Scarcity vs. Abundance Mindset – Do you know how to benefit from this distinction?

Georgstuby Georg 6 Comments

Do you want to live in a world in which you lack nothing? Do you want to enjoy life to the fullest ? Do you want to know that you deserve all the amazing things in this world? 

Well – it lies in YOUR hands. It is all about the perspective you choose.

Today I will tell you more about the distinction between scarcity vs. abundance.

Do you know about the mindfuck of scarcity?

You DO know it if you often think that there is too little of everything. You know it, if you often focus on what you don’t have in your life right now – instead of seeing what you ALREADY have.

Maybe you see a lack of money, a lack of deep friendships, a lack of travelling, a lack of positive feelings or a lack of health. This is called a scarcity-mindset – and it is completely innocent. To focus on what we don’t have is what society, advertisement and the market teaches us from our childhood on. 

But what is actually enough? From where on will you start to relax and enjoy your life? When do you finally take this vacation or do the things you have been thinking about for such a long time?

See, here is the catch: If you remain in the mindset of scarcity you will never really be content. You will keep on living in a feeling of lack, missing out and jealousy.

Let’s have a look on the opposite of scarcity: abundance. How does abundance look like instead? If you live in a feeling of abundance, you are grateful for what you already have. You appreciate the place you live in. You are happy with where you are right now in your career. You also appreciate things that are for free – like the sunshine, the nature around you or simply that you are alive. 

Even while talking about this, I start to experience a lighthearted feeling. My brain relaxes and I have less loud thoughts. The monkey mind cools down. This happens because gratefulness is a gateway to happiness and contentment. 

At the end it is all about focusing on what you already have, because there is no god-given amount of what is enough. If you ask 10 people around the world how much money in the account is enough, you will get 10 different answers – that vary between a few dollars and a few trillions. 

So, it is really a conscious choice on what you focus on. It might be difficult at the beginning – but with every time you shift your focus to see what you already have in your life it will become easier and easier. 

I am sure you already heard about the famous example with the red car. From the moment on you get interested in buying a red car, you will all of the sudden see it everywhere. Of course the red cars have been driving around before. You just started to focus your attention on something different – and your world changed.

What is the obstacle between a scarcity vs. abundance mindset?

The obstacle is how much you believe in your loud thoughts – how much you listen to your monkey mind.

Every human being on this planet knows this kind of thoughts – including me: “Who am I to ask for this or to do that?”, “I always get left out”, “I am not good enough to do this”, “Why does he have more success than me?” … These are just a few examples of these loud monkey thoughts.

A lot of these loud thoughts are also wandering around in society:   “I need to have more than my neighbour”,  “ I can’t live without having this” or “I am not OK until X happens”.

I now could speak a lot about this “monkey mind”. But at the end more knowledge about it is not going to help you. Why? Because just feeding the intellect with more knowledge won’t stop you from thinking and attaching to these thoughts. 

And here lies the problem – and also the solution: If you choose the perspective of you being the origin of these thoughts, think they are you and buying into them – it gets painful. 

As long as you attach to this kind of thinking, you will kick the can down the road and postpone happiness and contentment.

As long as you attach to thoughts about scarcity you will live in the ambivalence of secretly wanting more – but not allowing yourself to actually get it. You just tell yourself “I don’t deserve more” and go on to the agenda. So you stay where you are and where you think you feel safe.

If you are stuck in this version of reality,  you blame others and thus gives them power. You put yourself in the role of a victim. 

I certainly did all of this when I was younger. I could not see that I subcounsciously chose this slice of reality with believing these thoughts and through that give them power. 

Today I know how to do it differently. If your life today is still determined by scarcity and fear, I am happy to show you how you can easily choose abundance in your life.

How can I choose abundance?

No let`s talk more about the solution and a SIMPLE exercise that you will EASILY integrate into your life.

The solution is twofold:

First it is about knowing that we always experience everything via thought. And that most fears are made up by us. 

Marc Twain said it in a funny way: “I Have Experienced Many Terrible Things In Life, A Few Of Which Actually Happened”. 

With this quote he points us to the mirages that we create in our lives through overthinking and choosing certain perspectives. 

The more we do this the more we train our brain to go this way again. But if we can build synapses for negative thoughts we can do this as well for positive ones.

The best way to do this is to realise what you are thankful for in your life. Let me show you a short exercise:

To make the effects of this exercise even deeper you can write the things down that came up. This ties in into the “Morning Pages” that Julia Cameron is presenting in her well known Book “The Artist Way”. In these Morning Pages she recommends to write down your stream of thoughts for a few minutes. 

In my experience this exercise gets even more powerful if we focus on two things:

–  What we are grateful for

–  And What we wish for in our lives

 Set a timer to 10 Minutes and just keep on writing what comes to mind – until the alarm goes off.  

If you know about Compound Effects you know how much even 10 Minutes of doings something will change your world. 

The best time is to start now. So why not doing the exercise right now after reading this article?

And of course, I am interested to hear, what your personal experience with the scarcity vs. abundance mindset is. Please share it with us in the comments below!

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