Lynne Twist Quote on Feelings of Lack and Inadequacy (and How To Combat It)

“For me, and for many of us, our first waking thought of the day is ‘I didn’t get enough sleep.’ The next one is ‘I don’t have enough time.’ Whether true or not, that thought of not enough occurs to us automatically before we even think to question or examine it. We spend most of the hours and the days of our lives hearing, explaining, complaining, or worrying about what we don’t have enough of… We don’t have enough exercise.  We don’t have enough work.  We don’t have enough profits.  We don’t have enough power.  We don’t have enough wilderness.  We don’t have enough weekends.  Of course, we don’t have enough money—ever.  We’re not thin enough, we’re not smart enough, we’re not pretty enough or fit enough or educated or successful enough, or rich enough—ever.  Before we even sit up in bed, before our feet touch the floor, we’re already inadequate, already behind, already losing, already lacking something.  And by the time we go to bed at night, our minds race with a litany of what we didn’t get, or didn’t get done, that day.  We go to sleep burdened by those thoughts and wake up to the reverie of lack… What begins as a simple expression of the hurried life, or even the challenged life, grows into the great justification for an unfulfilled life.”

Lynne Twist, The Soul of Money

Beyond the Quote (92/365)

How do we combat chronic feelings of lack?  By deploying chronic gratitude.  It’s no secret that gratitude is a cornerstone piece of a fulfilled life.  Gratitude is, in fact, what fills a person’s life.  When we are grateful for our family, our family fills our lives; when we are grateful for our friends, our friends fill our lives; when we are thankful for food, water, shelter, clothes, health, etc., then those things fill our lives, too.  Gratitude fills us up and the more gratitude we can deploy, the more fulfilled we will feel.

But, when we are not thankful, we are as Lynne describes above—inadequate, behind, losing, and lacking.  When we didn’t get enough sleep, we are drained; when we don’t look the way we want to look, we create lack; when we decide we must have the latest gadget, we put ourselves behind; when we blame our circumstances in life for not putting us further ahead or in a better situation, we lose control over our own lives.  Lack and feelings of insufficiency is what drains us and the more feelings of lack and insufficiency we manifest, the more unfulfilled we will feel.

What’s incredibly powerful to realize is that it’s impossible to feel truly grateful for something AND like you’re lacking anything in the exact same moment.  When you take that first sip of your coffee and it’s at the perfect temperature and you close your eyes and embody the moment with nothing but gratitude, nothing else in the world matters.  For that singular moment there is no lack, there is no insufficiency.  In that moment, you are fulfilled.  If you think back to times when you’ve had moments of deep, heart-felt gratitude for something or someone in your life, you will notice that same singular feeling of fulfillment, too.  Even if in the moment right before or right after you had thoughts of lack or inadequacy, for that exact moment, they didn’t existed.

So how do we deploy chronic gratitude in our lives and fight off those feelings that seem to be robbing us of fulfillment?  With nothing short of chronic, deliberate effort.  Of everything that I might list, the only noteworthy items are the ones that you might actually do and do whole-heartedly.  Gratitude isn’t something you can half-ass.  Feeling “kind-of” grateful for having a roof over your head isn’t going to banish the feelings of lack anymore than feeling like you “kind-of” love someone is going to banish away their feelings of lack—the feeling has to be whole-hearted.  So, what might that list look like?  You could start a gratitude journal, write gratitude letters, send gratitude texts, do meditations focused on gratitude, cut yourself off from anything (or anyone) who is making you feel inadequate or like you’re lacking something, or even immerse yourself in an experience that makes you more deeply appreciate all that you have (like a mission trip or a visit to a rehab center, for example).

How you choose to fill your life with gratitude is irrelevant and should be personal to you.  But, be warned, not filling your life with gratitude at all is not a path that will ever lead to fulfillment. For, without gratitude that feeling of ‘not enough’ will continue to arise and follow you and drive you mad until it’s “filled.”  And if you try to fill that void with materialistic items, you’ll be forever chasing more.  For, as J. Cole lays out for us in his song Love Yours, “Always gon’ be a whip that’s better than the the one you got/ Always gon’ be some clothes that’s fresher than the one’s you rock.” It’s a forever fleeting finish line and the pain of that void is real.  You have to drop the idea that you’ll be grateful when, grateful if, or grateful after… You have to be grateful with what you have now.  Because, as J. Cole reminds us again, “You ain’t never gon’ be happy till you love yours.”