Defining Your "Enough" and Why You MUST Do It.

Last week, I checked out a stack of business books from the library, and I used a gift card to buy another stack from an online bookstore. I love reading and learning, and the slow winter season is the perfect time to do this.

The first book I read was one I'd heard of many times before: Quitter by Jon Acuff. The tag line of Quitter is "Closing the gap between your day job and your dream job."

While I don't have a day job and I'm already working toward my dream job, I found the book interesting, catchy, and valuable for many reasons. One topic leaped out at me though, above all the rest.

Jon talks about a crucial step in closing the gap between your day job and your dream job, and ultimately achieving success in your life.

Before you can be successful, you have to DEFINE what success means to you.

He says: "You have to define your Enough."

What is enough money?

What is enough travel?

What is enough?

If we don't intentionally and specifically identify what enough is to us, and what our version of success is, it's like chasing a moving target.

We think we'll feel successful at the end of the year if we have a good year, but unless there is a quantifiable criteria to judge our success against, it's an allusive feeling. One we will never catch because we could have always made more. Sold more. Done more.

While this concept is CRUCIAL in business, I think it's also equally important in our daily lives.

What is your version of enough?

If we don't pinpoint what is considered ENOUGH to us, we risk the inevitable nagging feeling of disappointment, and the ever-present feeling of almost being successful but not quite.

That grade wasn't quite good enough.

That meal wasn't quite good enough.

Our house isn't decorated well enough.

Our cars aren't good enough.

There is always more, and there is always better. If we don't quantify what is enough to us, we'll always be looking at what we don't have, and feeling like we haven't got enough.

One of my personal challenges this month is to actively ask myself: what is my version of success? What is my version of Enough? I need to do this both for my business and for my personal life.

Only when I've done that, can I begin to see the possibility or the probability of achieving that success. Of finally having enough.
And because if you're like me, you are feeling like this winter is dragging on and on and on and on... Here's a reminder that spring WILL eventually come our way and things will become green again!