Waking up too early to a blaring alarm you are acutely aware that you didn’t get
enough sleep. As you rush around trying to get out the door in time for work you
consider having breakfast but realize you don’t have enough time. As you listen
to the horrible new noise your car is making you imagine what it might cost this
time and decide that you don’t make enough money. You brew your third cup of
coffee before heading into your morning meeting because you don’t have enough
energy. In the meeting you feel shut down and dismissed and you think to
yourself that you don’t get enough respect. Driving home from work, thoroughly
exhausted, you lament that you don’t have enough time off for a proper vacation.
As you crawl into bed you think, “I didn’t get enough done.”

How often in the course of a typical day do you find yourself thinking “not
enough”? As in, I don’t have enough time, I don’t have enough money, I don’t
have enough love or respect? When we become hyperaware of scarcity we start to
act out of fear. At best it might come across as insensitivity and at worst,
entitlement or narcissism. It looks like not letting people into your lane
because you want to get home as fast as possible. It looks like getting loud
with the store manager to make them bend their return policy for you. It looks
“ugly,” as we say in the South.

The fear of scarcity is a huge obstacle to happiness. The antidote? “I have
enough.” Just trying on this new way of thinking might be enough to quell that
fear and turn towards happiness.