I remember hearing about 20 years ago that happiness was a journey not a destination. That notion itself made me happy because happiness was elusive to me back then, and I thought, “great I have plenty of time to find it.” When I started my own personal inquiry into sufficiency, I told myself it this is also a journey not a destination.

Last month I was tooling along during a normal week – clients, admin work, Facebook, Twitter, meetings, home and family – when I received a reply message from an old classmate of mine when I asked him about sufficiency and the new book I had published Living in Sufficiency. I was struck by his response: “[I am] not sure if I follow it too well. I think you think at a different level than me  (I’m still mostly sports and beer, guess I haven’t grown up enough yet.)”

My first thought was, “well he just hasn’t thought about sufficiency, and now that he has he will want to start that journey.” By the end of the week I started wondering about where I was and what would be the equivalent of stepping off “the road less traveled by” and relaxing out in the meadow thinking about well, whatever interests me including sports and beer.

Does the ever moving journey toward something (happiness, wealth, enough) actually perpetuate scarcity? Am I gobbling up the now’s, these moments and this moment just to get to the next? Am I seeking spiritual and professional growth because I actually want to be more than I am? Because I am not enough?

One of my clients has doubled her business in the last four years. Now at $16 million she has a nice empire, and this summer she will be at a place to take a step back and admire her creative genius and a lot of hard work. I asked her, “What have you lost during this rapid growth period?” As I write this blog I am wondering what do we lose when—if you are like me—we jump from course to course, one business opportunity to another, from tele-class to tele-class, newsletter to newsletter, from one social media guru to the next? Is this our new addiction? Is this where we are trapped in scarcity? If I am enough, where does personal evolution and growth belong?

We canceled the Parenting from Sufficiency tele-course. I feel sad, disappointed – defeated, even. I am sharing this because transparency is a practice of Sufficiency, telling the truth, exposing the shame to the light. I messed up.

I thought because I had designed great content and flow and lined up extraordinary guest speakers that it was an obvious “Yes”. I know a lot of people. I have a lot of friends. I thought it was an attractive offer. At least half of everyone would show up. I thought.

The law of attraction theory notwithstanding, I was forcing a solution to the problem of wanting to talk about parenting and sufficiency with other parents. I didn’t have this in my life. The course would solve it. The course was such a great idea, solving other problems as well by providing money, convenience, opportunity to practice.

So, when people were excited about the course, but not registering, it occurred to me something Mark Silver, business coach and healer, says about making contact through your love and passion with people about what you are about: I have been hiding my passion for the conversation about enough, scared that I will say the wrong thing and put people off forever to it, scared that I have nothing to offer.

Scare City, as parenting coach Scott Noelle says. “Scare City is a place a place where you’re always afraid of coming up short,” he writes in his Daily Groove newsletter. And I have been living in it, and not even knowing it, kind of like Truman (in the Truman Show).

I have a new plan and it is aligned with my intention and integrated with my passion and open to the law of attraction: To talk with people about what they care about. And because I love to write, to write about it when I feel moved to. Sometimes it will be about parenting, or their dog, or a new recipe (and I personally do not enjoy cooking). I will also have a gathering at my house for parents who are interested in parenting from the vantage point of enough. This sounds fun. This is enough.

I love and admire Scott’s work so much, I am going to end with more of his words of wisdom:

To live the Good Life, you have to leave Scare City and go to a *dance* — a joyful, magical, healingdance where you release your fears and *shake your booty* like nobody’s watching: a-BUN-dance!

Here’s to knowing we are enough and letting it flow in the path of our passions.

The first time I was conscious of using enough in my life was when I trained our dog, Scout. She came home at 12 weeks in April of 1994. Because I had never owned a dog and I knew she would get to be 70+ pounds of pure muscle, I immersed myself in reading several dog books to prepare myself for dog ownership and to learn how to train her.

I turned out to have a knack for training animals and Scout learned the usual commands: SIT, DOWN, STAY, HEEL. And I also taught her more sophisticated commands like WAIT and ENOUGH. I remember thinking what an odd command, ENOUGH. I ended up using it often, mostly to convey, what you were doing was fine but now I have had enough. So stop.

I took that same philosophy into my parenting, again to communicate your rowdiness, loudness or rudeness was fine for a while but now I have had ENOUGH. I also used it liberally with food, “you have had enough snacks, dinner, juice etc. . .”

Now as I think about enough as an inquiry I see why I can get tripped up by the word. When I physically have arrived at enough I think I actually have been pushed into more than enough. I moved from content, fun or play into annoyance, distraction or tiredness.

I seem to actually cross a line from enough to more than enough.

When I look at the world and living a life or creating a business within the paradigm of enough, I wonder if I am drawing too fine a line? Short of the line I am left wanting—cross the line and I rapidly get distressed.

Yet somehow I have come to believe that crossing the line is better than being short of it. I would rather the indigestion from overeating then the hunger pains for under eating. I’d rather the exhaustion of over working rather than the feeling of incompletion. I would rather own every book on leadership than be caught short without one.

Maybe my journey of enough has defined this line. Have I created such a thin place to stand that is therefore unattainable? Maybe if I stop short of enough for a few moments, hours, or days I will finally rest in enough.

• When have I ever gotten less than enough?
• Where is my enough line?
• What happens to me physically, emotionally and spiritually when I have more than enough?
• What might happen if I stopped with less than enough, only to discover that I still had enough?

How many times do you say or hear in your head “I wish there was more time?” “I wish the day was 4 hour longer?” “I wish I had more time for myself.” “I wish my kid didn’t ask so many questions, or was so loud, or so demanding?” “I wish my child wouldn’t do that, be different, or more like that other kid?”

Parenting can be frustrating, especially in the realm of time.

This week as I practiced yoga, and I listened to my mind chattering away about all the things I had to do, I had the thought, “If only I could replicate myself.” My ’scarcity radar’ picked it up, and gently moved my mind on, but another thought rolled in, “If only I could extend the day a bit.” Radar engaged again, backed up away from the thought, but then, quickly, another one: “This parenting job takes up so much time.” “Ahhg!” I thought, “That’s enough!” And I asked myself, “Why is it I feel the need to be so productive? What is that compulsion? What do I think will happen if I don’t complete everything on my list?” And from that inquiry, and probably from the power of being in a challenging yoga pose, I softened into the opening of what is, the present moment, the crystal clear knowing that I was enough right now, and always was and always will be, no matter what I check off my list.

I have an infinite trough of scarcity stories, about time, money, food, sex, love, sleep, resources, knowledge, time. Time is the big one for me. Never enough of that it seems.

What is it for you? Take a moment to check it out by noticing what occurs in your relationships to the varying domains in your life, your relationship to:

1.    Food
2.    Sex
3.    Money
4.    Work
5.    Recreation, Creativity, Hobbies
6.    Self care, Sleep
7.    Your Body
8.    Your Family of Origin
9.    God, Spirit, Nature

How you relate to these domains in your life will effect how you parent. Feeling distracted about work? Feeling deficient in your marriage? Angry that Grandma doesn’t listen to what you say? Our children can feel and sense what is happening for us, and our feelings, unless we become deeply aware of them, conscious of their flow, will influence our behavior. Take a look: where is there enough in these domains? Where is there a feeling of lack, of not enough? Where do you complain, and where do you celebrate?

Now consider, what is the story you have about your kid(s)? And separately, what is the story you have about yourself as a parent? Are you enough as you are?

Tell me about it in an email shea@sevenstonesleadership.com. Help us expand the conversation and light the torch of collaboration, a pillar of sufficiency that we all depend on to experience being enough.

May my body Move toward its calling in this moment.

May I feel Love flow in me and through me.

May my heart be open to the experience of Joy today.

Excerpted from: Living in Sufficiency: A Daily Journey

Yesterday 40% of Massachusetts came out in the sleet and snow to vote for the vacated seat left by Teddy Kennedy, a long term Democratic Senator, much adored by his constituents. The current race is between a lackluster but competent Martha Coakley and an inspiring handsome Republican Scott Brown. Brown has surprised the state with a strong campaign and could overturn our state’s long tradition of Democratic Senate representation. He could further disrupt the momentum in Congress to pass legislature granting healthcare to all.

That’s not what I was thinking about when I parked and unloaded my precious cargo, my three year old daughter, and walked into the community elementary school down our street to cast my vote. I was thinking, wow, this is beautiful public school. Wow, all these people here are volunteering so we the people can vote. Wow, this was easy, tell them my street and number and name, then color in a circle. Wow, this is democracy. I turn to Maxine, “Maz, what I am doing is voting and this is the action of democracy, where every citizen gets a say in the matter …” and then I choke up, tears start flowing. She just stares. We are walking out now and I am crying, filled to the brim with gratitude for being born into a democracy. Our imperfect, messy, sometimes polarizing democracy. But, how lucky are we? I feel the crushing reality of so many places in this world where women can’t vote, people with with wrong associations and skin color and ethnicity or religion can’t vote, where people are afraid to vote and where people vote but it has no impact because the election was pre-determined. I feel so lucky to have been born into our imperfect and messy union, where we can dream, we can fail, we can try again. Where we can declare bankruptcy and then build our lives again. Where there is public education options for everyone. Where many, many streets are clean and safe. Where most water is safe to drink. Where most air is clean to breathe. Where there are parks with grass and safe play structures every few blocks for our children. How lucky are we?

I get it. There’s a lot that isn’t working. A lot that is broken. A lot that needs fixing. The list is long and I get scared. I feel that scarcity a lot – that we will run out of time, money, love for each other. But yesterday, on a day I got to vote, I feel grateful. I am appreciating what does work, what we do have, what we do share. What is clean and what is safe. And I remember this moment of sufficiency, of what is enough already, because it is always there. Because those voting booths are waiting for me each election, and because I get to participate.

On Sunday my minister preached on WWMD (What Would Martin Do?) as homage to the bracelets that many Christian youths wore about a decade ago as a reminder to ask themselves, when up against a moral dilemma, what would Jesus do? (WWJD) On the Celebration of the birth of Martin Luther King Jr. our minister challenged us to ask, “What would Martin do?”

Because I post on Mondays I have known for a while that I would be posting on this day. I didn’t want it to go by without discussing MLK and his legacy. I began reading his papers: letters, sermons and speeches . . . searching and trying to connect him to this sufficiency movement. I wanted the perfect quote or phrase where he talked about not being enough or not having enough. Although he spoke of these themes many, many times during the civil rights campaign I didn’t come across the perfect pithy statement to blog about.

However, I did discover the same truth with King I did when studying Gandhi—it is not about what they did in their moment of need, it is about who they were being. This is the lesson I continue to learn on my sufficiency journey.

King brought light to injustices, had us examine our moral compass as a nation, and brought voice to the oppressed—dignity to the disaffected. He spoke of economics, interdependency and poverty as well as the deep divide between blacks and whites in this country. All of who King was, and took a stand for can be brought into the conversation for sufficiency:

• What injustices do we cause the planet by taking more resources than we need?
• Where does our moral compass point when we are gripped by scarcity?
• How do we alter the inherent scarcity perpetrated by how we produce, measure and value money?
• How do we march against the system itself, a system that produces the haves and the have not’s?

What if I looked at the current state of our planet and imagined the bracelet I am wearing (given to me by the Achuar people of Ecuador) also had WWMD woven into it?

• WWMD about the genocide is Africa?
• WWMD about the rampant spread of HIV/AIDS?
• WWMD about the escalating war in Afghanistan?
• WWMD about China’s human rights violations?
• WWMD about the homeless sleeping in the streets of our cities?
• WWMD about the delay in providing health care to all?
• WWMD about child sex trafficking and slavery?
• WWMD and say about marriage equality?

I believe that all of what King stood for can be our true North for our sufficiency journey starting now.

• What can I do today to bring voice to the oppressed?
• What can I do today to bring dignity to the abused?
• What “call to conscience” can I answer in this moment?

It was an accident that I started reading the book Strength in What Remains (Random House, 2009) as I also started preparation for the Parenting from Sufficiency tele-course. I had ordered the book from the library back in October, but it was so popular, the book arrived three months later, last Friday. I’ve been transfixed by Tracy Kidder’s narrative since then, following the story of a young man who escaped Burundi (Africa) during the 1993/4 genocide, somehow making it to NYC where he spent most nights in Central Park, worked for $15/day as a delivery “boy”, and endured all the humiliation of being poor in a rich country. There is an upside, hope – after all, the book’s tagline is “A Journey of Remembrance and Forgiveness”: he eventually makes it to medical school, becomes a US citizen and builds a medical clinic in the town where his family relocates after they lost everything in the civil war. He begins to heal.

It didn’t have to be a Tracy Kidder book, or a story about genocide, or about Africa. It’s the earthquake in Haiti. It is the tall public housing buildings I drive by to go to the grocery store. As a parent thinking about parenting from sufficiency – when I look around, read the news, or put down a book that touches on what it is to raise a family with so little material resources, I am compelled to revisit what I think is so hard about parenting as a middle class American. I run a scarcity story about parenting that goes something like this: “Woe is me. Parenting is so hard.” “I know I only have one, but it’s still so hard.” “It’s virtually impossible to work and to parent. I do it, but it’s hard.”

It’s hard, sure. Hard, humbling, tiring, boring, confronting. (It’s other things as well – joyous, healing, fun, creative – but right now I am talking scarcity). I don’t get all the sleep I’d like to. (The mom of Deo – the young man Kidder follows and writes about – has eight kids, three of whom are adopted. They live in a single room thatched roof hut and sleep on banana leaves next to each other.) I don’t have the money for all the activities I’d like to take Maxine to, or for the schools I’d love to send her to. (School in Burundi’s remote areas costs around $1 a year and most families struggle to pay. Children are beaten for being late (after walking extreme distances) or asking questions the teachers’ don’t know. Most kids have to leave sometime before their sixth year to tend to the families’ herd of animals.) I worry that the world Maxine is inheriting will lack all of the stability and certainty that I grew up with, that life will be hard for her – and her peers. (Deo and his brother walk 14 hours back and forth over seven mountain peaks carrying huge bundles of food from a fertile family property to their main family compound. They do this barefoot and they do it once or twice a week.)

Listening to the news this morning, the stories of parents not able to find their children after the earthquake hit Port Au Prince, the families that will struggle for survival in a humanitarian crisis in a country that was just starting to get attention and some solid help – my heart tore a little. It’s impossible not to put myself in the shoes of these mothers. I am humbled. I am humbled in my story of how hard it is parent a healthy, well-nourished, clothed child in a house with water, electricity, food. This is not to minimize or discount the challenges of living in modern life. Deo himself admits he chose sleeping in Central Park over squatting in the Harlem tenements because he felt more at home, closer to nature. The modern pleasure of a roof was not, in this case, better than being under the stars – or worth putting up with the violence under that roof. We are not fools for going about our day in modern American life (and someday there will be a post about those actual hardships); but there is something absolutely terrifying about abject poverty and the “structural violence” that can arise from it (Peter Uvin), the destruction of families.

The point for me, as a parent thinking about parenting from sufficiency, is to contexualize my parenting challenges more broadly. These challenges are universal; raising a child(ren) is a long developmental journey and requires a lot of resources – material, emotional, spiritual, communal – all parents could agree on this, no matter their situation. For me, today, this week, the story of Deo and the pictures coming from Haiti, invite me pause and to remember what I do have, what is going well, and that might just be long enough for the complaint I was having to vaporize into gratitude.

I have said many times that shame is a weapon of Scarcity. I have said it is The Atomic Bomb of weapons. I had a thought this past Friday, what is shame? Is it guilt? Where does it come from? Looking in the Oxford English Dictionary doesn’t quite describe what shame is for me:

The feeling of humiliation or distress arising from the consciousness of something dishonorable or ridiculous in one’s own or another’s behavior or circumstances, or from a situation offensive to one’s own or another’s sense of propriety or decency. (OED 5^th Ed.)

I think the OED missed the point. When I feel shame, see others dwelling in their shame, I see much, much more.

I asked my neighbor about shame and she said, “Shame is when you feel like you are a mistake.” I thought, “Bingo” – that is why I declared it a weapon. When we wield our shame beyond the temporary of humiliation and distress, when we integrate it into our psyche and say we are a mistake— this is the ultimate declaration of I am not enough. I am not sufficient.

Is shame prevalent for you?

What thoughts keep you dwelling in a shameful place?

What “tool of sufficiency” can you call upon to step from shame toward wholeness?

When can you declare: I am enough?

What does it mean that I go to my computer – to check email, Facebook, to jot a few notes to myself for a future blog post or to check a quick fact – every single time I walk by it? I am programmed to open my computer before picking up the phone to call someone or even to turn my head and engage with the people around me, my family. Working – or rather, being on my computer – has become a release valve, a decompression, something I do when I feel stressed or don’t know what else to do. It’s become a filler, and of course at times, a function of distraction. Rather than sitting quietly with myself, calling my grandmother or wrapping myself up in my husband’s arms, I am computer bound.

Coupled with my habit of nose down into digital data, I notice that I am uncomfortable receiving social fabric* actions, such as my neighbor shoveling our sidewalk last week. I was so uncomfortable that I paced around the house seeking relief, challenging myself not to call out my window to tell him to stop. Stop helping me! If you do, then we are actually in community, and then what? I owe you something? But what? What is the perfect exchange for this momentous gift? (He knew how hard it was for me shovel with my three year old around and my husband working all the time.) I don’t have cash to give right now and that seems easiest (see Jen Cohen’s 10/11/09 blog post Creating a Culture of Sufficiency that attends to currency). Beer? Cookies? A smile? My friendship? What?!

I think this is what scares me about the social fabric conversation. The relationship part. The not knowing how to be in that level of giving and receiving where the rules are not set, but rather they are felt, they are discussed, they are generated as you go and mutual understanding arises, (or the exchange dissolves). The rules become understood over time, and until you know, there can be a kind of awkwardness. Kind of like when I went the “wrong way” down a parking lot circular and got unfriendly gestures from about five cars of people. There were no arrows or signs, but I had broken some in-town club rule. I was in a suburb of Boston, a wealthy one, and I came away jaded, grateful I lived in the city where the rules made sense, because I understood them!

In our work to usher the truth and promise of sufficiency into the world, attending to social fabric will be a key focus. I don’t yet know what it will take to restore the social fabric of my own life, never mind the culture at large. For now, I am guessing it takes one relationship at a time. Starting with those around us first, family, friends, colleagues, neighbors, municipalities… small systems of connection that will web out from sheer strength and fortitude, (see Permaculture Principal 9: Use Small and Slow Solutions in 12/23/09 blog post Beyond Green: Permaculture). Small gestures of allowing my neighbor to shovel and then pausing to chat next chance. I am clearly going to have to start with myself, my own discomfort and awkwardness, and in moments of stress or longing, resist the call of my computer’s hum and head for a warm body.

*Roger Burton, adviser to Seven Stones, has been talking a lot about social fabric as a key principal to sufficiency, how humans relate to each other and the assumptions that inform those relationships.