The revolutionary act of starting with enough
An invitation to explore ditching the conventional 'shouldism' and doing things differently.
My friends have always known me as the Queen of to-do lists. It’s how I operate. My system has become so elaborate I could teach it at Harvard Business School. I have met people who do not use to-dos. It’s like meeting someone who doesn’t enjoy Friends: I can’t relate.
With time, I learnt to notice when a freshly written list triggered anxious muscle aches. It’s a signal that I’m trying to do too much with the capacity, energy, or willpower available for that week. I learnt to take things off my list. It was very hard. Almost like cutting my arm off (I'm also known as a drama queen).
Do more, read more, work more, learn more, see your friends more, travel more, etc.
But sometimes, more does not mean better. More work can mean burnout. More friends can mean less quality time. More success can result in more unwanted responsibilities, etc.
I’m not special. I’m a symptom of a very specific mindset that afflicts many. I call this mindset the ‘Shouldism’, or the ‘Not Enoughism’: You should be doing more and, you are never doing enough.
If you’re not careful you start thinking you are not enough…It’s a slippery slope…deriving your sense of self, your worth, and value from your ability to produce make you vulnerable. It makes you vulnerable to bad weeks, bad years, and bad luck.
Oliver Burkeman* wrote about the idea that we tend to start the day in a ‘debit’ situation. You wake up, you have a list of things you want to do, and by the end of the day, if you haven’t, you feel deflated. Because you should have. He invites his readers to reverse their positioning, and begin at ‘zero’. We could go further and decide to open the day in ‘credit’.
What if we started with the feeling that whatever we do today, is the cherry on top of our accomplishments? What would that change for us?
Thinking about it on the scale of our lives: we all have things we want to accomplish or become. And there is nothing wrong with that, it’s probably healthy. But the trick is how you consider your starting point, where you are now: do you perceive it as “lacking” or as “enough”?
The answer to that question is crucial because it impacts what comes next. If you’re starting from enough, the rest is a bonus to your already incredibly rich life.* You don’t have to carry these heavy bags of anxious “not enoughism”.
You can explore and allow yourself to be wrong, backtrack, play, and be bold. Because if you fall, you fall back to this magical place where you’re enough, have enough, and do enough. This is nothing short but revolutionary.
This is especially interesting for the dopaminergic* personalities for whom it’s always about moving forward.
Ok, Lina, but this lacks ambition, no? If your starting point doesn’t “hurt”, where would the drive come from? I don’t see it this way anymore. In life you have two ways to go from A to B: the painful one, or the iterative playful one.
If the second option feels like science fiction, fear not: it's a journey. You don't erase decades of conditioning by reading a Quirky Conversationalist piece. No matter how well-written it is. At this stage, the best we can do is notice which narrative prevails, and act mindfully when possible.
See you next week,
Lina
*Incredibly rich life. I mean by that we live better today than King Louis XIV (the fourteenth) could have ever dreamed of: hot showers, Spotify, Daniel Steel novels, etc. This is the topic of another piece. But think about it: you wake up, get running water (no need to walk 3 km to bring it back), you have coffee that has been harvested, packaged, and sent to a supermarket (that you didn’t have to build or open or manage), you put the coffee in a machine plugged on an electricity system you didn’t design, and don’t understand, I could go on forever, cars…planes flying in the sky… Facetiming other humans…etc. Yes, folks. Incredibly rich life. Facts.
*Yes, Oliver Burkeman again. What can I say? He’s the gift that keeps on giving. Besides, I feel like this piece is a nice follow-up to the JOMO one don’t you think?
* On dopaminergic personalities; a lot of my thoughts on the subjects come from the book ‘The Molecule of More’ by Daniel Z. Lieberman and Michael E. Long and ‘Dopamine Nation’ by Anna Lembke. I dare to recommend both quite strongly.
*Source of the Post-its artwork: https://pin.it/oafsBnP. I struggled to find good illustrations for today.