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?

Share