Can You REALLY Shift from Scarcity to Abundance Mindset?
This episode of Atlanta breaks it down.
Deep down, everyone believes one of two things: life is scare or life is abundant.
Scarcity…you clean and reuse Ziplock bags.
Abundance…the kitchen is always stocked.
1.
There’s an episode of Atlanta called “The Streisand Effect” that explains all of this beautifully.
Essentially, Earn, the protagonist, wants to trade in an old smart phone for cash at a pawn shop.
His buddy Darius says he could make more money if they trade the phone for a sword and flip it.
Later in the episode, Darius trades the sword for a dog rather than cash.
Then, he reveals his plan to breed the dog and that way, they’ll have more money in the future, as multiple puppies are more valuable than the phone ever would be.
Darius thought he was helping Earn get more money, but in reality, Earn needed money today (he needed to “eat today”), so Darius hands over his own phone so Earn can get cash today.
This is a long, drawn-out, comedic event to show the difference in abundance and scarcity.
Earn’s mindset is about money today, not tomorrow. He’s only worried about today and he can worry about tomorrow, later.
2.
We all want to have an abundant mindset, to live an abundant life, to have more than enough to provide for those around us.
But moving from scarcity to abundance is not just a on/off switch.
In fact, while you’re in the process of making the shift, it feels like a curse.
You know there’s a better path out there for you, but you’re surrounded by your old way of thinking.
Not just the mindset, which is hard to break, but everything around you and the choices you make about those things, how you spend your day, and basically…everything you do.
3.
I know the answer is abundance, but I grew up in an area focused on scarcity, where most of my peers spent a lot of time with grandparents, who survived the Great Depression.
This means finishing your plate, saving the excess, focusing on getting a good job nearby, and taking little to no risk in life.
This is true for most people in America, even if they dream of more.
The past few days, we had a bad leak in our basement. As a writer, it felt like a metaphor for years of neglect.
We should have organized it sooner. We shouldn’t have so many catch-all places in the house. We shouldn’t have so much stuff we don’t use.
But underneath all of that, we’re focused on scarcity. It’s hard to throw things away. What if you need it later? What if times in the future are scarce?
This mindset made me wait three days to call a plumber after trying to fix the issue myself.
This mindset made me wait until junk was truly damaged to finally toss it out.
This mindset made me think everything out of sight was of equal value, which certainly wasn’t the case.
It’s one thing to understand the idea that abundance trumps scarcity. It’s another to live it and instill the idea into the choices we make day after day.
4.
Today, I still managed to move forward with my goals, but my mindset is up and down to say the least.
- Publish Medium ✔️
- Schedule Email ✔️
- Swipe copy emails ✔️
- UpWork outreach 3x ✔️
- Podcast interview ✔️
- Prospect interview 1 ✔️
- Prospect interview 2 ✔️
- Clear water damage ✔️
- Schedule plumber ✔️
- Start tomorrow’s post ✔️
I wish this post had a more tangible bit of advice, but I fear everything in life is actually the same: you have to choose to live an amazing life and force yourself to make the hard choices that lead to what you desire most.
Which camp do you currently belong to: abundance or scarcity?
.
.
.
If you’d like daily posts from this continuum, make sure to join my newsletter and steal my first book right here, for free.
