughness and magical moments of making it at different points along a journey. A person who stands out to me - someone I was treating for stress and loss while she was in chemotherapy at a cancer center - had this beautiful moment of enoughness that happened months before she achieved the remission she was hoping for. There was a moment in her care where she finally shared in group therapy and expressed her anger about always being told to "battle" or "fight" as if cancer was an invader she had to beat by just fighting hard enough. She had not been able to express how she truly felt aloud and when she started it all came out. I remember how relieved she felt, and how proud of herself. She was not yet in remission, sure, but the way she began treating herself during her recovery, expressing herself, and feeling held and seen in this community of fellow cancer patients was beautiful. She joined the funny memes, shielded herself from blame, and corrected language that suggested she was not doing enough. Because she knew she was and had.
Enoughness can be contentment, a sense of home, rediscovering openness and creativity, and feeling genuinely proud of ourselves. It can show up in moments when we don't ask ourselves to justify our time but instead allow ourselves to feel it, play in it, and be in it. Deep relationships where we can lean on one another, communities where we care for one another, and self-trust can all remind us that we are already enough and our lives are already happening.
"Making it" isn't just about reaching a goal. It also means learning to allow ourselves to settle into the stillness, the sensory beauty, the meaning of our current lives so that we can notice and appreciate the goals we have met at any given time. "Enoughness" isn't a solid state or outcome we reach, so much as little moments where we can genuinely feel content - a moment of shared humor between you and a loved one, enjoying a good meal, the feeling of flow you get while painting, reading a story to your child, stepping outside just after it rained...
That's where the magic is. Where "enough" lives. And in those moments, maybe you've already made it.
So how do you put this concept into practice?
Practicing Enoughness in Daily Life
1. Do a gentle time review.
How have you been spending your days? Where does you time go, and to what degree are the things you are doing lining up with what you actually value? It can be helpful to consider where you feel joy, rest, or purpose and when you are feeling the opposite (e.g., drained, disconnected). This isn't to shame yourself, but to notice ways you may be able to reclaim time doing what actually nourishes you. You may already have some of the ingredients for enoughness or making it right now in one or more areas of your life.
2. Are you treating yourself like you are and have done enough?
If you are still living in a pattern of self-sacrifice and hustle, of course you will not feel like you've "made it" or achieved enough. Are there ways to show yourself in your actions that you are already deserving of care and already doing enough for where you are in your life and journey? This could mean protecting meals in your day, ensuring you get regular sleep, and having genuine care routines that look like what you imagine you would do for yourself if you had already made it.
3. Train your brain to notice enoughness and making it.
Instead of asking if you did enough, earned enough, or accomplished enough, you could try intentional journaling. This can help us train our brains to notice the things we already have. We can notice things we did well, things that do feel stable, and things that we did find joy in. That can help you break from the mental pattern of continually chasing enough, and instead stopping to experience the amount you already achieved. This is not a practice of lowering you expectations, but rather improving your attention to what already exists. You can live in more emotionally deep, whimsical, and whole ways even before you've reached that next goal.
I hope this helps! And I wish you a lovely feeling of enough at some point today.
-Dr. Jackie Layton
