You're at the Coaching Inn, 3D Coaching's virtual pub where we enjoy conversations with people who engage in the world of coaching. Welcome to the 3D Book Group where we read a book together, we comment through the 3D social media channels on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook, and then our lovely author responds to your insights and questions in a live extra podcast. We're just starting The Art of Enough by Becky Hall. So over to you, Becky.
Hi there, this is Becky and I'm really pleased to be joining you for the first of the Q &A parts of this book club with the wonderful 3D coaching. And I've had a couple of great questions, so I'm going to read them and then offer you my thoughts on them. And thank you very much for the people who sent them in because it's just great to have some engagement about the book. It's a really good way of... continuing the conversation I guess.
So the first question I was asked was, and I'll just read it out, I really like the emphasis of being, doing and having enough. Is there a particular reason why they are in that order? Well, yes, is the answer to the question. And it comes from my idea that enough is a kind of inside out state.
And as with many of these things, I believe we have to start with how we are internally and that that has an impact on how we show up and the choices that we make and what we feel is available to us on the outside.
My idea is very much that it's so often a feeling of us not being enough or that we aren't somehow adequate or up to the task or sufficiently capable or even worse than that, that we have voices in our head which trip us into a sense of failure because we're chasing an ideal of perfectionism. that puts us into this state of lack that I explore in the first part, the first three chapters actually of the book.
And it's my real belief that once we begin to work out a state of enough, where we believe we are enough internally, that we can then address our patterns of perhaps over consumption or under. of overreaching ourselves, being overstretched and subsequently overconsumption. So being definitely starts with us internally. And I think that the doing enough comes as a sort of counterpoint to being enough.
I think it's often the case that we, because we feel that we aren't quite, we're coming from a place of scarcity or a place of lack. that we overcompensate by over committing or working too hard or we're driven to achieve a state that is nearly impossible to achieve often. It's this sort of, I think Daniel Pink in his book, Drive, calls it an asym trope, which is this sort of, it's the ever elusive unattainable. And whilst it's of course really important and fine for us to have ambition, great.
But if we have ambition based on the fact that we can never achieve it or that we've somehow failed before we've begun, all it does is get us to drive harder and further without giving ourselves healthy boundaries or forgetting that we need to resource ourselves. my premise, and I don't believe it's completely cause and effect, I don't believe it's necessarily linear.
But my premise is that I think there's a connection between feelings of scarcity or coming from a place, a position of scarcity and therefore overcompensating in our lives, working too hard or doing too much or unable to hold boundaries and overcommitting or double booking ourselves, whether that's in work or socially actually.
That it's those two things are really connected and that they cause us to swing from on the scales, if you remember the scale analogy that I use in the model, between scarcity and excess. So I think being and doing are very much more of the individual side of things. And I think there's an inside out connection. And then having enough. I deliberately put having enough third because partly because it's an extension of overcompensating.
So we overcompensate by over-stretching ourselves and we are also then over-consume or somehow use things that we have, whether that's experiences or indeed physical things, as a way of somehow comforting or soothing our sense of lack. So the whole concept of retail therapy, that sort of thing, can be an extension from the being, not being enough, then doing.
enough and doing too much and then thinking well I need to reward myself so I'll buy something that I don't really need but it makes me feel better about myself and so the cycle continues. So there's something individual about that sequence but I also am trying in the book to make the connection between us as individuals internally and externally each of us in the world in the lives that we lead.
And then the sort of bigger systems, what Burt Hellinger talks about as the larger forces and our collective contribution and challenge of the climate crisis, where we're clearly as a human race over consuming. And how can we bring ourselves back into this idea that limits are actually useful and enable us and will not just not just allow us to thrive as individuals, actually quite sort of, quite literally survive as a planet.
So it's the sort of, if you imagine it like ripples of a stone in water, the being enough is the first ripple, is the inner bit. Then there's the next ripple, which is the outer bit, which is us in the world. And then there's the wider ripples, which is us in our. communities in our societies and then of course in the widest collective state. So that was my thinking of the being doing and having enough.
But great question because it really made me remember why I wrote it like that and then to think about it. So thank you for that. The second question is, I found the use of enough as a proper noun very impactful. Can you say more about the decision to write it like that? So yes, I can. I can't remember if I told this story when we met for some of you the first morning we met, but.
The very use of the word enough was a real decision for me because there were a couple of people who said to me, even the word enough is somehow limiting or that it's somehow lacking in ambition. And actually I had a conversation with a really good publisher who just couldn't get past that. She didn't like the word. And in the end, I decided that it was so important. to me that I kept it and went a different route with publishing.
And the reason I decided to use enough with a capital E as a proper noun is because I feel it's such an important concept for us to reclaim and rethink that the very concept of enough as a pathway to ease and flow and presence is so important.
So I wanted to really emphasize that and to sort of make it, it was a sort of an attempt to really give it weight and reclaim it so it sort of looks like a sort of something a bit more substantial on the page with its capital E, but also that it precursors each of the chapters so there's enough mindset, enough permission, enough. enough presence, boundaries, resource, that sort of thing.
So that each thing is a sort of concept in and of itself, which helps us create a sort of pathway to what we can look at and think about and consider and reflect on in order to be, do, and have enough. So it was my attempt to reclaim, give weight, and sort of credence to the idea of enough, which I think is so often used as a sort of shorthand for mediocre or indeed in English it's also used as a stop, know, stop, that's enough.
And what I want to get at is this idea that enough is something in and of itself that offers value. because when we get to a state of believing that we're enough and a state where we are able to do enough, not too much, not too little, just right, and we can have enough, then of course we can focus on what it is that's really, important to us and achieving our ambitions and being absolutely able to live the lives we want to with giving the best of ourselves to the things that really matter.
to enable us to thrive and grow and all of that good stuff. So that's why I gave it its capital E. And it really reminds me as I'm talking of A.A. Milne, and I always loved that thing in Winnie the Pooh. When I was a kid, I used to really like it when he used to use capital letters for very important things. So maybe it's a sort of hangover of that, that it gives it sort of emphasis to things that are really proper nouns indeed. Thanks for your questions.
I really, really enjoy receiving them and please do keep offering them. Let's keep this conversation going. And I very much hope that you enjoy chapter one, enough mindset. So speak to you in a couple of weeks. Bye. If you've enjoyed what you've heard today, we'd love you to share the podcast with a friend or leave a comment on social media. And if you'd like to become a regular at The Coaching In, you can subscribe on Podbean and all major podcast channels.
We look forward to welcoming you next time. You've been listening to The Coaching In, 3D Coaching's virtual pub. For more information, check out 3dcoaching.com.