Welcome back to Little Leadership Lessons, my newsletter highlighting short but powerful insights to help you lead with confidence and create lasting results. These lessons come directly from my research, interviews, and coaching work with six- and seven-figure creator-founders.
I hope you’ve had a wonderful week. If you celebrate Passover or Easter, may this be a peaceful weekend full of connection to family, friends, and your faith.
I’m coming to you a bit later in the day than normal, which usually means lower engagement. I hope you find a moment to sit and read in solitude whenever it fits in the rest of your weekend.
The topic this week: “What is enough?”
Let’s get to it.
A Beautiful Photo of Nature
A short poem on Spring:
With the Spring
Come flowers and blooms
Stretching into their wholeness
What is ready
To be created
And shed
In this season
Of renewal and possibility
Will we allow ourselves
To hope?
Little Leadership Lesson: Do you have a definition of enough?
“Do you have a definition of enough?
– Shawn Blanc, as asked on my end of year AMA
My Take On Enough
Most of us will live through a period of life when it feels like we don’t have enough.
When we’re in a period of needing to meet our basic needs, we build patterns and habits to make it happen. We hustle. We grind. We work multiple jobs. We do what it takes.
But then somewhere along the way, if we’re lucky, we meet those basic needs and enter a new period of work and life. A period of possibility. A period of more.
And when we’ve come from not getting our needs met, those old habits don’t automatically go away once we’re no longer in survival mode.
In my experience, this is why it’s so easy to chase “more.” If there’s “more” then there will always be enough. We won’t ever have to wonder if we’re ok.
This way of being puts our old habits to use to accumulate ever-more resources.
More revenue. More followers. More leverage.
This is when it makes sense to hit pause and answer the question Shawn asked me: do you have a definition of enough?
For me, enough looks like this:
- Family life full of rich relationships and love
- Clients I deeply respect and love working with
- The freedom to show up fully, with presence and care
- Conversations that feel honest, human, and transformational
- A coaching practice that replaces my old income as a software exec
- A creative outlet that allows me to exercise my creative potential
Perhaps there will be more than this in the future. Perhaps the podcast will grow. Perhaps I will grow a company beyond me. Perhaps I will write books.
But what I try to settle into is the centered ambition of knowing that even if I never do “more” than what I’m doing right now, that my life is good, I am good, and my family will be taken care of.
I’m not optimizing every hour for output. I’m optimizing for depth. For service. For resonance.
There’s a kind of peace that comes when you realize: You’re already doing the work you were made to do.
And so this brings us to our questions for reflection…
Questions to Apply This to Your Life
- Do you have a definition of enough?
- If (IF) you already had enough, how might that change the goals, projects, and relationships you’re chasing?
- What old habits or patterns are still alive in you from a time when you didn’t have enough?
- If you don’t yet have enough — truly — what is the best path to get there and how can you celebrate it once you arrive?
A Generous Offer for You
As I mentioned last week, I recently took part in an advanced coach training program. As a part of the program, all of the coaches take on two new coaching clients to practice the curriculum as it is written.
Three of my fellow coaches in my group are taking on new clients to support their training and are doing it at a reduced rate or free.
I know my rates are not the most accessible for most people, so I am including links to my three fellow coaches below.
- Sarah Beller – specializes in working with women and non-binary working to make social change ($1,800-2,600 total for six months of coaching)
- Emily Carpenter – a social worker turned coach who focuses on the whole person, is mindfulness-based and addresses either personal or professional topics
- Blair Morris – a physical therapist turned coach working with mid- and late- career people facing key moments of transition, especially in health-related fields
If you’d like to explore working with one of them for the next six months, hit reply and I’ll connect you! I don’t get anything for this, I just want more people to have access to good coaching.
As always, I’m grateful for you. Thanks for being here.
Much love and respect,
P.S.: If you haven’t already, please take a few minutes to complete my subscriber survey. I’ll be giving a $150 gift card to the restaurant of your choice to one person who completes the survey by April 30th.