How to Feel Like you are Enough

What I learned by turning 40.

Hi folks!

It’s been a minute. 

Back in September I set off on the Fall of Slow. After a 2023 with some high highs, and several low lows – I was craving time to come back to myself. I’ve spent the past five months giving myself permission to STOP, to PLAY, and to go INTERNAL.

I was not expecting to take such a long hiatus from writing. While in the Fall of Slow, I returned to my journaling practice so I could process the rollercoaster of last year. I’ve taken the past few months to reorganize my schedule (and, really, my life) to be more aligned with Stopping, Playing, and being Internal. That shift, funnily enough, has inspired me to write again in a form that is not just chicken-scratch in a soft notebook (eg. what my journaling looks like).

So, I’m here, admittedly, a bit out of practice in writing in a linear fashion. There are so many thoughts and ideas that are backed up that it’s tricky to figure out where to start. 

To rip off the Band-Aid, I’m sharing a Snapshot from my 40^th birthday in December, and my reflections on how I spent it.

The look on Justin’s face <3

My 40^th was one of the best birthdays I’ve had in recent memory. After reflecting on why it felt that way, I understood that practicing real self-care made it so. Real self-care consists of 4 Principles:

• Boundaries

• Compassion

• Values

• Power

For my birthday, I set Boundaries (with others), was Compassionate (in the way I spoke to myself), and I chose a birthday aligned with my Values (an intimate, low key day spent people I love). In the end, I felt gratitude and ease with what I have in my life (I call this Power).

In this note, I’m going to first set the stage with how I spent my milestone birthday, and then after that, I’ll walk you through my practice of Boundaries, Compassion, Values, and Power.

I've spent the past few years participating in the 40^th birthday parties of friends and colleagues. So naturally, in October or so, I began feeling an urge to throw myself one. Forty is a big deal, and I deserve to be celebrated, right?

In early November, one of my closest friends asked if I wanted to see if our tight-knit close friend group, who is now dispersed across the country with approximately 30ish small kids between us (OK, not really that many), could come to Austin for my birthday. 

It sounded like fun *and* I noticed that when I sat with it, my mind went straight to panic mode. Where would everyone stay? What would we do? Because of my ADHD, coordinating logistics, making plans, and really anything that involves going to a place in the real world with multiple interconnecting steps is energy depleting for my brain.¹ 

I talked this over with my therapist and my executive coach. I was confused because hadn't I told myself I wanted a 40^th birthday party? Shouldn’t I *want* to have people I love come visit and celebrate me? Was I flaking out?

I came to the conclusion that while there is a part of me wants to be the person who can gracefully host several of her bestest friends in her home for a weekend, the reality is that is not who I am.

So instead my friend of 20+ years, Puja², flew to Austin for one night. On my 40th birthday: we ate cheese enchiladas at mine and Justin’s favorite local Mom+Pop taqueria; Puja met baby K for the first time and gifted him a magnetic-car garage set thing that he is now obsessed with because he is in his “beep-beep” era; we went leisurely window shopping in the fancy Austin shopping district (I bought fun wrapping paper at Paper Source, the super fancy kind that sells only by the sheet !!³); we at carbs + cheese and drank wine; we sat on the couch in sweats having the types of conversations that one can only have with their girlfriends when on the couch in sweats.

The night of my birthday, me, Justin and K ordered in my favorite fancy sushi for dinner, and K attempted to fed me a piece of strawberry shortcake from Central Market. I felt full of gratitude and contentment with this little life I’ve built.  

This is 40 and it’s grand.

It’s not a coincidence that I woke up the next day with an overwhelming feeling of being Enough and having Enough. Like if time stopped, and I didn’t make anymore future progress to “achieve my potential”, I would be totally fine. And like I could handle the curve balls that will undoubtably come because I’d made it this far. That “this far” was enough— and that anything more was icing on the cake. In short, my powerful mental state was a far cry from how our culture says women over 40 should feel about being 40.⁴

If there’s one thing you take away from this note, it’s this: When you approach yourself as Already Enough, you make choices based on agency as opposed to scarcity. This, my friends, is what I call power. Feeling like you are Enough is POWER. The reason I felt enough & powerful is because I worked through the process of Real Self-Care. You can’t force yourself into feeling enough & powerful. You must take the internal steps to get there.

There are many other ways this story could have gone. I could have forced myself to plan a party that I wasn’t fully into, and then felt exhausted. I could have obsessed over getting the perfect pictures and having the best outfit. I could have ruminated about my fertility and the question of if it makes sense to try and have another baby or not. I could have worried about how I’m another year closer to “retirement” or to affording K’s college tuition.

But, instead, I set a BOUNDARY and I was COMPASSIONATE with myself while doing so. I allowed myself to ask for and to receive the celebration that was aligned with me and my VALUES (intimacy, spontaneity, casualness, “earthiness”⁵ ). Because I practiced Boundaries, Compassion, and Values, I could experience my birthday as a day of fullness as opposed to ruminating over what was lacking or what I was afraid of losing. As someone who has lived so much of her life waiting for her life to begin and dealing with hungry ghosts, the feelings of enough & power were nothing short of magical.

When you take charge of your life and make choices aligned with what works for you, the internal chatter becomes less important. To be clear, it’s not that the chatter disappears, I for sure still worry about that laundry list of insecurities and life questions. But, they aren’t taking center stage in my brain. They aren’t as important and they do not have power over me or my mind.

Do I feel this enough & powerful everyday? Nope. I have plenty of days where I forget, and I don’t hold my boundaries, or my ego tantrums, or my inner critic runs the show, and all the other normal human stuff. But, on my 40^th, it was a nice reminder of what’s always here for me when I come back to it.

xo, 

Pooja 

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ICYMI: I sat down with

Shannon Watts

again, this time for her new podcast & newsletter

Playing with Fire

02: Dr. Pooja Lakshmin Tells Us How to Avoid Burnout

1. Even as I write this note, I worry somewhere, one of my IRL friends is reading this and feeling offended!

2. Yes, we have the same name.

3. I cannot articulate exactly why this purchase made feel so pleased with myself, but I am confident at least one of you out there understands my glee.

4. See also this fucking fantastic 2022 essay from author Mira Jacob in Harper’s Bazaar about 40

5. A media person once described me as Earthy and I will forever hold on to that description.