on "declaring enoughness"

 

I recently attended a virtual professional conference through the American Speech-Language and Hearing Association (ASHA), the governing body in my field of speech-language pathology. 

One of the presenters (who I particularly enjoyed listening to) shared several concepts and practices that have helped her to build awareness and mindfulness into her private practice life. She talked about identifying and living within boundaries, building, resilience, and living true to our core values, among other things. 

One concept that she shared has really stuck with me - the idea of "declaring enoughness". It's easy to want to keep going at the end of a work day and finish whatever thing, or keep trying to achieve a higher level of perfection on a project. 

But we can reach a point, or a pre-determined time of day when we can sit back and declare it "enough". We can do this by establishing what she calls "conditions of enoughness"

These are her examples from the presentation:

1. Name what is enough in simple facts.
2. Include a time element or frequency of some kind.
3. Ensure they're dependent on ONLY YOU on an AVERAGE day, not a SUPERHUMAN day. 
4. Declare you are satisfied when your conditions of enoughness are met, even if you don't feel satisfied.

The way she presented this idea really caught my attention! It's been simmering in the back of my mind ever since. 

Then this week, several weeks after the conference, I was taking a moment to savor the feeling of having accomplished some personal "wins" for the day. This phrase came back to memory and with a surprise, I realized that the concept was not foreign to me. I had, in fact, read and heard a similar idea many times. 

The phrase "and God saw that it was good" appears after each day in the creation period as recorded in Genesis 1, as well as in Moses 2. This lends itself to the concept that at the end of a work period, God Himself took a moment to acknowledge His work as "good". 

I've thought a lot about how God shows us the pattern of planning something in detail before creating it, but I hadn't considered this part of His pattern - when you're done, see and acknowledge the good you have created. 

Declare it's goodness or enoughness. And decide what that will look like for your particular situation. 

So, what does "enough" look like for you today?

For more goodness from Melissa Deutsch, check out her book, This SLP Life. While it is geared specifically toward speech-language pathologists, the concepts can be applied in many settings. 

"If you don't declare what satisfaction or enough is for you, 

you will never be satisfied."

Jennifer Louden

Fun fact - using a Panda Planner (not an affiliate link) is my personal favorite way to plan my day, and it has designated space to check in at the end and record the day's wins, and one way to improve.