Stress and Enough

The promise of abundance defines much New Age self-help work. According to this promise, you can have unlimited abundance if you develop the right mindset. One example of such claims about abundance is this assessment by Ben Sweetland:

The world is full of abundance and opportunity, but far too many people come to the fountain of life with a sieve instead of a tank car—a teaspoon instead of a steam shovel. They expect little and as a result they get little.

Rather than consider the how-tos of acquiring abundance, let's focus on a different question by substituting enough for abundance. The question then becomes:

How does your perception of enough relate to whether you feel stressed-out or peaceful?

Why substitute enough for abundance? Although the concept of abundance is wonderful to contemplate, the word enough holds a significant clue about how to transform a stressed-out life into a peaceful life. Simply talking about abundance in your life doesn't require you to identify how much abundance is enough for you to "tame" your stressed-out emotions.

Enough is a word that isn't used enough. Enough sets the boundaries. What's enough for you to be happy? What's enough for you to feel secure? What's enough for you to feel successful? What's enough to end your stressed-out feelings concerning money?

Stressed-out demonstrates an imbalance between more and less, between too much and too little, too many and too few. You might be saying that you have too much to do, which is another way of saying that you have too little time to do it. You owe more in bills, which means you have less money than you need to pay them. You have too much responsibility and too little help. Too much work means too little play. Too exhausted means less sleep than you need. Too tense means too little relaxation.

However you express it, your stressed-out state of mind reveals that something is out of balance in your life. You think you don't have enough to feel peaceful.

What Is Enough?

Let's look more carefully at the idea of enough. Does "enough" mean just enough to scrape by? One of the phrases I heard throughout my childhood was "make do with what you have." This definition was a legacy of the Great Depression and World War II. During the war, government posters encouraged frugality with this phrase:

Use it Up, Wear it Out, Make it Do, or Do Without

Making do substituted something of inferior quality because the real thing was not available. Other phrases include "making ends meet, keeping your head above water, make the best of, get by, manage, cope, survive, keep the wolf from the door.

Consider what Oprah Winfrey claims about this meaning of enough:

Be thankful for what you have; you'll end up having more. If you concentrate on what you don't have, you will never, ever have enough.

The enough of "making do" demonstrates a scarcity mindset of limitation and lack. This stress-inducing perception of enough cannot create a peaceful life.

[Original Post December 7, 2015]