The phone rings. He’s a friend of hers who just landed a recurring role on a great TV series. She is ecstatic; her voice sings and screams in a high pitch of excitement. She is very grateful to share her moment with you. Despite his genuine desire to rejoice at his friend’s good news, a twinge of anxiety erupts in the pit of his stomach. Your heart begins to race, your breathing becomes shallow, your face turns red, you even feel like crying. Worst of all, you feel ashamed that you can’t enjoy your friend’s success.
When you have a full-bodied, visceral response to hearing about someone else’s accomplishments, it can be indicative of a deep psychospiritual conditioning known as the scarcity mindset. The scarcity mentality is a worldview rooted in the belief that there is not enough. There is not enough success, there is not enough wealth, there is not enough love for everyone. The maxim of the scarcity mentality is that someone must lose for you to win.
This mindset is often codified early in life. If we experience childhoods in which in fact “there was not enough”, where our physical, emotional or spiritual needs were unmet, the scarcity can easily become the lens through which we view the world. This worldview often motivates tremendous momentum, but it also leaves us hyper-vigilant, incessantly comparing and competing with those around us, and making us fundamentally distrustful of life.
The opposite of a scarcity mentality is an abundance mentality. A paradigm of abundance views the world in terms of unlimited potential, where there is the possibility of enough for everyone. If you identify with a scarcity mentality, you may view the previous sentence with skepticism and rejection, or equate an abundance perspective with a misleading utopian vision. However, rather than a Polyan denial of injustice, an abundance mentality sees the world’s inequalities as stemming from an awareness of scarcity at the individual and collective level. World hunger is not the result of food shortages, it is a product of national and global policies rooted in greed and scarcity. While there may be a limited amount of oil on earth, there is a great deal of alternative energy available.
An abundance mindset is based on the spiritual principle of interconnectedness. Abundance allows us to experience ourselves as more than animals separated at war with each other for the last bit of food, but as part of a collective where everyone has a vital role to play, and we are in this together. While competition still plays a natural role in everyday life, when an expectation is disappointed, when someone else gets the job, the pain isn’t so great that your core shudders. It doesn’t become a Herculean task to wish someone the best because you have an innate confidence that you, too, will be cared for.
What is so pernicious about the scarcity mindset is that it is a self-fulfilling prophecy. When you see the world as scarce and perceive the success of others as a threat, you project an air of despair that is unpleasant toward opportunity. The old adage “don’t network, make friends” comes to mind. When you enter a situation from a scarcity mindset, all you see is what others can do for you. This agenda is transparent and generally makes people run! When you can rest in a place of abundance, you open yourself to serve. You are able to authentically connect with others and radiate an engaging and positive energy. Wisdom traditions throughout the centuries reiterate that you only get what you give away. This does not mean martyrdom, or feign philanthropy, or suppress jealousy or shadow. It means doing the inner work of dismantling scarcity conditioning and realigning yourself with an abundance mindset that can foster inspiration and generosity for yourself and others. Ultimately, it is a much easier way of life.
Copyright Meredith Hines MA 2011
