
We all want to feel fulfilled, satisfied, and ‘enough!’ When we’re searching for ‘enough,’ we’re searching for satisfaction.
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Self actualization, by definition, is the realization or fulfillment of one's talents and potentialities. We all want the feeling of fulfillment. We all want to feel enough. We all want to feel satisfied.
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Welcome to the Strategy Hour podcast brought to you by Boss Project. I'm your host, Abigail Pumphrey, and I'm dedicated to supporting online businesses. I don't believe in one right way to build a business. I'm here to help you build business your way. One that supports not only the life you have, but the life you want. I'm on a personal mission to help you become financially free. I'm taking all the lessons learned as I turned a layoff into a seven figure online business. I'm here to help you prioritize your life every step of the way. Whether you're creating your first digital product, growing an email list, or scaling an already profitable business. Settle in. It's time to talk strategy.
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If you'd asked me five years ago what enough looked like, I could have given you a spreadsheet. I broke all of this down in my mind into how much visibility I needed to get, how many followers to get, how many people to click onto my website so I could generate how much in revenue so I could ultimately pay for the life that I have and build towards the life that I want. To me, it really felt that simple. It felt like if I could fulfill all of those things, that I would have enough. According to the Oxford Dictionary, enough is as much or as many as required. But I don't think any of us really ever think about it that way. So I prefer Merriam Webster's definition in or to a degree or quantity that.
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Satisfies or that is sufficient or necessary for satisfaction.
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And I think ultimately when we're searching for enough, we're searching for satisfaction. We want to feel fulfilled, we want to feel like we're enough. And it's so easy to make it about a monetary value or a number on a page. But you feeling enough, will never just be satisfied by numbers on a page or a certain amount of money. And I think all of us can know that, really grappling with it and figuring out what does it mean instead and how do you search for it? And how do I change and grow as a person and how do I acknowledge who I am and how I've grown? It all starts to feel so much more complicated. And of course we all would love to just simplify it down to an amount of money that we must achieve in order to have enough now. I think at some point it really started to make sense to me that the way I was approaching it wasn't ever going to satisfy. I think I knew that instinctually. I think I was willing to accept that as true. But I had zero frame of reference for what to do instead. And I don't think it was until I stumbled back upon this one particular thing that I started to really understand why I had been so focused for so long on that particular piece. And I don't necessarily think all of our stories are the same. So if I start sharing and you're like, that's not me, okay, well, maybe this isn't your problem. Maybe you are more able to wrestle with this thought and idea and get to some sort of conclusion that's logical. But for me, I couldn't figure out if it's not a number on a page or a certain amount of money, then what is it? Well, I went back just by happenstance and looked at Maslow's hierarchy of needs. And I had previously looked at these as I'm sure most of you had to better understand, what were the various things people need to satisfy in order to feel like we have all of our needs met? Because I don't necessarily think I realized at the time. But if we have all of our needs met, isn't that satisfaction? Isn't that the definition of satisfying enough? Right. Anyway, I wasn't this profound when I saw it initially. Okay, it was not that deep. I just simply was looking at this pyramid again and I remembered some of the basics, like the bottom, the foundation. The thing that we need before we can move on to the next is physiological needs. We need air, we need water, we need food, we need shelter, we need sleep and clothing. And those things, if they're not satisfied, it's very hard to focus on the next set of needs. Ideally, we need all of these things to feel whole and fulfilled. But if you don't have those base needs met, it's very hard to move on. So the second layer is all around safety. We have to have personal security, safety in employment. And in my opinion, that's more like sustainability of income. Like, we have to make enough financially, we have to have resources, be resourced. We need our health. And this particular version talks about having property or assets. I would imagine that could be savings or investments in our future. But we need safety for not only today, but for our future. And previously I focused enough essentially around fulfilling safety. I wanted to sustainably make enough income so that I could take care of those safety needs. And I was so focused on that for so long because I didn't have that for most of my life. At least I didn't feel that way for most of my life. Growing up with two parents on disability, it just changes you. You feel reliant on everyone else and you feel like you're not taking care of yourself. At least I didn't as a child of that system. And so it only makes sense that in a business I would work my butt off to get to the point that I felt like I was independently safe and secure and financially resilient. I very much remember when I got to that point where I felt like this was satisfied. It was around the time when we moved into this home, which is already been five years, which is bizarre to me, but we had bought our dream home. We had good savings, like excellent savings. I knew we were set up for our future. I knew retirement was going to work out, we were going to be able to be self sufficient. Like all of those things finally clicked into place. And then I didn't know what to do with myself and I didn't know what I was looking for. I felt kind of adrift. Like if all of these boxes are checked, then what am I supposed to do now? If the goal, like foundationally as a human being was to get that sense of security, I would do things that would provide that or make me feel in control of that or make me feel validated, which looking back, hindsight's always 20 20, right? Like I can look back and I can see why that makes sense. I can see why I put those goals and those things ahead of where I was going. Like $100,000 launch or $100,000 month felt like the definition of a growing business. That is a sustainable one. Reaching a certain team size felt like I was running a real company that was going to support me long term and be able to continue to grow and flourish. Getting pressed felt like validation. Outside of myself, I wasn't the only one saying that what I was doing was making an impact. Other people were saying and validating that what I was doing was making an impact. And I think all of us do that, at least for a while. And then at some point it starts to feel frivolous, like why am I still focusing on this? When did money become so important? Why do I even care about that? And I think this disillusion often happens in correlation with actually being safe and secure and we don't realize the connection. I certainly didn't when it was happening. It took me five more years to figure out that was Happening. I just felt lost. I felt like. And what now, right when you've done it all, when you've met the goal, when you check the boxes, and it still doesn't feel like enough, even though that's what you defined as enough, what's next? I certainly didn't know then. I had no clue. And instead of searching for the answer, instead of trying to figure out what it is that I really wanted or what was going to satisfy that or what was going to make me feel whole, I distracted myself. Because girl is really good at doing that. I kept, in some ways up the ruse, right? Keep growing the business, keep making money, keep helping more people. If you keep doing all of these things, then surely at some point it's gonna feel good. That was all true. And I was spending every waking moment of my free time focused on helping other people. A big chunk of which three years of which was spent caregiving for Jared's grandmother, You know, she lived with us full time. She lived with us from 93 to 96. And it was a lot. It is so much time and energy, and more so than even that, it is absolutely consuming of all your extra thoughts and ideas. I didn't have time for that. I didn't have time to continue to explore. I wasn't really growing myself. I was, for lack of a better way to describe it, in survival mode. Because every new day brought a new set of challenges. As her dementia progressed and her physical abilities declined, there was more on our plate constantly. And I by no means regret that time. I would do it again in a heartbeat. It was such an incredible time to be a part of someone's life and really make a lasting difference. There is no way she would have lived as long as she did if she hadn't been in our care. And it wasn't prolonging something in a way that she wasn't enjoying it, like she was truly living. And that's such a beautiful thing. And I think in some ways it gave me some level of fulfillment because I was able to focus on someone else. But that can create a nearly codependent relationship. I don't necessarily think it was that way because she truly did need the help. I wasn't, you know, overcompensating, but it didn't mean I could continue to explore the concept of enough. Now she's been gone two years, and for anyone who's been through grief, you know that it's never really over, but it's usually more all consuming in the beginning. And then every day gets a little bit easier and sometimes it comes back in waves and unexpected things kind of bring you back to those moments, but for the most part it gets a little lighter every day. And it really wasn't until this summer that I felt like I could explore again what I needed. Because for so long I had been focused on what everyone else needed. And in some ways I think I thought that was what I was supposed to do. If I have enough, then that means that I need to make sure everyone else also does. If I am safe and secure and have the financial means, then I need to, in order to feel satisfied, make sure everyone else also have those needs met. And I think that comes from like an incredible place of giving and caring, but it fails to ignore your other needs. Because there's not just two levels in Maslow's hierarchy of needs. There's five. There's five levels Want to learn exactly.
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Being love and belonging to where you're seeking friendship, intimacy, family and a sense of connection. There's also esteem, which is about respect and self esteem and status and strength and freedom. And the ultimate need is self actualization, desire to become the most that one can be. And I think so often that's what we're actually trying to achieve. But we're trying to skip all of these other steps. And it took kind of a rearranging of my life for me to realize that I was never going to be enough without community. I wanted to be enough all on my own. I wanted to be hyper independent self kind of. I don't know what the word I'm going for is, but really focused on being sure I was the only one who would ever take care of me. But you need more than that. You need other people to take care of you. Not all the time and not for everything. I'm not talking about them rescuing you. But you need love and a sense of belonging. Of course you do. And you know if you back out and look at it, I know you know that. But often when there is this shift happening, we don't see that as the solution. We think we need to do more of what we've been doing, work harder, accomplish more, get more validation, have more money, put more money away in savings like we think that will make the shift. And it's not going to. It's not going to. I do Think, in some ways, you attempting to focus on those things can sometimes, not always, can sometimes earn you that esteem, that respect or status or recognition. But it's all coming from this place of overwork and underappreciation of self. So it's just happening, but you're, like, glossing over it every single time because you're missing such a key and important component. And it's really easy to want to put that, like, all in one place. Like, if I have a solid, intimate partner, usually sexual partner, like a spouse, then that's all I need. Then I have that love, I have that intimacy. But it is incredibly unhealthy and very unrealistic that we are going to be able to get all our needs met by one person in the same way. You know, people talk about needing a village to raise children. You need a village for different things. You need someone who will make you laugh. You need someone who'll make you cry or listen to you cry. You're gonna need someone who's gonna have fun. You're gonna need someone who can help you grow spiritually, who can support you psychologically. And some of these things, as odd as it sounds, I do think you can pay for, like, I do think a therapist can go a long way. I do think being a part of a church community can help. But I really avoided truly intimate friendships. I didn't want to get hurt. I didn't want someone to know all of me and then be completely torn apart if they didn't like that person, that version of me. It's kind of an impossible thing to admit, you know, that you want that and that you deserve that, but you're scared of it. And ironically, I don't think I intentionally went after intimacy because intimacy feels very vulnerable, right? It feels exactly like it sounds very intimate. And so typically, we put that aside for a select few, right? But I did know, especially coming out of COVID that I needed friendship, genuine friendship. Because so many of my quote unquote friends up until this point were really business relationships. They were built on, I'll scratch your back, you scratch mine. And not that that's unhelpful. Like, clearly having business contacts, having business relationships, it's going to help that business grow. It's going to help you create that safety and security. It's going to give you an opportunity, when necessary, to talk to somebody else that actually gets it because they're in your shoes. But you also need people that could care less what you do for a living that has, you know, zero care in the world for how you're doing financially. Not that they don't want you to have enough. They do, but they don't care if you're rich or poor. They just care about you, regardless of all those things. But friendship was not just something that was going to fall into my lap. It wasn't going to be. And someday all these people will just exist and be new characters in my story. I had to go find them. I had to go put myself in a room consistently, again and again and again until I could really get to know people. Because, ironically, some of my best friends are the people that I had written off in the beginning. Not because I didn't think they were good people, but I assumed we didn't have enough in common or that our lives were too very different. But usually we're getting to know this, like, superficial version of people. What do you do for a living? How do you spend your free time? That we don't spend enough time getting to know people's hearts and values and the things they prioritize in life. We're focused on all these, like, frivolous, unimportant things. There's absolutely a reason I've talked about friendship on this show before. There's been multiple episodes on adult friendship. But I also think a good resource that has come up quite recently was totally took me by, like, what's the word I'm going for? It was just unexpected. This is not where I would have thought it would come from. But earlier this year I read the let them theory, and there's a whole section of the book on friendship. And I think it talks a lot about this closeness that we're seeking and how often how we're kind of pulled away from it because of this kind of separation that naturally happens at several inflection points in our lives. And for me, because I didn't have kids in my 20s, I lost a lot of friends. It's not that, like, I actually lost them. Like, they're, of course, still there. They're in my orbit. But our lives are so very different that we never had real reasons to cross paths. They started to feel weird about inviting me to their kid's birthday because now they're five or now they're eight. But that was the thing going on in their life. So if enough isn't some measure of output or something, you go and seek, like, a certain amount of money or you checking boxes. If it's not you arriving somewhere, if it's not some sort of destination, then, like, what is it? And it's not me sitting here saying that, oh, you know, it's not money at all. It's friendship and intimacy. No, that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying we have complex needs. We need food and shelter and sleep and clothes on our back. We need to have our safety needs met. We need personal security. We need our health. We need financial resources. But we also need that love and belonging. We need to feel validated and recognized in our communities. Then and only then, can we become the most that we can be. Because when we're distracted by a lack of need, like this area is devoid in your life, I think it's very hard to do the most good that you can or be the best version of yourself that you can because you're struggling, because a need is literally not met. Now, my wealth isn't just measured by some number on a spreadsheet. It's not the amount of money in my bank account or my investment accounts. It's not how early I can retire. Although all of those things matter to me, that's not it. Wealth is also time, freedom, where and how I get to spend my time. Just having the choice to do something different. It's intentionally choosing calm instead of constantly putting myself in chaos. Because so often the things I say have to get done, especially as an entrepreneur, they're things that we put on ourselves. They're responsibilities that we say we have. We're the ones who defined how many social networks we're maintaining and how much output we have and how many times we launch and how many times we put our offers in front of people. All of those things are our decisions. And then we say we're out of time and we can't invest in all these other areas of our lives because we're not doing what we say we're going to do. But is what we say we're going to do a desperate need to fulfill yourself? I mean, I think more likely than not, yes. Because the people I've found, especially clients who've gotten to the point where they do have what they need, they feel lost for a period. They start to beat themselves up for not doing enough, for not, you know, moving forward at the same speed they once did. But wealth is being present. Wealth is having joy and peace and happiness. It's not just money. I don't know if you'll ever really know if you have enough. But my hope is that you realize that you are enough and that you don't have to be anyone but you to the rest of the world. You don't have to keep up the show, you don't have to keep performing, you don't have to keep acting a certain way because you think that's what people want from you. I mean, you can do that, it's clearly gotten you this far. But if you're as exhausted as I am or was, you know that you can't keep up with that either because you've put too much on your plate or because you're masking all the time. Enough is not some like destination that you're gonna reach and have some sort of finish line. It's always evolving with you. You're gonna have to see it through. You're gonna have to constantly revisit these things. Like, because our situations change, relationships change, the amount of money we need to survive in this country changes. Inflation's real, right? So we will have to reassess these things. But we can't get so hyper focused on one little piece of the puzzle because you're so much more complex than that. Not that you can't have the spreadsheet, not that you can't track your progress towards a goal, but if you think hitting it is going to make you feel a certain way, I doubt it. At least not for very long. Years ago, when I started this business, I focused on creative entrepreneurs, people who saw themselves as creative. And sometimes over the years that's evolved. And I've spoken more generally to a population of entrepreneurs doing a wide variety of things. But I think often that's what we're seeking. One person's version of self actualization is morality, creativity, spontaneity, problem solving, a lack of prejudice and acceptance of facts. Self actualization, by definition, is the realization or fulfillment of one's talents and potentialities. We all want the feeling of fulfillment. We all want to feel enough. We all want to feel satisfied. And my question to you is, are you ever gonna feel that creativity and that groundedness and that acceptance if you don't have those other things taken care of? I don't think so. We wanna jump there. We wanna focus on personal growth. There's a reason self help is such a huge industry, right? Because we want to get there, we want to focus on that. But if we're not focused on the other things first, it's just not going to happen. So the question I want to leave you with is perhaps it's twofold. One, where are you putting your focus or emphasis? What have you convinced yourself that you need in order to have that enoughness satisfied? Where have you been putting your time and energy. And two, if you were to spread that energy out a little more and include some of these other pieces, where have you been completely neglecting yourself and your personal needs? By no means do I know this statistically, but I know enough of you personally and I know my audience enough to know that for the majority of you it is that lack of belonging. You're missing the love and intimacy in your life. And so if I can encourage you to do anything is to put a little less on your to do list and a little more emphasis on the community you want to build.
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Title: How My Definition of “Enough” Has Changed
Date: November 4, 2025
Host: Abagail Pumphrey, CEO of Boss Project
In this solo episode, host Abagail Pumphrey takes listeners inside her personal and professional evolution in defining “enough.” She shares how her view of fulfillment has shifted from strict financial and business benchmarks to a more holistic understanding rooted in satisfaction, connection, and self-actualization. Abagail uses her experiences and Maslow’s hierarchy of needs as a framework to discuss how entrepreneurs often conflate “enough” with external validation and monetary success—but what truly matters goes much deeper. The tone is authentic, vulnerable, and motivational, offering actionable prompts for listeners to reconsider their own definition of enough.
Friendship and Intimacy:
Action Required:
Resources Mentioned:
Call to Action: