If I Could Leave You With One Lesson...

When you feel the desire to hook up, or when you feel the desire to take drugs or go out drinking, all you are in pursuit of is the feeling of presence. All that you are looking for is an experience of happiness and contentment within yourself. And when you don't experience that, you feel a sense of lack, a sense of emptiness, a sense of there is not enough or that you are not enough. And when you believe that you are not enough, you come up with ways to escape that feeling or to fill the void in order to go back to this experience of presence and contentment and happiness within yourself. I know that I spent most of my life feeling like I was not enough. And I came up with all kinds of ways to prove to myself or to justify to myself that I was indeed worth something, that I was indeed enough. So one day I just pulled out a journal and I asked myself the question, what if I did believe that I was enough? And if I did believe that I was enough, then I wouldn't need outside approval from anyone. If I am enough, then my body is perfect exactly as it is. If I am enough, then I have enough money. If I am enough, then there's no reason to stress, because stress is resistance to what is. And what is is enough. And what I was really processing when I was writing all of this down was that if I'm just good, if I'm just okay with everything, if I'm enough exactly as things are right now, then all the money I want to make, all the relationships that I want to pursue, all the things that I want to accomplish are all just extra. They're all just things that I can joyfully pursue rather than look at them from this position of angst or lack that makes me feel like I have to get them in order to justify my own value and my own existence. And if I do get them, if I do get the house I want and the car that I want and the amount of money that I want, then it doesn't change anything about who I am or the value that I have. They're nice to have. They're fun goals to pursue as long as I'm operating from a place of knowing that I am enough. Now, unfortunately, I couldn't learn that on my own. I had to go get the house and the car and the money. And I still felt like I wasn't enough. Because when you pursue external stimuli as a way to try and fill the void, fill the lack that you feel, it doesn't satisfy it at all. It actually makes that voice louder. It actually amplifies that feeling of lack, because you realize that you have all of these things, but this perspective that you have of your own lack and this internal void is still there. And it reflects all of these things that you are trying to do and accomplish and get in order to satisfy it. But what if you believed that you are enough right now? What if you could satisfy the world from a place of having more than enough, of having more than enough abundance, more than enough love, more than enough money? How would you show up if you believed and knew that you are enough? For me, instead of pursuing money, I would pursue having customers who joyfully shared our products because it made such a big difference in their lives. The irony of that is when you pursue that, you end up getting the money too. When you show up with the belief and the knowing that you are enough, it fills all of the voids that you are looking for external stimuli to complete. Regardless of the results or the circumstances, we all are enough as we are. That doesn't mean we're perfect. It doesn't mean we're good. It just means we're enough.