Monday was International Women’s Day. It is the 99th year of this global day celebrating the economic, political and social achievements of women past, present and future (go to http://www.internationalwomensday.com/ for more information). This year’s theme is Equal rights, equal opportunities: Progress for all. The inclusivity of this statement is a declaration of sufficiency, of enoughness for all. The reminder that when we lift up the marginalized, the invisible, the oppressed, we all benefit.

This is the message of Half the Sky: Turning Oppression Into Opportunity for Women Worldwide, the modern tome of the International Women’s Movement. New York Times reporters Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn traveled the globe talking to women from the lowest castes, the seediest neighborhoods, the poorest families and wrote their stories of suffering and in many cases, of renewal, into this anthology and call to action. As a note to future readers of this book: they leave you hopeful, if not clutching your chest in empathy. Throughout, and a large part of the later chapters, you are directed to organizations and efforts in which to invest, given guidance as to how to both powerfully perceive the dire situations of girls and women worldwide and take action by contributing time, money and your voice. The authors are, if nothing, staunch supporters of Americans getting abroad to broaden their perspectives.

Reading about bride burnings, genital cutting, rape as a weapon of war, maternal mortality or the sexual slave trade and forced prostitution was not new to me with my educational background, (though no less painful). A trauma girls and women in marginal communities endure that was new to me was fistulas, and falls under the category of maternal morbitity, a category (and injury specifically) underserved by the international aid world. If you remember anything from this article, remember fistula. It is a common injury to women giving birth at very young ages and/or under insufficient medical conditions, or to women being raped with sticks, guns and other rough objects. A fistula is a tear in the vaginal, anal and/or bladder walls, causing pain, infection, and the leaking of urine and feces. These in turn lead to the abandonment of family and community (often do to the smell), undernourishment (due to women not eating or drinking to reduce leakage) and severe depression (due to the above). One woman Kristoff and WuDunn befriend lives for two years curled up in the fetal position in a hut on the edge of her village, waiting to die. She lives in the end, after her family raises the money for a taxi ride to the nearest hospital and she gets much needed treatment, from physical therapy, to the surgery to mend the fistula to psychological healing.

Millions of women endure fistulas because they are caught in a militia fight and raped, or are sold off into prostitution or wed off into marriage at the age of 12 – with pelvises still developing, giving birth is dangerous and causes severe tearing. Without surgery they become outcasts.

This is what I am thinking about this week: the invisible stories of women on the edges of their villages, the women who find the courage and means to go on with their life, and the women and men who devote their lives to the work of mending fistulas, ending the cycle of prostitution (and often methamphetamine addiction started by the johns), building schools for girls and asking questions and paying attention to what is said. The programs, organizations and methods that seem to work, according to the authors of Half the Sky, appear to be the ones that operate inside of sufficiency*. They are the hospitals, schools and outreach projects that include the women they serve, empower the women to make their own decisions and distribute resources, seek win-win outcomes, create community among the women, and are fiercely loving.

It is now a well documented fact now that when you empower the women of a community, everyone benefits. When you give the women of a community the money and the resources, children are fed, schools are built, clean water flows and crops flourish. This week I celebrate these women, these men, these projects, and I pray for the courage and the wisdom to be so brave. This week I look at where I allocate my resources and ask myself if I am directing my energy – my money – towards that which I care about, if I am uplifting those around me, so that we may all be uplifted.

Note: The majority of projects intended to help the underserved fail. The exact number is unclear, but it is an interesting point nonetheless that in an age of scarcity there is an uphill battle in determining the most effective course of action within the intention of being helpful.

How do we leave the current context? Take a step forward into a future of my design? When that future is different from all I have been taught?

At Seven Stones we are continually looking at how we craft and run our business. We are creating our partnerships, collaborations, strategies and actions from a stance of sufficiency: that we are enough. Part of our commitment is to be transparent.

• No hiding
• Truth telling
• To say 100% of what we need 100% of the time

This past week Jen, Shea and I decided to put our money where our mouth is . . . literally. We are changing the way we price. We are allowing our clients to choose the price they want to pay us for our work. We are allowing them to declare what is enough and how their resources will flow to us and when.

I am scared. What if (maybe I need look at my previous post What if?) our client choose a payment amount that doesn’t support our families, our vendors or our commitment to the planet? What if we discover that we have worked a year for naught? What if this is the stupidest idea I have ever had?

I don’t know the answer to these questions and yet I know that if I am going to walk away from the Weapons of Scarcity the only thing I know to do in this moment is let go of all I know and take what feels like my next most powerful step. That step is for me to offer my gifts and talents in a way that my client chooses. The four choices are:

Investment

When you pay our Investment fee to Seven Stones you are paying for our founders and collaborators to care for their families. To allow us to invest in our business, pay our venders and staffers a living wage while contributing to a global movement. It gives you, our client, the opportunity to allocate your resources toward the people, organizations and conversations that you say are important. Your investment also allows us to allocate our resources toward the well being of future generations and you will receive an quarterly update about our collective investments. The investment funds received also contribute to the annual Global Sufficiency Summit and much of the work we do for the Global Sufficiency Network. We expect all corporations to contribute at the investment level.

Valuing

 When you pay our Valuing fee to Seven Stones you are paying for our founders and collaborators to care for their families. To allow us to invest in our business, pay our venders and staffers a living wage. It gives you, our client, the opportunity to bring value to yourself, or your organization, and gives recognition to the larger context.

Honoring

When you pay our Honoring fee to Seven Stones you are honoring your coaching relationship and paying below the living wage for the coach. This allows you, the client, the opportunity to honor your individual coach while remaining in integrity with your financial commitments.

Exchange

When we enter into an exchange we allow for all of our needs to be discussed and we look at what gifts, resources and talents can be exchanged in a way for all to be cared for. The exchange allows for money not to be a stop for our working together and it opens up alternative methods to value wealth and currency.

I continue on my path.

I am eager to have company.

Thank you for engaging in an opportunity to let it all go.

Some time ago I had this great idea to shift consciousness. It would be called the Kindness Campaign and would be delivered via bumper stickers with a corresponding website. You would go to the site and take a pledge of kindness. Not unlike Thich Nhat Hahn’s inspired pledge of nonviolence called the Manifesto 2000 (or unlike the Pledge of Sufficiency being developed by the Global Sufficiency Network). There would be resources about the power of kindness, and eventually practices and a search engine to find practitioners that would help deal with whatever was in the way of being kind. (Remember those bumper stickers, Random Acts of Kindness and how it became part of the popular vernacular?) Kindness is a core principal across most major religions: Love Thy Neighbor, Do Unto Others. It was an idea – and invitation – I thought everyone could relate to.

I wanted to start a movement you see. Some paradigm shifting, easy to relate to idea that would go viral (Now, my inbox is cluttered with this kind of stuff!) Then came another idea, the Curiosity Movement. Lacked the alliteration of the “k” sound, but I realized I was looking for movement – shifting context – not just behavior. My thinking was that curiosity was an antidote to the limitations of uninvestigated assumptions that caused our behaviors. With the rigor of asking questions, being curious, we could begin to unveil what motivated us to think, do and desire what we did. How else, I thought could we jump paradigms, but to see and admit that our realities were compilations of our interpretations of realities, through uninvestigated filters. Everything we experience, and say “that’s just the way it is,” is just that, an outcome of some assumption we have not considered the validity of. (Plus, “that’s just the way it is” is a Scarcity Myth as defined by Lynne Twist in The Soul of Money, 2000.)

All of this existed in my mind. I knew I wanted to be part of something bigger than myself, something that could move people towards choices that would naturally solve the big, complex problems of our world. I knew I didn’t quite have it though, so I never attempted manifestation. Nor did I really know how.

Then I discovered the Sufficiency Conversation. Or, more precisely, it discovered me. It is not so much a campaign, (though many campaigns are born from, supported by or supporting the work of ushering in the mindset of Sufficiency – for example, check out Four Years. Go. campaign). It is indeed more like a movement, a movement like some others, and one that began from a conversation about the sense of enoughness. I don’t hear it called a movement much by those who talk about it, not yet. But it is.

The Sufficiency Movement addresses today’s problems, not from the problem point of view (like my Kindness Campaign that was, in essence, working from the assumption that people were wrong for ever acting mean and that they should be kinder – to the earth, to the people around them, and to themselves). But, instead, it is a reminder of what is and was and will be – that we are enough, that we have enough and that we do enough.

This is a radical idea. A radical remembering of our core nature of love, of connection, and of trust, and it is a practice. Sufficiency is at the very least a shedding of the scarcity paradigm that has us enslaved to money, buying stuff we don’t need, excessive behaviors and neglecting the vital assets of our communities from infrastructure to children to marginal populations.

The movement I am privileged to be a part of is the manifestation of decades of thinking, by folks in the Global North and the Global South, individuals and communities, high profile leaders and lesser known folks. This radical idea is happening; it is a growing context in which more and more people grow curious about and make a pledge to devote their life to through their work, their parenting, their buying and their being. It is the antidote to the insanity of the scarcity paradigm that currently dominates and that is destroying our economies, our environment and the social fabric in which we depend.

For me this is a dream come true, and I invite you to join us.

Come to the Global Sufficiency Summit on April 10th & 11th in Cambridge, MA.

I got married 17 years 2 months and 3 days ago today. If you had been there you would not have seen anything unusual from a typical American wedding: a church, officiants, a white dress, tuxedoes, brides maids followed by a great party if I do say so myself.

On that day we also exchanged a vow.

A declaration.

A commitment.

A list of things we would and would not do for the rest or our lives.

Ours was:

On this day we unite two families and begin a new life of growing together. I will love you, honor you and cherish you with all the depth of my heart. I will be faithful to you and truthful with you.  In good times and bad times, in sickness and in health I will care for you. I take this vow of friendship, love and commitment with seriousness and gladness. I will work with you to make the world a better place. I will hold our love above all others as sacred in the eyes of God. It is my honor to share my life with you now and forever.

My engagement, like many, was a time of hustling, organizing and the doing of planning for the big event. I remember spending a lot of time on limos, bands, food tasting and ring selection. We went into Manhattan (from Boston) to select our rings. I remember how important I thought our wedding rings were and how carefully we selected them and how much thought and attention we paid to the physical representation of our union.

This past Saturday I got a call from the jewelry story where I had dropped of my wedding band. After some chit chat the clerk said, “It can’t be fixed.” Earlier in the week my mom and I had stopped at the inviting store to shop and take our minds off of my sister who was sick in the hospital. I saw how shiny and new the rings were and looked down to see my set wasn’t like it was when we got married. The clerk took my rings to clean and noticed a defect in my wedding band. After she saw it through the loop we could see it with the naked eye. Why hadn’t I noticed until then? She said she had never seen such a defect before – It could have been there from the beginning, an issue with the original casting from long ago that is only now appearing after long use.

My wedding band cannot be fixed.

When I got married and I said, “I do” to live and be with my husband, “now and forever.” I think I assumed the ring would come along for the ride, that it was the symbol of our commitment. Now after the ups and downs, ins and outs and the raising of children inside this marriage, I realize it was my declaration, my commitment that was and is the lasting symbol of our relationship. The material accoutrements are fine but they don’t make my marriage.

I believe it is the same for sufficiency. There is nothing to buy, to wear, to own or manifest. All there is to do is to declare: I am enough, I am sufficient.

Inhale Unity

Exhale Love

Breathe so that all may be nourished.

Excerpt from Living in Sufficiency: A Daily Journey

A Sufficiency Practice is really a spiritual practice, or a practice in mindfulness. In order to recognize our enoughness, we must come into presence, come into an inner state of quiet. From this ground of being, we are able to see the what is of reality, the perfection of the moment. In fact, it is impossible to deny from this seat of awareness. The only action we must take is creating the environment – set the stage – for this internal state to blossom forth from within.

Creating context is an art and a science. We are training our mind’s electric board to simmer down, for our frontal lobes to actually stand back and act as witness so that they may see clearly from a vantage point behind the details and the illusion that we must act (e.g. do anything). We are thinking and doing machines – our cerebral cortex, or the newest part of the human brain, is the miracle of high functioning cognition. But this part of our brain also came with the capacity to witness, to stand as a reflector to the brilliance – and sufficiency – that is life. When we quiet and soften back our minds, we are able to flow, to remember what is whole and complete already around us. We can fully listen to ourselves and the wisdom that is always available to us.* This is the essence of what all the great teachers of all times have been inspiring us to try for ourselves.

The challenge for the modern person – including myself – is to take the seat into the quiet, to make the time, the space, the context for this brain release, the transition to calmer brain waves. I am a great example of a woman who was told she could do anything she put her mind to, and took that to an excessive place of overachieving, double-booking and more is better-like striving. I became a workaholic, a socializing machine, a knowledge fiend. Whatever I put my mind to, I went for it. I’ve seen myself do this with healthy habits too – exercise, building strong relationships, eating well and even meditation. None of my excessive behaviors brought me a sense of wholeness or joy.

What I can tell now – from many years of input from teachers more skilled than I and a growing and steady practice of mindful movement, meditation and yoga – is that to experience the ground of being, which is sufficiency, I don’t have to do much except roll out my mat. I can ring a bell and light a candle too, but the quiet and expansiveness of enoughness will flow whether I do those things or not. I just have to set the time, sit down and settle into it – create the context for quiet.

Settling is an experiment, and our rhythms change from minute to minute and week to week (and of course year to year). There is a miasma of ways and paths and rituals that help us to do this settling. All we need to do is pick one and be gentle with ourselves as we finesse what works for us. Then the settling takes on the same kind of flavor as creating context: we create the outside conditions for quiet, and then work on the inside conditions for our mind. There is no right way, just the way that works for you in that moment. (One way to quiet the mind is to do contemplative reading, Living In Sufficiency: A Daily Journey).

For me, I’ve needed the regular intervention of a teacher. It’s been a long journey, over a decade since I first declared I wanted a daily practice. I struggled to sustain anything over time until about three years ago when the help I sought out after I had my first child came in the form of a shaman who gently co-created a ritual with me that I could actually commit to and keep. From there, my practice has morphed many times but the central theme is the same: create a doable routine and time I could commit to each day, and then settle and wait. This is how sufficiency occurs for me, for now.

*Napolean Hill of Think and Grow Rich calls this “Infinite Intelligence” and in his books talks about how many men have made their living on getting quiet to listen to what comes through them and then capturing that wisdom for profit.

I am taking a class called Enough. Its being taught by Vicki Robbins, the women who wrote a book called Your Money or your Life.   Well, which is it?   Why you might ask is it either/or?  Well I don’t know exactly what Vicki would say to that but I do know this, people do chose money over life.  It happens in small ways and in big ways every day.  One company my husband used to consult for chose to save $24,000 rather than budget for one net on a construction project that could save a life.  The cost of death is less than the cost of the net. This is a true story.  They chose death and they got it: 2 deaths per year and they saved $28,000.00 not buying nets.  Then there are the smaller choices we make to take the job we don’t really love but we need the money.  So I don’t know if we have to choose or live but I know there are countless examples of how we do choose one or the other.

So we ask ourselves this one simple question and believe it or not it places us on a whole different road one that leads to new and exciting places.

What is enough?

If the company could have answered that for itself, for its shareholders, for the earth those two deaths per year could be prevented. But we don’t even ask because more is the mantra of our society. More is the Holy Grail, deliberately undefined so as to keep us running towards it never knowing when to stop.

Well, as Vicki wisely knows, the first step to answering this question for ourselves is to find out first what is?  What is comes before what is enough.  Vicki asked us to track something in our lives: money, time, food, something so we could actually see what we are doing NOW.  Well this simple little assignment packs quite a wallop.  So much becomes clear: being in reality with what is currently so makes a difference.  When I start tracking money or time or food I can see reality instead of seeing my story, my fear, my wishes.  Once I have reality then I ask myself what is enough of this thing: what is enough money? What is enough time? What is enough food for me?  When I ask what is enough I am beginning to take care of resource in a new way.

My friend said it well – “Guilty Moms are a dime a dozen” – but I really had no idea all the ways in which I was feeling guilty (one of the top Weapons of Scarcity I use on myself regularly) until I started looking around my life. Take the trip we are going on that involves a six-hour drive one way. I am anxious for my three year old to be in the car for so long. Though I was given lots of advice about ideas to entertain her, I was loath to deal with the preparation. Find a DVD player to borrow, collect some DVDs, go to Target’s $1 area for cheap and new-to-her toys, and make some puppets and other home made activities. I had a deadline this week and wasn’t willing to spend my downtime making stuff. I didn’t want to spend the money; didn’t want to have TV in the car. I just didn’t want to deal.

But two days before we leave with most options no longer viable, my folly began to dawn on me like milk slowly spoiling in the back of the fridge. Was I crazy? Six hours, no preparation? I don’t have a lot of evidence for my child being difficult on long rides, because we don’t take any. I knew that I had to do something and that something I did was Target.

I have a habit of pretending I am an anthropologist visiting a foreign culture when I engage in some pop cultural ritual that I am ambivalent about, such as watching CBS Monday night comedy shows or buying cheap products at big box stores. I realize that Target provides jobs here and abroad (sometimes uplifting women and their families out of abject poverty), but I am vastly ambivalent about the overall value of this business model. I know deep down that when I step in there for something I could buy for a couple dollars more at a local hardware store or children’s boutique, I am not aligned with my core values.

Why did I do it? I felt desperate. I felt afraid. I became worried that we would have a terrible drive without some new stuff to ward off Maxine’s boredom. That we would be trapped in the car together angry and fuming and late for where we needed to be. That my fire-breathing Dragon Mama would unleash her wrath in frustration and I would ruin the trip. Mild hyperbole, but a LOT of scarcity running the show and a whole cultural conversation backstage.

And, I will admit that being in Target the night before Valentine’s Day was rather festive. I felt I was participating in a modern American past time: consumption of cheap goods. I understand this activity because it feels good. It’s fun to find little treasures I can afford in the stacked bins, fill up my bag and walk out with the (perceived) security of a peaceful drive. It was easy and convenient. I was grateful for that.

The part of me where my actions trampled on my values feels guilty. I felt queasy in the store even, under the slight high of finding what I thought was protecting me. I felt a weird sense of pride and repulsion for my Americanism and the way I was expressing it. I’ve been left wondering, how does one be a mindful working mom? How do we stay aligned to our values, our ideals, when we feel depleted of time and creative energy, when the easier route is not only available but is celebrated by a society hungry now to keep the economy humming?

One thing I know is that I have some work to do on trusting myself (I always have a choice not to lose my temper), trusting my child (she always has 10 fingers to count and shoes to take on and off), trusting my community (to ask for help) and going with the flow (so what if we arrive late). Trust is an action of sufficiency. For now I will stand in the inquiry of how rigorous do I really need to be about Target and its peers when I it’s a priority to me to flow my resources to local shops. And in the meantime, I will shake off the guilt.

Epilogue:
We are back from our trip. While the $1 clipboard was great for drawing, Maxine was unimpressed with my Target purchases. The stamps didn’t work, the dry erase board fell apart, so did the markers. What did I expect for $1? The miracles came in ways I could never have controlled: her folding up my scarf to make a pillow for a long nap each way, rocking out to her CDs, eating snacks and playing with toys I brought from home. When it comes to scarcity, FDR has it right: The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.

I once heard someone say that the phrase ‘what if’ made them crazy. I was struck by the veracity of that comment mainly because it clearly troubled them and I hadn’t ever thought about it. I was surprised that I hadn’t because after all, the in The Tools of Sufficiency, I claim that ‘what is’ is a tool that keeps me grounded in sufficiency. Does ‘what if’ create scarcity? Where do I go emotionally, physically and spiritually when I spend time with my what ifs?

What if . . .

I had had more kids?

What if I had stayed in Massachusetts?

I went to a different university?

I won the lottery?

I chucked it all in and went to work for a large corporation?

I renovated my kitchen?

My kids do not get into a prestigious high school or college?

I had married that one?

I experienced love each and every moment?

My kids pick up drugs?

I only had 5 years to live?

I went off the grid – for real?

My kids get addicted to video games?

I removed e-mail from my life?

I had moved to Europe in 1975?

I leave my husband or he leaves me?

There is no answer to all my questions. As I look over these questions I see that dwelling on them mostly keeps me worried, doubtful and not present. They have me compare myself and my children to others successes and failures and ultimately do not allow for me to create the life I want to live in this moment. When I ‘what if’ I question my choices – and their outcomes – as if they were not enough as they are. I am not only pulled out of the present, but I am not honoring what is. In this way I declare, ‘what if’ is a Weapon of Scarcity.

I was picking up some pants getting re-hemmed at a store in a mall and my three year old and I had to walk through Nordstrom’s to get there. She was walking next to me and then stopped suddenly, at the end of the rug. I said, “Come on!” And she yelled, “Come pick me up!” I walked back to her and she looked down at the floor and I realized, the floor was freaking her out. I took her hand, and as we walked we talked about the fact that the floor was so shiny it looked like you could fall right through to “down there.”

I was overwhelmed myself. It is not the first time I have felt shabby walking through a mall (after all, why do you need all those fancy clothes but to feel like you fit into the glossy mall scene to buy some more). I am not immune to the seduction of beauty. To the plush rugs. The uber shiny floor, buffed moments before the big Saturday opening. The shoes in the shoe department we walked through looked edible. I stepped off our path to the exit when we were leaving to admire a pair of boots; a well groomed woman was by my side immediately. “All these are waterproof,” she said. “The technology is so advanced now with leather.” “Ahhh…” I said, expressing my desire and repulsion all in one breath.

The reality is I have been thinking like I need a new pair of boots. The perfect pair. Waterproof and attractive. It is also not lost on me that my buying the perfect pair of boots helps to pay the saleswoman’s bills. That my consumption helps drive the economy. As a colleague with strong ties to retail once said, “Retail is the foundation of the economy and many jobs, including my ex-husbands, are reliant on our buying stuff.” Another time, she said, “The more presents under the tree, the better. Those presents represent possibility to me.” In this way, abundance = more is better.

I can be seduced by this, easily. More consumption means jobs, means support from the ex-husband, means my feet are warm and stylish. Throughout the mall, I was aware of the team of salespeople so exquisitely dressed and thoughtfully arranging their gorgeous department store wares. Their talent at display, design, and engaging customers is not lost on me. Retail is an art. Retail is about abundance, and abundance is seductive. More is better.

Lynne Twist in her book The Soul of Money distinguishes Scarcity Myths. One of them happens to be More is Better, the unexamined cultural assumption that drives our economy and makes me feel special in a new pair of boots. Because for sure, I do not need a new pair of boots.  I have a bunch at home I’ve collected over the years. (I was wearing a well-worm pair to the mall.) All functional, none perfect, none matching the current trend to a T, but what are trends for then? To remind us to buy the next best thing. I am seduced by buying, by owning, by fitting in to these cultural norms and assumptions that I deserve abundance, that I am entitled to as much as I want, as much as I can get my hands on, and more, much more than I actually need to live comfortably. I just am.

But I am also afraid. I am afraid of energy descension (Peak Oil). I am afraid of climate change. Of higher and higher food prices. Of health care insurance and health care costs. I am afraid of what I am hearing and reading (Depletion and Abundance by Sharon Astyk, Half the Sky by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl Wudunn) and I am afraid that so few of us are listening, including myself much of the time.

Consuming stuff makes me feel part of the world and it dulls my senses. Some experts are talking about the fact that the response loop to our actions is delayed in the earth’s response. So we can’t see it. Sitting still and listening, reading what the experts are actually saying, is frightening. At the moment I am strung between scarcity and abundance, fear and yearning. Sufficiency is the way out, the exit off the continuum of scarcity and abundance. If I could just get by the boots…