CKat March Newsletter

#5: The Lie of "I'll be enough when ___."

Reader,

Who are the happiest people you know?

What emotions and feelings does the word “content” bring up in you?

If your identity is rooted in achievement, contentment likely feels dangerous.

• As athletes, we are trained to believe contentment is dangerous. If you're content, you lose your edge. If you're satisfied, someone passes you. If you're not hungry, you get benched. It’s understandable then why we may not like this word.

If your identity is rooted in Christ, contentment becomes stabilizing.

• We can be content and ambitious.
• We shift from “I’ll be enough when ___” to “I am enough. Now I press on.”

Freedom to pursue greatness without needing it to define you.

---

I grew up fortunate enough to spend summers at a beautiful lake in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. Spring-fed, clean water, beautiful trees and scenery, and…. mansions! What took me a long time to realize is that I already had what I thought my dreams and ambitions would give me.

Now, I didn’t have a mansion to go to, but I did have a shared pier and “lake rights,” which if you know, are a BIG deal. This is so much to be content with. So much to be grateful for.

But… I always viewed those mansions as aspirational, dream-chasing desires I wanted. My family would encourage me… “Chris, come on you gotta work hard and use that Duke degree to get us one of those one day.” It was sort of a joke, but not really to me. I think achieving great things in life can lead us to believe that is our identity. It’s what had me saying, “I’ll be enough, or content, once I get that mansion.”

But all this dreaming… what’s really happening is that we are envisioning ourselves being content in that moment. You know that most of those owners spend 1 week, just 7 days, using the house, boats, the amazing lake. Just 1 week. Here we are using this lake almost every weekend. Here we are, right now, on the water, swimming, enjoying the sun, playing our made-up games. Yet I envision that future moment where I will be finally content. Will I?

This has been described as the arrival fallacy–once we arrive, then we’ll be enough. Then we can be content. Then we can be happy.

More often than not our expectations of how content we will be are higher than the reality of how content we are. That makes it hard to be happy. It’s a continuing cycle. Always onto the next.

John Candy said in the movie Cool Runnings, “If you’re not enough without it, you’ll never be enough with it.”

What would it look like to pursue your next goal from a place of contentment — not deficiency?

Reflections:

I’ve started asking myself better questions:

• Why do I really want this?
• What do I think it will give me?
• Is that something I already have?
• Is that something Christ has already secured?
• Is this desire mine or inspired by God?

I’ve started to practice what it’s like to approach ambition from a posture of being content.

This verse is not about winning the championship. This is about being content whether you win it or not. Philippians 4:13 isn’t about achievement. It’s about stability. Paul learned contentment in plenty and in want — and from that place, he pressed on.

When your identity is secure, ambition becomes freedom — not pressure.

Want to make this personal? If you want to explore what coaching could look like for you, or if there's someone you think could benefit, let's connect!

Email: chris@ckatcoaching.com (or reply to this email)

Or Schedule a Call

What's New:

Duke Athletics Workshop I'm heading to Durham this March to lead a workshop titled: "What does it actually mean for our identity and purpose to be rooted in Christ?"