Hey You!

This week is about enough.

Why knowing yours is where discernment, taste and the freedom to be you begins.

Because, in the age of ai, your creative signature is the most precious thing you have.

Look after it like your quality of life depends on it.

Because it does!

The enoughness of: enough

Modern culture has totally messed up our sense of enough, don’t you think?

It tells us we don’t have “enough.”

That if we consumed or optimised more, we’d feel “good enough.”

Why 73% of us have felt “not good enough” at one time or another.

Ugh. So over it.

The guest who laser beamed on this is the brilliant writer Aja Barber (find her on Patreon) who saw through the system telling her she had to buy more to be more.

She took back her power, refined her taste, got as discerning as hell, and wrote the eye-opening book “Consumed” to peel the wool from our eyes.

She says: "If I was a billionaire I’d take out an advert saying "You are good enough exactly as you are."

Let’s put that on a billboard.

Any billionaires reading this? Email me.

Listen here.

Add or Subtract?

To find your creative signature today is about taste, because taste is the story of who you are and why you love the things that you do.

But the real secret to taste is what comes before it, and that is discernment.

Cultivating discernment is about knowing what to keep, what to throw away and to be engaged in a constant process not of addition, but of subtraction.

We are drowning in information and stuff. Discernment is how you stay yourself.

Four Books on Enough

Here’s four foundational books that informed The Enoughness project and Become The Front Row Editor Of Your Life.

Reading these lessons are probably the best thing you could do with the next five minutes of your day. Just saying.

1.Back in 2008 John Naish’s Enough was already wondering why we live as if more will save us.

His book looks at ways we can change our thinking about what we need, and talks to people who live an “enoughist” life, including one of my faves, Charles B. Handy OBE, author of The Empty Raincoat.

Naish’s mindset shift? Notice when something stops improving your life and starts overwhelming it. Then edit. The biggest win? Editing your life is good for you and great for the planet.

2. In his book Enough (2008) legendary investor and founder of Vanguard John C.Bogle, examines the history of investing and what led to the global financial crash, laying bare what happens when we abandon our values and let greed win.

Bogle’s mindset shift? “Not everything that can be counted, counts, and not everything that counts, can be counted.”

It’s often misattributed to Einstein, but appeared in a 1963 book by sociologist William Bruce Cameron. Either way, SO true.

3. The Art of Enough by coach Becky Hall (2021) offers seven practical ways to find your own good enough, with tips for resilience, self-worth, and connection.  

Hall’s mindset shift? Like a caterpillar who chomps through life before turning into a butterfly, we all carry the potential to transform ourselves from the inside out. This book is a cute place to start the process.

4. Finally, in How Much Is Enough? (2012), economist Robert Skidelsky and his philosopher son Edward challenge the obsession with endless economic growth and consumption, and leaven it with this thumb stopper: what makes a good life?

The Skidelsky’s mindset shift? The purpose of life is not endless optimisation. It’s to build a life so rich in meaning, connection, fulfilment and enjoyment that “more” stops being the default setting.

Get High On These

• Grasshoppa Floor Lamp by Greta M Grossman, pared back, beautiful, timeless, elegant, functional. I could look at this forever.

• Tricolour Prayer Plant: Pink and green on the top half of the leaf, burgundy underneath: a combo so good it inspired my colour scheme at home.

• Neroli and Jasmin Hand Soap: we use 720 million plastic bottles of soap a year, why when a bar as chic and delicious as this is less than £10.

The Lighthouse

Scroll down to find this months’s screensaver which says

I’m just going to enjoy this!

Every time you unlock your phone, remember

You can pause and reset your mood to UP anytime.

It works, try it.

The Enoughness of everything, shared every Tuesday.

Until next week,

Melanie x