What does "enough" look like?
You're chasing a feeling
The Third Door is a weekly newsletter about sustainable business strategy for solopreneurs and creative souls who want more out of life than the status quo, hosted by business coach and strategist Jenni Gritters. If you’ve been reading this newsletter for a while and you receive value from it, I’d encourage you to sign up for a paid membership.
When I first started running my solopreneur business as a freelance writer, I earned $5,000/ month. It felt wild to see that money coming in each month; it was about as much as I’d been making at my full-time editing job, prior to being laid off.
But I also noticed that every month, I experienced a few days of panic about paying our bills. I worried: Was $5,000 enough, once I handled my taxes?
Then I started earning more. After about six months, I’d expanded to $10,000/ month. I figured that my financial panic would disappear once I hit that marker – but it didn’t. If anything, it got louder, which was strange.
As you may know, in June 2023, my husband left his job as a nurse and I had to increase my earnings drastically to cover our whole family’s needs. Instead of earning $8-10k per month, I was aiming for a $18-22k/ month. It felt like a wild challenge but I knew the writing work was there. And wildly, I hit those goals. (I also had to expand the business a lot, and add in many support structures. I wasn't doing it alone!)
But guess what didn’t change? My financial panic. It still didn’t feel like enough money.
This led me down a rabbit hole of learning about financial abundance, the nervous system and the ways scarcity can show up in our society and our family patterns. I learned that my parents had always been worried about having enough. (Even when we did have enough – often, more than enough – the environment in my home was still one of fear and panic.) I learned that my husband had been exposed to the same messaging growing up, too.
Together, we were wrapped up in a “never enough” mentality that I see over and over again in my clients, too. It’s partially a product of late-stage capitalism, which thrives when we feel like we don’t have enough time or energy or money. That “not enough” narrative convinces us to buy more and work more – all priorities in keeping a capitalist society running. I also believe our generations’ grandparents truly did not have enough, in many moments, and that patterning lingers in our nervous systems, despite conditions having changed.
So much of my own work has been noticing where things are already more than enough in my life. And so much of my work with my clients, too, has been about defining what enough even looks like for them.
Chasing more and more and more is a hungry ghost, friends. It sucks. There is no end point. You will always be running.
If you’re nodding your head along with me – if you, too, have seen your income grow and you still don’t feel safe – here are 3 things I want you to consider:
1. Enough is a feeling, not a number.
The word enough literally means to have as much as is required. Most of us believe that having more will make us feel better (safer, calmer, etc). And that is true, to a certain extent. But a lot of research shows that the happiest people have just enough. They are full up. They’re not over full, not under full. Just… full.
When you say you don’t have enough, you’re chasing a feeling. And I want you to think about what that feeling is. Then ask how you can have more of that feeling every day, right now, versus waiting for a number that you might hit someday to be able to feel this way.
2. Defining enough also requires looking at your numbers.
In my business, it is really helpful for me to crunch numbers and define the window of “enough.” I look at my personal finances, then create a high end and low end number, and aim to hit within that window each month. My friends at Lettuce, an amazing financial services company that builds tools and programs to help solopreneurs feel more steady in their financial journeys (they’re part bookkeeper, part accountant, all for $299 month), offer a financial dashboard that’s incredibly helpful for getting these numbers in check.
And here’s the kicker: When you feel that panic coming on (omg, I won’t have enough this month!), you can look at the dashboard and ask yourself if there’s really a problem. If there is a gap: You can fix it. And if there isn't, your brain starts to believe in the concept of enoughness.
Consider that panic might just be a familiar, standard response for you, when it comes to finances. Perhaps you don’t need to panic at all.
3. Enough is something you can create.
Every night, I write down 3 ways I notice abundance in my life already. Sometimes, when my bank account is the thinnest, my life is the fullest. I spend a lot of money on my kids’ childcare programs for example. And yet, I spend those dollars joyfully. They add so much value to all of our lives. My bank account's numbers are lower after I pay those bills, but the feelings of “enough” and “support” are higher. I have more. I have enough.
You can cultivate a feeling of “enoughness” just by paying attention to what you already have. Our brains are very used to noticing scarcity (they just want to keep us safe!). They have to be trained to notice abundance, too.
xo,
Jenni
PS. Lettuce is sponsoring all of my financial content for this season. I know a lot of you have questions about their program, so you can now book a call with them (schedule it here) to explore what it would look like to optimize your tax strategy and hand over your financial processes so you can experience more ease and less anxiety.
Curious about my background? I’m a writer and business coach living in Central Oregon. My goal is to teach everyone who will listen that it’s possible to build a simple, stable, successful business that support your human needs first. Join my group coaching program, SUSTAIN, for more conversations like this (and a community of people who are all about the path less taken), and follow me on LinkedIn or Instagram.