Last week I caught myself saying something out loud that I’ve said hundreds of times before: ‘I just don’t have enough time.’ The second the words came out of my mouth, I stopped. Because here’s the interesting thing…it wasn’t actually true.
I was standing in my kitchen making my morning coffee, mentally running through everything I wanted to accomplish that day. Finish this week’s newsletter. Record my podcast. Respond to emails. Work on Beyond. Exercise. Run a few errands. Before I’d even poured my coffee into my favorite mug, I could feel the tension building in my shoulders.
It wasn’t because anything had gone wrong.
The day hadn’t even started.
But somehow I’d already convinced myself there wasn’t enough time.
The funny thing is, if someone had asked me at that moment how many hours were in my day, I would have laughed and answered, “Twenty-four, just like everyone else.” Yet my body was responding as though someone had secretly taken six of them away.
It made me stop and wonder how often we do this to ourselves—not just with time, but with so many other parts of our lives.
As I sat there with my coffee, I realized that what I was really feeling wasn’t a lack of time at all. It was scarcity.
How Scarcity Quietly Takes Over
Scarcity has a way of quietly showing up everywhere. We tell ourselves there isn’t enough money to do the things we’d love to do. There aren’t enough opportunities left for us. We start believing we’ve missed our chance, that we’re too old to start over, that we don’t have enough energy, confidence, or years ahead of us to create the life we really want.
The words are different for each of us, but the message underneath is almost always the same:
There isn’t enough.
Your Mind Looks for Proof
I’ve been thinking about that phrase a lot this week because I realized how convincing it can be. Once our minds decide that something is scarce, they immediately start collecting evidence to support the belief. If I tell myself there isn’t enough time, every interruption feels like proof. If I believe I’ve missed my opportunity, everyone else’s success becomes another reminder that I somehow fell behind. Before I know it, my mind has become an expert attorney, building a case for the very story I wish weren’t true.
The problem is, our minds are incredibly good at proving what we’ve already decided to believe.
What If “Not Enough” Isn’t the Truth?
So I started asking myself a different question.
What if the feeling of “not enough” isn’t actually reality?
What if it’s simply the story I’m telling myself?
The more I thought about it, the more I realized we’ve all seen this play out in life. We’ve seen people with very little live with an incredible sense of abundance, while others who seem to have everything never feel like it’s enough. We’ve seen women begin entirely new chapters in their sixties, while others quietly convince themselves in their forties that life has already passed them by.
The circumstances weren’t creating the feeling.
Their mindset was.
Scarcity Changes How We Experience Life
That thought has stayed with me all week because I can see how it plays out in my own life. Whenever I believe there isn’t enough, I rush. I worry. I compare myself to everyone else. I become so focused on what I don’t have that I completely miss what I do have. Ironically, that’s when life starts to feel the smallest.
But on the days when I consciously choose a different perspective—when I remind myself that maybe there is enough after all—I notice something shifts. I slow down. I make better decisions. I become more creative. I notice opportunities that were sitting in front of me the whole time but were invisible because I was so busy looking through the lens of scarcity.
Do We Have a Time Problem—or a Belief Problem?
Lately, I’ve been studying a concept called Einstein Time, and it has challenged the way I’ve thought about time for years. I’m not going to dive into it today because I think it deserves a conversation of its own, but the basic premise stopped me in my tracks.
What if we don’t actually have a time problem?
What if we have a belief problem?
What if feeling rushed has less to do with the clock and more to do with the story we’ve attached to it?
I don’t have all the answers yet, but I can tell you this. The moment I stop believing the words, ‘there isn’t enough’, something inside me begins to soften. I breathe differently. I feel calmer. I make decisions from a place of possibility instead of fear.
Nothing around me has changed.
Only the story I was believing had.
Change the Story You’re Believing
💌So this week, I have a simple invitation for you.
Pay attention to the moments when the words not enough quietly enter your thoughts.
Not enough time.
Not enough money.
Not enough opportunity.
Not enough youth.
Not enough energy.
Don’t judge yourself when they show up. Just notice them.
Because sometimes the first step toward changing our lives isn’t changing our circumstances at all.
It’s changing the story we’ve been believing.
When You Feel Like It’s Too Late
One more thing…
As I was writing this week’s newsletter, I kept thinking about an earlier podcast episode I recorded called Don’t Quit Here.
If you’ve ever found yourself wondering, maybe it’s too late. Maybe I missed my chance. Maybe there just isn’t enough… I think you’ll really enjoy this conversation.
🎧 You can watch it on YouTube here: https://youtu.be/wFfqo9iKJXA
Positively,
Deanne
