Enoughness, Perfection, and Not Giving A Sh*t About Eating Sugar (Potentially)

After carefully observing my thoughts, I found the lens of “enoughness” is my default mental state

Art by Stephanie Davidson. Written by Rae Katz

I’ve noticed recently how very much I feel like I’m not doing enough. I see the half-finished books all around my desk and note silently that I’m not reading enough these days. The little pile of laundry on the floor reminds me that I had intended to do laundry twice a week so it wouldn’t get so backed up, but really I’m only doing it once a week. I should do laundry today, says a voice, which seems to be programmed somewhere deep in my reptilian brain. I see the plants all around the living room and remember they have not been watered since the Wednesday before last, and the small voice reminds me that my plants need weekly watering. I see the old keyboard that I have aspirationally set up next to my desk and think about how I really do want to get back into playing a bit of piano. It would be good to work out today, I think, apropos of nothing, I’ve been slipping in the last few weeks.

Doing enough is a preoccupation of my generation; as a rule we tend to feel like there’s always something we’re not doing enough of—work, or art, or nurturing friendships, or house cleaning, or spending quality time with partners or children or eating vegetables. I knew I was one of these people, someone who feels like I should just do a little more of this or eat a little less of that. But the past couple weeks, as I took a more careful inventory of what happens daily in my mind regarding the concept of “enough,” I was still shocked to find just how many times a day and in how many different ways my mind tells me that I’m now doing quite enough of something.

The list above doesn’t even including the health work I’ve accumulated as a result of my self-directed approach to my autoimmune disease. I have an iron deficiency, so I should be eating more meat. Everyone says meat is inflammatory so I should be eating less meat. I don’t eat dairy, so I need to focus on getting enough calcium, so I should really be getting more leafy greens in. More green vegetables in general, actually—I’m not getting the three servings a day I intend to. A little less sugar would be good. I should do more vagus nerve exercises to rehabilitate my broken parasympathetic nervous system. I should look at my phone less (huge one).

Like I said, I knew this about myself—as someone with perfectionist tendencies, tweaking life towards a state of perfection is a highly appealing pastime. I also live in a culture that is obsessed with personal responsibility. I already knew that, as a result of these facts, I tend to blame anything negative in my life on my inability to try a little harder—whether it’s my autoimmunity, the inability to conceive a baby, a work meeting that goes south, or basically anything else. Meghan O’Rourke described this dynamic perfectly in the case of her chronic fatigue: “my fatigue felt like a problem with me—something about my very being. I worked too hard, but without enough discipline; I exercised, but I ate junk food; I was sloppy where I should be ascetic.” I read this a couple years ago and recognized myself immediately.

What I didn’t realize until the last few weeks of closer observation, is how very often this category of thought occurs, how totally ubiquitous these thoughts are for me, how they actually seems to be one of the dominating forces in my brain, potentially even my default mental state. A feeling that I’m not quite doing enough of something, (or not quite trying hard enough to do less of something), arrives in little spikes whenever I see things in my house: books, piano, plants, laundry, kale. It enters my mind when nothing else is there for a moment: pause: I should be riding my bike more and driving less. It occurs when I do activities that remind me of other activities—I used to do pelvic floor exercises while I brushed my teeth, so now when I brush my teeth I very often think, I should be doing pelvic floor exercises to prepare for this imminent delivery. This track—the consistency of it, the strength of it, its unrelenting presence—must be, I can only assume, highly exhausting. But I’m not sure I can remember a time when I’ve lived without it.

Whoa, so now what

This is not an essay where I’ve worked through the issue to my satisfaction and have some great learnings for you. This is a mid-process essay, the capturing of a moment of realization that feels important, with the hope that the realization might be contagious and spark a related insight in someone else.

This type of mental habit is not one that I can just change, in fact, in a kind of sick rock-hard-place situation, all the approaches that immediately come to mind feed right into the habit: I should do self compassion mediation; I should find an effective mantra about how just being is enough. Even books like Jenny Odell’s How do Do Nothing spark in me a predictable response: I need to get better at doing nothing! You can see my problem here.

But there is one approach I have found interesting as I have come to this new awareness. It is simply having the thought, “what would it feel like if I didn’t think I needed to do more of this?” What would it feel like if I was actually totally fine not playing the piano these days? What would it feel like if I was just absolutely unconcerned with the amount of sugar I currently eat, and was not trying to eat less? I’m not actually asking myself to feel that way, that’s too big of a jump. I’m just wondering what that state of affairs might be like. And even in wondering that, I have felt little moments of release. Like, hey, the plants are actually all alive. What if I didn’t care that I missed watering on the day I’m supposed to water them? What if I actually was fine with the amount that I look at my phone? Again, I don’t actually feel this way, but wow, that would feel pretty great if I did. That alone opens a new door, just a little.

This whole thing is difficult, because I do still hold tight to a belief that my impulse to do more and to get better has given me a lot of gifts and led to things that I value in my life (like this newsletter!). I am not ready to see those attributes as fully negative and banish them, perhaps because they are so core to my sense of myself and my identity. (Maybe someday I will let go of my ego and become enlightened—do you think I should meditate more in order to expedite that day coming?)

But perhaps I am not actually at risk of losing that doing, striving part of myself, being as deeply ingrained as it is, even if I work to cut down the immense, all-consuming amount of self-talk directed at doing things a little better than I currently am doing. I suspect that’s the case.

The guides

Where to look for guidance in this area when so many influences—my formal education, the shows I watch, even a lot of “grow your Substack” content that I see every day—all focus on doing more, essentially adding things to the list of stuff I wish I were doing?

Well, in my case, I am looking to the women who live with chronic illness. I suspect my personal investigation into this topic is happening right now in part because of my many wonderful conversations with the amazing women of the Lady’s Illness Library: people who are suddenly and against their will have been thrown into a world with far more constraints: limits on energy, physical ability, mental stamina—things it is easy to take for granted if you haven’t had them taken away. When you can only get out of bed for a handful of hours a day, and particularly for someone who has always been a doer, the idea of “doing enough” presents an existential challenge.

And they have a lot to say.

Kathryn Vercillo

of

Create Me Free

found that making crocheted gifts offers her a sense of purpose without saddling her with feelings of striving for higher productivity. When I told Kathryn that I don’t really knit anymore because I feel like I’m not knitting fast enough (lol), she told me: “we can use the safe space of our craft or art as a place to work through some of the bigger issues. Because it’s likely that not knitting fast enough is related to all kinds of other things in your life that you're not doing well enough.” I love that idea.

Michelle Spencer

of

Armchair Rebel

introduced me to the idea that, in our culture, we often feel like we only deserve joy if we are being productive. Wow, that resonated hard. Then, as almost a side note, she said, “It sort of explains how we treat old people too. Because they cease to be productive.” Mic drop.

Louise Burn

of

Underachieving Overachiever

increased my awareness of the way that our thoughts can affect our physical body, even though it’s easy to think of thoughts as “not real,” while the body seems very real. Even though I believe in the mind-body connection, it is still hard for me to really believe it, given that I have spent most of my life practicing ignoring the impact of my thoughts. Without a doubt, all my ongoing thoughts about needing to do more all the time affect my physical body.

And there’s so much more in all these conversations that touches on this topic, so much wisdom! I am only at the beginning of absorbing it all. And so the journey continues…

I wonder…

1. Are there areas/topics of “self-improvement” your brain latches on to the most? What do some of your inner thoughts sound like?

2. Have you been at all successful at cutting down the immense, all-consuming amount of self-talk directed at doing things a little better?

3. I think it was

   Marlee Grace
   who said, “Stop improving. Just be hot.” How would it feel to move the focus away from improving altogether?