In 2020, mid pandemic, my husband Kevin and I started a podcast called Growth Minded Marriage. One of the main takeaways from our podcasting experience was that Kevin and I were able to articulate what we wanted our life to look like, our dream life if you will. And it was a life focused on time. We wanted to be time rich, hold time as our dearest asset. In 2021 we took steps to strip our lives of things that stole time from us, and became very judicious with what we gave our time too. Over the course of 2021 my life became a series of intentional events that I love.
However, from this beautiful place a new question began to invade my peace.
When is it enough?
When do I have enough time?
Enough moments of happiness?
Enough space for creativity?
Enough LOVE?
This feeling of not being satisfied with what I have is a long-standing demon in my life and it was back.
Frustratingly, I thought I had cracked the code on living a fulfilling life. I had detangled myself from our society’s message that I am only worth the money I make, the possessions I own or how productive I am and I was left rich with time but somehow, annoyingly, not mental freedom. As my life became more aligned with my values, the more this demon found new ways to be heard. This internal mental demon kept saying, “sure this life is good, but what if it could be better”?
Here are some examples of what I mean.
I had finally created the habit of a morning routine and carved out 45 minutes alone full of journaling, reading, and meditating, but occasionally one of my blessed children interrupts me 10 mins. before I am done and the whole thing feels ruined. I get frustrated and feel like I don’t have enough time. Here is something else. Over the past few years, I’ve gone from working 60 hours/week to 40 hours to 30 to 20, finally fulfilling a long held dream of “work life balance”. And yet, I still come home on work days and feel exhausted and like I don’t have enough energy or patience to engage with my family. I still wanted more. Along those lines, in 2021 my husband and I got a babysitter most Saturday mornings so that we could have a date day together. But about 6 months into our routine I found myself becoming bored with our once precious time away and began longing for passion now too.
Here’s another one you all have witnessed. In 2021 I leaned into my creative side through speaking, podcasting and storytelling which has breathed so much life into me. It all has been really meaningful. So of course, my demon high on trying new things, incessantly asks me, if that feels so good, why don’t you do that a bunch more and bigger. And then towards the end of 2021 I had a realization. This feeling of wanting more time, more energy, more passion, more opportunity isn’t going to go away. The bar just keeps moving up. This is an ongoing, ever evolving problem and I am conditioned in a 1,000 different ways to always be searching for more, bigger, better. I am certainly not saying that change for the better isn’t good to want. And I am not suggesting that wanting more and getting more won’t sometimes be the right thing. I just don’t want my present life to be ruined by the promise of my future life.
“I just don’t want my present life to be ruined by the promise of my future life.”
More, bigger, better is what our culture and often times our own demon tells us we should want but wanting more, even of the good things, makes me feel dissatisfied with the good things I already have. Wanting more steals my mental energy, it steals my peace, it makes me accountable to more people and more things, at the very least it gives me a longer to do list. If my goal is to find peace, I knew I must find a new way to view the life I lead. I must practice telling the demon, my own brain and my own body that this, right here, is ENOUGH. Getting to speak my truth to a room of a 100 instead of 1,000s is enough, having my perfect beautiful uninterrupted morning routine 4 days a week not 7 is enough. Accepting my current work life balance as enough, embracing the marriage I have right now as enough. My enough will look different than every other person’s enough. And honestly accepting my version of enough feels like it is going to be really hard, already this week, the piece about my marriage feels too big to tackle, but I know this is the intentional work I am called to do in 2022.