I recently came across a LinkedIn post on how to get your book on the New York Times best seller list. The tips themselves were practical, and described pretty much what I’d seen several recently successful business and productivity authors do. And it was one of the most depressing things I’ve read in a while – and let’s face it, there’s stiff competition for that these days.

The gist of the article was to minimise the focus on writing, forget your inner poet and embrace your inner CEO instead. It was about marketing, building a brand, leverage, products, to be the one percent of the one percent who ‘make it’. And there’s nothing wrong with that if that’s what you want to do.

But what the author didn’t talk about was what you might lose if you follow their plan. Because even those who make the best seller list will tell you it felt good for maybe 24 hours. Sometimes less. And there they are, back in their same body, with all the same insecurities they had the day before, in their same life. Perhaps wealthier, likely with more doors opening, and now faced with even more opportunities that pull them away from what made them love writing or their field of interest in the first place, with the added pressure to do it again.

And if you don’t make that not so holy grail? What gets lost when we swap art for algorithms, grace for grind, magic for marketing? There’s a risk we kill the very things that make life worth living and drive away the people we most want to connect with through relentless hustle. And the risk to us as a society? It’s a lot of noise with very little substance.

I’m not saying to give up on big dreams. Someone is going to be top of the best seller list, win gold at the Olympics, or build a billion dollar business. Why not you? But there is also greatness in the far more humble impact you can have closer to home, in real people’s lives, by embodying what you hold most dear.

Curiosity is a wonderful thing. But it can make us so hungry for more knowledge and skills that we feel saturated. Responsibility can make us cram in so much learning that we feel bloated. And integrity can overwhelm us with the expectation we need to integrate it all into our practice.

Or maybe that’s just me. But if it sounds familiar, we can ask ourselves what can I learn again? What do I already know is valuable and could do just a bit better? What good foundations can I build on? What could I refresh or revive?

We can do the familiar with more intention. Do the usual with a little more pause and consideration. We can return to old gems and breathe new life into them with a little more depth from what we know now. We can practice ways to sustain the good things we do that tend to fade under pressure.

Of course, we’ll keep learning new things. It’s necessary. And it’s rewarding. But let’s leave room to rediscover what we already know. Just because we’ve met it before doesn’t mean it isn’t worthwhile meeting it again. And again.

For myself, I could do a lot worse than to keep coming back to speaking less, listening more and evoking what the other person already knows but might also be ready to learn again.

Last year I did a cooking class in India. The instructor refused to give us a recipe for each dish, instead wanting us to be guided by our palate and instincts. We had a limited spice set that covered all the bases: digestion, health, salt, bitter, sweet, sour, umami and heat.

There were some guiding principles for the order to add spices and a general flavour profile we were aiming to create for each dish, but the depth of flavour came from tasting and adjusting throughout the cooking. There was no correct amount of anything, just a desire for the final version to be delicious.

When it was time to check the balance of flavours, our first urge was to ask her for direction. But she refused. “It’s your dish. You’re the one who’s eating it.” She encouraged us to pay close attention to what our senses were telling us, and to trust our judgement on what to add and how much. Then add 60 percent of that. Let it settle. Then taste again.

It was such a lovely metaphor for a mindful way to live. Know what matters. Choose a limited but well-rounded set of key ingredients. Be present. Be intentional. Be mindful of all of your senses. Embrace your own preferences. Trust your intuition. Take action.

Taking the metaphor a step further we can set our sights on the ideal, then do 60 percent. Make the action bold enough to make a difference but modest enough to be sustainable and allow room for further adjustment. Give it some time. Review and adjust. Share and savour. Keep going. With consistency and repetition, instincts become a craft and the process becomes a rhythm that can carry us through the ups and downs.

We humans have a complicated relationship with the idea of ‘enough’. The fear of not doing enough is a trap anyone can fall into if they care about what they do. The fear of not being good enough is one of the most common and wounding core beliefs that holds people back from their dreams and from each other.

‘Not enough’ can be a motivational war cry to inspire us to dig deeper in service of our ambition or community. Or be dangled in front of us by astute marketers and social engineers to keep us drudging along a path of constant consumption, endless subscriptions and relentless work. And not enough food or air or clean water or medicine or love can kill us.

At the other extreme there’s the richest people in the world, with far more than they could ever consume in a thousand lifetimes, who are hell bent on acquiring more no matter the cost to others or the planet. Another 100 billion won’t fill the emotional hole they’re trying to fill.

Few of us are immune from the siren call of enough, the prize just beyond reach, just beyond that next purchase or promotion or praise. It’s like we all played Hungry Hippos as kids and got the message that’s how we play the game of life. Just. Get. More. Or lose.

‘Not enough’ is a cue, not a cure. It’s a signal to investigate our own discomfort and deeper needs. We can be curious and follow the trail of breadcrumbs to its source. “If I had/did/was that, then I would have/feel… and if I had/felt/was that I would have/feel…” and so on.

Sometimes we find we’ve been chasing a unicorn, an unrealistic state of certainty or contentment. Sometimes we find we were chasing something we had all along but it looked too humble and familiar to seem important. And sometimes we find we were chasing the wrong thing. We didn’t need more knowledge, we needed more energy.

But maybe the word ‘enough’ was telling this all along. At least in English. Just look at it. It’s complicated. The spelling is hectic. The pronunciation is bewildering. There’s a lot going on. And indeed there is.