The Joy of Enoughness

Do you have enough? Do you know how much is enough for you? Or maybe nothing is ever enough for you?

Living in a world that always seems to strive for more and is never satisfied, this is something that I have been thinking a lot about lately. I think this whole thing got started when I took ‘The Science of Wellbeing’, the great free online course by Laurie Santos. In this course she talks about things that we think would make us happy, but really won’t - and one of this things is (surprise surprise) money. There seems to be a limit above which the overall wellbeing just does not increase in any significant way anymore even when your income keeps increasing. This always stuck with me, but the number given in the course seemed so arbitrary and I always had the hunch, that for me personally that ‘peak happiness income’ might be quite a bit lower than that number given in the course.1

Thinking about it a bit more I started to wonder: Does that mean that you ‘should’ strive to reach your ‘point of peak hapiness income’? The answer I arrived for myself is: No.

Let me elaborate. I think that point is not as absolute as it might seem. First of all, there are probably parts of the income curve where you only have 75% of that ‘peak point income’ but still are ‘95%’2 satisfied, so reaching for the last 5% might be more trouble than it is worth. (Especially if that means sacrificing a lot of time to gain a little more money.) But even more importantly, I think you can move that point by building the skill of enoughness.3

Skill of Enoughness

So, how do you build that skill?

For me personally I found that cultivating gratefulness and appreciation of circumstances, things and people around me is a big part (for example by using a gratefulness journal and actively noting the good things in your life). In order to actually notice all the good things, being more present seems to be the base for most of the feelings of enoughness, so cultivating a mindfulness practice seems beneficial as well. In general for me, getting out of the ‘thinking mode’ and more in the ‘noticing-what-is-around-me mode’ tends to trigger this warm feeling of enoughness.

Something seemingly unrelated that I found really strengthened my enoughness-muscle was tyding up using the KonMarie method. For those who have never used it: You go through your stuff in a predefined order (starting with clothing) and for every item you ask yourself whether it ‘sparks joy’. By the end of the process you are surrounded by all the things in your life that ‘spark joy’ - which forcefully puts you in the mindset of appreciating the things you already own. (And it turns out that I am not the only one that got a glimpse of an “enoughness-mindset” from completing the method4.)

Although I just started on my journey with the skill of enoughness I already noticed a shift in perspective and in general a lighter and warmer texture to life. Things that previously got drowned out in the never-ending stream of thoughts in my daily life suddenly seem more salient. For example the texture of the handle of my cup when drinking tea or how the temperature is just perfect during this time of the year when leaving the house. Those are all things that have been here all along, but I never seemed to really notice them.

Put simply by building the skill of enoughness the never-ending ‘I need X to be satisfied’ seems to turn into a stream of small ‘Uh-that’s-lovely’s every day.

I am curious to find out what happens when instead of more possessions/money/etc. I continue to invest my time and energy in improving the skill in enoughness.

Sources and Annotations

Footnotes

  1. Thinking about it now, it probably just meant that for every person such a point exists, and not that every person’s ‘point of peak happiness income’ is the same. ↩

  2. KAHNEMAN, Daniel; DEATON, Angus. High income improves evaluation of life but not emotional well-being. Proceedings of the national academy of sciences, 2010, 107.38: 16489-16493. ↩

  3. EDLINGER, Gabriela; UNGERICHT, Bernhard; DEIMLING, Daniel. Enoughness: Exploring the potentialities of having and being enough. ephemera: theory & politics in organization, 2021, 21.3. ↩

  4. CHAMBERLIN, Lucy Clementine Joyce; CALLMER, Åsa. Spark joy and slow consumption: an empirical study of the impact of the KonMari method on acquisition and wellbeing. 2021. ↩