I want to share a client insight that’s been evolving over time. The first time this client had the realization I’m about to share was a couple of years ago. Since then, we’ve revisited it at deeper and deeper levels.

The insight is this: enough is just a thought.

If you’re like me—or like many of us in the high-achieving corporate world—you might feel this constant nagging sense that you can never do enough or be enough. There’s always another task, another position to strive for, or another mountain to climb. It’s exhausting and stressful.

This reminds me of a story about Suzuki Roshi, the author of Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind. He once addressed a group of students in the 1970s, saying: “Every one of you is completely perfect as you are… and you could all use a little improvement.”

That paradox—being already complete while still striving for growth—is at the heart of what I want to discuss today.

The Rules We Create for Ourselves

We often create rules for ourselves, like always needing to be productive, always achieving the next goal, or constantly climbing to the next peak.

A friend of mine, an avid skier, illustrated this beautifully during a conversation we had while walking our dogs. He told me about a local challenge called the Highland Bowl Lap. It involves hiking to the top of a mountain, skiing down, and repeating this cycle as many times as possible.

This isn’t just any mountain—it’s double black diamond terrain, a bowl full of powder that feels almost vertical. It requires exceptional physical fitness and skill. My friend was pushing himself, wondering whether three laps were “enough” or if he should aim for four. He felt that unless he was completely exhausted, he hadn’t done enough.

This led me to ask: What is “enough”?

“Enough” Is a Thought

Enough is whatever we decide it is. It’s entirely conceptual—a thought we create. What’s more, the idea of “enough” is a choice, though we often forget that.

And beyond those thoughts is the presence—the essence—of who we really are. That presence is the silent, creative force from which all thoughts emerge.

To think that this creative force, the source of the entire universe, is not enough is, frankly, laughable.

Three Approaches to “Not Enough”

When faced with the feeling of not being enough, we often default to one of these approaches:

1. Doing more. We exhaust ourselves by trying to achieve more and more, hoping it will eventually feel like enough.
2. Covering up negative thoughts with better ones. We try to counter the thought of “not enough” with affirmations or evidence of our worth. While this can provide temporary relief, it’s not a lasting solution.
3. Seeing the truth beyond the thought. This third approach involves recognizing that “enough” and “not enough” are just concepts. They don’t define the presence—the essence—that is thinking those thoughts.

Conclusion

The key is to experiment with this third approach. Recognize that the creative presence within you is already complete. It doesn’t need to measure up to arbitrary ideas of “enough” because it’s the source of everything.

Have fun exploring this idea, and I’ll see you next time.

I was talking with one of my clients today and I asked her if she is working Monday (two days before Christmas).

She is. There is too much to do, she said. She couldn’t let others down. The mission of the organization she leads is simply too important. I asked her when the last time was she had taken even one full day off from work.

She could not remember.

Separately, she told me about a board meeting where she had lost her patience. She had been working since 6:00 am, and the board meeting was on Zoom at 7:00 pm.

I asked if maybe her long day was related to her loss of patience.

I asked if that was the highest level of service she could give to her board.

I asked her if taking care of herself was her first priority, or something to fit in after taking care of everyone else first.

And I asked her, finally, how that was impacting her leadership.

Put On Your Own Mask First

I’m sure you have heard the flight attendant tell you that if you are traveling with a small child and the oxygen masks drop down, you should put your own mask on before you put your child’s on.

And if you are like me, you have recoiled at that thought. How could you think of yourself before your child?

I notice I routinely do things like this in many areas of my life.

If I have time off scheduled and something comes up for a client, I will drop everything for that client.

If I’m on vacation I will make sure I am not far away from my phone and my email.

If something is going on with one of my kids, again, I will drop everything.

But my own coach got me to look at that a different way.

Being Your Best Self for Others

When I lose my temper with my kids or my wife, for example, nine times out of ten (probably more) I can point to some way that I’ve not been taking care of myself.

I haven’t worked out for a few days.

I had a drink last night or ate a big meal and didn’t sleep well.

I was distracted by something “more important.”

I was frustrated “they weren’t listening to me.”

But when I’m fully resourced, I can be present. I can fully listen. And in that space, things seem a lot easier. So easy, in fact, that I forget all the self care that was necessary to get there.

The Importance of the Taper

If you’ve ever trained for a big endurance event like a marathon, you know that in the last week or two the best thing that you can do to step back from your training.

In recovering from your long runs, for example, your body will get stronger and healthier if you do very little in the days leading up to the race. This “taper” means you will be more rested and ready on the day of the event than if you were training (and trying to improve) till the last minute.

In our culture of always having to work and fitting in as much activity as possible, this can be counterintuitive.

This finally started to sink in for me when I heard LeBron James say that he tries to get at least 10 hours of sleep a day, including a nap every afternoon, including, without fail, the day of a game.

Tapering for 2025

Today is December 18. You have two weeks to taper until the beginning of 2025.

How can you stop pushing?

How can you step back?

How can you even take a nap?

What will you make available for yourself if you make that room in the next couple of weeks?

I wish you a happy holiday season and a 2025 that is your best yet.

(And yes, I am taking a break from this newsletter. See you in the New Year!)

 

#founder #takingabreak #restandrecover

I just came in from the garage. Even though my wife is taller than me, she asked me to get the wrapping paper off a high shelf in the garage.

Why? Because she threw out her back doing a weird move with a kettlebell yesterday. And she didn’t think she could reach the wrapping paper without tweaking it.

My wife is powerful and self-sufficient. She’s not used to asking for help. Neither am I. I had minor surgery a couple weeks ago and went through the same thing.

The truth is that we are committed to each other and WANT to help each other. I am happy to help and I know she is for me. I know my default is to do it myself, yet I know I want to help her. I am even delighted to be asked. And I am beginning to understand that sometimes, the best thing to do for both of us is to ask each other for help. To give the other person the gift of helping us.

Sometimes it can feel strange, even, when another person doesn’t even ask for something that I could do easily. Sometimes, the person who is best suited for the task can be hurt when they are not asked.

The same is true for you and your team.

The Deep End of Being a Founder

Most of the founders I work with got there by doing a lot of the work. By having a great idea, yes, but also by working long hours on a lot of things unrelated to that idea.

By the time they get to me, this has often become a problem.

Their team sees them struggle, splashing in the deep end of the pool, and the first thing they want to do is throw them a rope. A finance rope, a product rope, a sales rope.

Each person knows there are things that they are better at than the founder. (In a calmer moment, the founder knows this, too.)

Unfortunately, the founder often thinks continuing to splash is the better choice. Though it’s not really a choice at all. It’s just a habit that used to serve them well.

The First Thing is to Grab the Rope

What if you could see the rope that others are throwing you? What if you could grab it?

What would that create for you?

What would that create for your team?

Can you catch the rope that I’m throwing?

Can you see how supported you are if only you’d stop splashing?

I was told from a young age that I was special. That I would grow up to do great things in the world.

I started reading at 3 (thanks, Mom) and took to school easily. My teachers quickly identified both my high IQ (or talent at taking IQ tests) and my eagerness to please.

I remember when a handwriting analyst (that used to be a thing) told me, in front of my fourth grade class, that I was destined for great things, and might even become president someday.

I’m not sure that I believed that, but I took it on as a personal burden. Whatever I did wasn’t good enough, because I was special, and it was my duty not to waste that.

I got straight A’s through high school, was the first generation in my family to graduate from college (with highest honors, of course), and the first of anyone in my family to graduate from law school (and it was, of course, a top law school). I measured myself based on my professional achievements—whether I was on the partner track at my law firm, how quickly I became a partner in my consulting firm—and my compensation and bonuses.

I took great pride in better and faster. If someone told me that it would take six months to get something done I would, without even thinking about it, assume that I could do it in three months. Often, I could.

And I was a mess.

Being “special,” began to take its toll. I was here to do great things, after all, and that meant that over and over again I had to top myself. It was exhausting, and it was one hundred percent internally generated.

I remember my dad telling me at one point, “If a job is worth doing, it’s worth doing right.” I used that mantra to create a bizarre sort of perfectionism, where I either totally absorbed myself in something or ignored it completely.

I suffered from social anxiety and panic attacks during my late teens and most of my twenties, which I learned to get through by self-medicating and later, more productively, through meditation.

I was harder on myself than on other people but I still wasn’t the easiest person to be around or to be married to. Under the veneer of carefully cultivated Midwestern niceness was someone who could be downright cruel and intolerant of himself and those close to him.

I’m not proud of that.

I remember a moment driving to work when I was 30 and had just moved from a law firm to a consulting firm. I was listening to a book on (actual) tape of Harry Truman, because of course every moment had to be productive, even during your commute. In a moment of existential despair, it hit me that try as I might there would always be someone better than me—smarter, more accomplished, making more money, better looking, whatever metric you wanted. And it had not occurred to me at that point that my value could be measured by anything other than what I had achieved in life.

The burden of being special had at last begun to collapse under the weight of its own absurdity.

Another Path to Achievement

If I was destined to not be special enough on the corporate path, what was left for me?

Good enough, you have to understand, was never good enough.

After a great deal of research and thought on the matter, I decided to become enlightened. If anyone was special, it was someone who was enlightened, who had become one with the universe.

I decided to separate from my wife to be with a woman who made me feel more special (she later left me—special can be really needy). My divorce gave me more time to learn with spiritual teachers, to devote myself to the enlightenment path, to the selfish pursuit of the selfless.

Along the way, paradoxically, I started doing better at work as I cared less at being the “best” at work. I started being more present with people. I started connecting.

I created a healthier way of being and got married again.

And I had a long way to go. I still do.

It All Falls Away

Turns out “enlightenment” is just another made up concept, like special. Meaningless except as a tool for self-congratulation, or in my case, self-flagellation.

As the absurdity of the “enlightenment” effort began to sink in, I fell into yet another funk. Yet in this funk something became abundantly clear.

There is no “there.”

There is no place to get to that we are not making up in our minds. The man behind the curtain creating it all (pardon me, I just saw Wicked) is us.

This is just here, just now, and what is emerging through us in that now.

And that something can emerge with ease and joy or by creating goals and pressure and stress.

What will you choose?

The Gift of Extra Ordinary

The irony of my tagline is not lost on me, and it has always pointed to something much deeper when I allow myself a moment to look.

Extraordinary is a word that I hear coaches use all the time. If you’re not after an extraordinary life, an extraordinary future, why even bother? (Echoes of my father here—a life worth doing right.)

Extraordinary is something I have long craved, as do the founders and CEOs who work with me.

When I want “Extraordinary,” I puff up and create impossible goals and berate myself (and others) for not meeting them. Or even having them.

But occasionally, I am able to step back and see what I really want. The special moments of ordinariness in which, when I am truly able to inhabit them, I can see that everything is already perfect and that nothing is ever missing.

In these moments, I see that I am perfect as I am and that I will never stop learning and creating.

This, to me, is extra ordinary. Not ordinary with something extra. Just deeply, deeply present with exactly what is, while simultaneously watching my deepest desires manifest in the world, whatever those happen to be.

In these moments nothing is missing and everything is possible.

Will you join me here?