The Power of “Enough”
It’s incredibly difficult to know when you have “enough.” But pinpointing that moment can be your ticket to freedom.
We all work for one main reason: to garner regular income that supports ourselves and our families. Unless your surname is Rockefeller, Walton, or any other legendary family, you pretty much have no choice. Some business leaders get incredibly fortunate: they achieve great success, both emotionally and financially. If you’re a small business owner, it’s possible you’ve gotten to that point as well. If so, you should feel extremely proud. Most people do not reach that level of achievement in their professional lives.
Just about everyone starts off working for what we can call “survival income” – making enough money to put food on your table, support your family, maybe buy a house, or any other typical financial goal. That can quickly morph into “status income,” when suddenly you want a larger house, or you want fancier decor, or luxury vacations. At the far end of the spectrum, it can even become “identity income,” where your earnings become indistinguishable from your sense of self-worth.
Don’t get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with wanting to achieve immense financial success and reward yourself accordingly. But some people continue chasing success long after the chase stops making sense. It starts with “I just need enough to pay off my credit card debt,” but can end with “If I don’t have that yacht, will anyone truly love me?”
Okay, I went a bit off the deep end. But you get my point.
We aren’t built to recognize the exact moment when “more” stops being useful. In his best-selling book The Psychology of Money, Morgan Housel discusses what he describes as “the relentless pursuit of more.” The research shows that it often results in “irrational behavior, causing us to…make choices that conflict with our values.”
You see this occur regularly in business, especially in small business leadership. Leaders and owners burn out not because a business fails – it happens when you discover success hasn’t fixed all of the problems you thought it would. I’ve written endlessly about the fallacy of money equalling happiness (https://www.mainstreetmind.com/p/employees-say-theyre-motivated-by). Things can be going great, but you’re still dragging yourself out of bed each day, mustering up the energy to go through the motions yet again. You say to yourself, “I just need to do this one more year,” but then five years later, nothing has changed. As leaders, we tell ourselves it’s responsible – noble, even – to keep pushing. In reality, we may be hanging onto something long gone – a past version of ourselves, a passion that used to exist but has long disappeared, or anything of the ilk.
The Catch-22 is that a business, by its nature, always wants more. Everyone around you expects you to grow each year – your employees, your customers, and your vendors. If you’re not growing, you’re contracting. If you’re not evolving, you’re falling behind. How would you appear to those who look to you for leadership if you said, “Eh, this year we’re just going to ride it out and see what happens,” and put your feet up? No ethical leader could do that in good conscience.
Housel also delves into how the fear of the unknown affects people’s financial behavior. “An uncertain future drives many to seek more money than they might ever need,” he says. “This relentless accumulation often comes at the cost of time, relationships, and peace of mind.” And those items are priceless – you literally cannot put a monetary value on them. Time, freedom, reputation, happiness, social and familial relationships: all of these are some of the key factors in one’s life satisfaction, and no amount of money can buy them. Yet, all of them suffer when you pursue additional financial success above all else.
You could argue that freedom is something you can indeed “buy” with money – generally freedom only comes once you have enough in life to not worry about where your next paycheck is coming from. But how many people out there have plenty, yet cannot seem to make the decision to take that freedom? We all know people like that – financially secure on paper, terrified in practice. They’re terrified of not working, terrified of losing the identity that is linked with their career, terrified of the unknown. So I would argue that freedom isn’t something money can buy; it’s something you need to be willing and ready to claim once you’re able.
There’s an old story, likely apocryphal, but eye-opening nonetheless. The late Kurt Vonnegut goes to a billionaire’s party on Shelter Island with author Joseph Heller. Vonnegut tells Heller that their host, a hedge fund manager, makes more money in a single day than Heller did from the sales of Catch-22.
“Yes,” Heller replies, “And I’ve got something he can never have.”
“What on earth could that be, Joe?”
“The knowledge that I’ve got enough.”
A quick caveat: the definition of “enough” is very personal. It is different for everyone, depending on their income level, financial situation, or stage of life. But when I talk about “enough,” I’m not talking about a mega-mansion with a luxury car in the driveway. I’m talking about the moment in which your life stops being dictated by fear. That fear could be the fear of failure, the fear of the future, or the fear of ending one chapter and beginning the next one. Whether we’re willing to admit it or not, most of us know that feeling well in advance.
If you do have enough, then what are you still working for? Is it because you’re still passionate about your work? Or is it because you don’t know what else to do? Is it because you wake up each day energized about the day to come? Or is it because you’re scared of the alternative?
I’m not one for New Year’s resolutions, but I do like using the turning of the calendar as an opportunity to reflect. As we head into the new year, ask yourself these questions. Be sure that the reasons behind your continued hard work still make sense.
Enough is something that we often don’t think about amidst the day-to-day stressors of life and work. But it’s something we should all spend a bit more time focusing on.
Enough isn’t a number. Enough is a decision.