079 | “It’s Not Enough”

I hear it all the time. Lawyers tell me that something they’re doing or something they have is not enough.

It comes up especially in the context of money, where income, bonuses, savings, etc. can all seem insufficient.

But the problem is when you’re constantly telling yourself “it’s not enough,” you’ll only continue to create the experience of “not enough.”

In this episode, we talk about why the thought “It’s not enough” comes up for lawyers, some examples of how “not enough-ness” has shown up for some of my clients and for me, why it’s so harmful, and an exercise to help you reframe the thought.

Lightly edited transcript appears after the show notes.

Topics Discussed

• why lawyers often think “It’s not enough”
• examples of “not enough-ness” from my clients and myself
• a test for when you’re in “not enough” thinking
• why “it’s not enough” is harmful
• what happens when you’re not thinking “it’s not enough”
• an exercise to challenge the thought

Listen to the Episode

Resources mentioned

Episode 77: When the Willpower Runs Out

Work with me

If you’re ready to learn the mindset and strategies to master your money, let’s schedule a call.

Connect with me

Social media: @iamrhothomas on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn

Email: hello@rhothomas.com

Recent Episodes

Lightly Edited Transcript

Hey friend. Welcome back to the show. I hope you’re doing well and having an amazing day so far. If you’re listening to this in real time, like the day it’s released which will be December 24. I want to wish you a Merry Christmas if you celebrate. I hope you enjoy the holiday. And if you don’t celebrate then I still hope that you are enjoying all of the end of year time with your family. So today we’re talking about the thought it’s not enough. This thought really speaks to the feelings of sufficiency and lack or scarcity and you know, just feeling like you have enough or not. It’s super common with lawyers. This thought it’s not enough and it starts well before you ever reach the law. And it comes up in a variety of areas, not just money. The type of people who tend to be drawn to the law tend to be very tight a so you’re probably really good at school, and you’ve always reached for the next goal. And every time you were to go, you’re just not the next one and don’t take time to acknowledge what you’ve done, or celebrate yourself because it’s not enough. We talked about how important celebration is before but by what I celebrate this because I haven’t done enough, right. This came up recently in a session with a client where she was telling me about how she feels like she doesn’t make enough to do the things that she wants to do and achieve the goals that she has. And when we dug into it, she has this recurring thought it’s not enough. She currently makes $100,000 more than she did when she first started practicing. And when she first started, she thought $100,000 more would be amazing. And now she’s there and it doesn’t feel like enough. I’ve told you before about my own experience with not enough ness and I still have this thought about things not being enough sometimes. So please believe like we are in this together. But as related to my personal finances. I told you before about when we first started working on improving your finances, and I was reading all these stories about people who paid off more debt or you know, who’d been able to save more than we had and I was thinking that we weren’t doing enough like what we had done was not enough. And it made that experience a lot more difficult than it had to be. Because I was constantly beating myself up for what we’re doing not being enough and for us not being able to do more. And I would obsess over the budget and see if there were other places that we could cut and all of these things and it was not fun. That kind of goes back to the conversation we had a few weeks ago about making your money management habit, a lifestyle change, versus trying to willpower your way to your goals. So I was very much trying to work our way to our goals in the beginning. And like I said it wasn’t fun. It felt miserable. I felt guilty every time we did something that wasn’t the most responsible or the most efficient thing to do. Because I had this recurring thought that all that we were doing wasn’t enough. I know this all comes up for so many lawyers in so many areas but especially in the context of money. So we settle into our income as it increases and we get used to the higher income and then we start thinking it’s not enough if we just made a little bit more be able to do the things we want to do and we be able to make progress on our goals and everything would just be better, right? Or if you say things like I told you before about the client who didn’t think she had enough in savings at $50,000 or another client who was building his emergency fund and kept thinking he should add more because it wasn’t enough. We think it’s the income or the savings or whatever else is the problem. But like we talked about before, there was a time in your life when you would love to have the income and meeting net where the savings you have. And here’s the test right back when you were in college or law school, would you have gotten the amount you make or the savings you have was enough? I’m thinking we would have and when you get into this spot, it not being enough. Whatever it is for you. You’re never going to do anything productive from that place. You’ll just keep ending up creating more not enough so if that thought if not enough comes up for you. There’s no need to shame yourself or anything like that. That’s not the point of this episode. The key is for you to notice it and then question it. Just ask yourself to define what enough means. When will it be enough? What is enough? We often think that something’s not enough, right? I’m not doing enough. I haven’t made enough. I haven’t saved enough but we don’t take a second to question what enough is, what would be enough? When you question it. You’ll see that your brain is just offering you this thought almost on autopilot. It’s like I don’t know what enough is I know this ain’t right. You can literally decide that what you have is enough right now. Even if you’d like to make more money, even if you want to pay off more debt, even if you want to save more, even if you haven’t done every single thing you’d like to do, you can decide that all that you have in this moment is enough. And the funny thing is once you decide that what you have is enough and you feel sufficient. That’s when you start attracting more to you. That’s when you’re able to build wealth. I say all the time. One of the biggest secrets to building wealth is feeling content, feeling content with the things that you already have, and not constantly feeling the need to go out and get more things and buy the newest upgrade that that’s not to say that there’s anything wrong with doing those things, but you want to pay attention to where it’s coming from. Because if it’s coming from this place of not enough, it’s never gonna be enough. You’ll stay in this cycle of buying more and trying to fill that hole because you haven’t done the work to feel sufficient in what you already have. And so the exercise I need my client, the one who’s making 100k More now was talking about how everything that she already has is enough. And in doing that we talked about the fact that she lives in a beautiful home and her family has a variety of foods available to them. And she’s able to buy her kids all the things that they need and a lot of the things that they want and she and her husband have a lot of the things that they want and just all these things that she has that aren’t enough or even more than enough in this moment. And being able to step into that sufficiency will serve her as she goes forward with her finances and paying her debt off and saving and all the gold that she has, because she’s not doing it from this place of scarcity and it’s never enough. She had exactly enough. She has what she needs already. And she wasn’t for finances, and she’ll be able to do it with more peace and ease than if she’s constantly telling herself it’s not enough. The same goes for you. You have exactly enough. You have what you need already. And if you still want to do more with your finances, that’s great. But when it’s coming from a place of sufficiency, you’ll have a much better experience of it. You have a much better experience of your finances. So I say all this to say think about where you are with your money with your practice. Even your whole life. How is everything that you already have? And every place you already are exactly enough now, once you can identify that, then decide there’s more that you want to do that will lead you to a much more peaceful and enjoyable experience of whatever it’ll take to get to the more that you want. And this is exactly the kind of work I do with my clients. So if you know this is for you, and exactly what you need to make the kind of progress you want to make with your finances. Let’s schedule a call to talk more. You can head to rho thomas.com/call to schedule Alright, so that’s it for this week’s episode. Come connect to me over on social media. I am most on Instagram at I am rho Thomas and on LinkedIn. Take a second and subscribe to the show and leave a review both of which help more people to find the show. And if you share with a friend, I would greatly appreciate it. As a close friend. I pray that you notice all the places in your life and finances that you tell yourself it’s not enough. I pray that you will take the time to explore and question that thought and reach a place of sufficiency. And as always, I pray that you continue to take steps to regain control of your time, build wealth, and live the life of freedom and choice you deserve. Talk to you later.