more enough, please
Everyday – every, single day – I see brilliant, sparkly people. Their sparkles and brilliance aren’t always obvious to themselves or others, because their luster isn’t tied to status, celebrity or style. Some have that stuff too, but the sparkles and brilliance are wholly their own. Here’s the rub: Despite the sparkly brilliance nesting in their core, not all, but too many, believe they aren’t quite enough. They believe they need to be somehow more.
This belief dresses in different costumes. Sometimes it’s disguised as a powerful ego working its hiney off to show how brave and big and fierce its person is. Sometimes it’s dressed like my old Brownie troupe leader whose gods were decorum and protocol. She so frightened us with stories about the perils of boasting, chewing gum, and sitting without our ankles crossed that we never dreamed of making a campfire or changing a tire.
Regardless of its particulars, these costumes try to make people too big or too small or too worried to shine. Consequently, they do hide some sparkles, but only by degrees, because, despite their beliefs, these brilliant sparkly people are enough and enough-ness sparkles.
And, most ironically, only when we know we are enough can we be more. Not more through stuff or fame, but more in our enough-ness. This more makes space to appreciate ourselves where we are and find bigger dreams elsewhere if we choose. This more doesn’t challenge our sense of deservedness or worthiness. It doesn’t fuel insecurity or competition or scarcity. It’s the more resting squarely in enough.
I remain fascinated and confounded by all the sparkly people who aren’t sure they are enough. Admittedly, they give me a little hope. I struggle with my enough-ness. Maybe like them I just have trouble recognizing my sparkles. Maybe my more, too, is right here in my sparkly enough-ness. I know this so clearly for you and the other sparkly people I meet. I think I’ll start knowing it for me.
Some of My Favorite Resources on Being Enough