Brené Brown wrote, “The opposite of scarcity isn’t abundance; the opposite of scarcity is simply enough.”
This stuck with me. I have lived most of my life believing the former duality.
When I perceived scarcity, I saw the absence of abundance. I was blind to all the enough within and without.
I go back to the story I’ve told about sitting in my car in front of a check cashing joint in North Hollywood crying because I couldn’t even get a usurious payday loan to cover all the bills I had said yes to.
Looking back, in that moment I actually had enough. I mean, here I am right? I made it.
I knew to call a friend and ask for help. This assistance bore no interest and came with a lot of empathy. This friend also didn’t really have a large cushion to spare, and still he lent. He had enough.
Let’s take a second and look in. Yep, your heart, where you really live, the real you that’s not your hair, skin, clothes, eye color, or bank account.
Are you looking? I’ll wait.
Look, you’re enough! How can you not be? You’re a miracle of creation here on this earth skewl with me, learning as you go down the road. How beautiful.
Have you tried affirmations? I swore off of them. (Though I’ve stumbled upon a cool way forward with them that I’ll share soon.)
Yeah, affirmations when you say, “I am all these grandiose amazeballs things,” and your brain says, “Pssshht. Um, look at your resume.”
The thing with I am enough is that you know it’s true. Enough is just right. You’re enough to be reading this, enough to contemplate this, enough to look inside and see, oh wow, there’s a whole lot of enough there.
Yesterday I said that when we sing, we can open our hearts and invite people in. They don’t know what’s in there, only whether or not we are being hospitable. That’s where all that enough lives.
And just think–I invite you in there, you see, “oh, Dan is full of all this enough. Wait a second, I’m a human just like him. I bet I got all kinds of enough, too.”
You would be right. It’s sweet. It’s full of rest. It’s powerful. It burns away the illusion of our separation and better-or-worse-than-ness.
In every present moment, you are enough. I am enough. You have what the moment requires–washing that dish, putting on that shirt, projecting a hello to that person in the grocery store through your mask and squinching up your eyes so they can see you’re smiling.
When you’ve done your prep, when you’ve practiced the notes, when you’ve made the words your words that stand for your images and your thoughts, you can stand in that song and know that you are enough.
Dang, even if you haven’t done all the work, know you’re enough and do a great job. Trust me, I’ve been fooled by many a student 🙂 In fact, you can do all the homework, and if you aren’t on board with your enough-ness, there’s no way anyone else can be. You have to go first.
You. Are. Enough. Promise me you’ll say that today. I am enough.
Because you are, and you know you are.
And maybe somebody needs to see you live that in front of them so that they can get a beautiful clue about their own cozy, infinite, breathtaking enough.
