Lose Your Scarcity Mindset - Day 74 of 365 Days to a Better You
Lose your scarcity mindset.
Scarcity is the biggest religion and the biggest economic system on our planet. Scarcity is a fear-based mindset. Tim Sanders, former Yahoo! executive and best-selling author, says, "The scarcity mindset has a battle cry and it's the following. There's not enough to go around"It's not surprising that the vast majority of human beings on this planet have a steadfast, almost religious, belief in scarcity. I think it's fair to say that most of our planet is controlled by three economic ideologies or some combination thereof - Capitalism, Socialism, and Communism.Each of these economic systems readily accepts and in different ways promotes a foundational sense of scarcity.
- Capitalism purposely creates scarcity so that lack can be sold back to you at a profit. This winds up creating actual scarcity for many people based on affordability and drives a whole set inequalities and unaddressed social problems.
- Socialism is like a potluck dinner with the government as arbiter. Everyone brings a dish and then the government supposedly divvies it equally among everyone. There has never been pure socialist society that didn't result in high levels of scarcity. When bureaucracies control the wealth, they almost invariably become bloated and corrupt in the act portioning.
- Communism, if you listen to its ardent advocates, is devoid of scarcity. In theory, everything is owned by everyone and shared equally. Starting with the fact this has never been achieved, scarcity often winds up widespread. Everyone may have basic needs met but the lack of incentive does not drive abundance to create more for anyone. This is a big part of why the Soviet Union collapsed and China has become a hybrid Communist-Capitalist state.
Ray, you might be thinking, why are you giving a political science refresher? It's because regardless of which one of these systems you live in, scarcity is an accepted given. You cannot rely on your economic system to deliver from that mindset. You have to do that on your own.The problem is scarcity is NOT a reality. It's a mindset. Every one of these societies projects consciously or unconsciously that scarcity mindset into the results it produces. The people are swept up in this belief that the world and the universe is naturally filled with scarcity when it is nothing more than the product of human-made systems of economics and thought.Some religious ideologies and even some strains of environmentalism also push this idea that resources are limited by God or by nature. It's simply not true. If you slip off the scarcity shades and look honestly at the universe around you, you'll see there's plenty to go around. We don't have a resource deficit we have systems that are horrible at producing abundance or sharing it.Power hack: How can you personally escape a scarcity mindset and achieve abundance in your life, even if our institutions aren't ready to go there?Stefan James from Project Life Mastery offers some great insights on dealing with the scarcity mindset and moving to abundance in this video.[embed width="123" height="456"]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wp9pBU7oaa8[/embed]Tony Robbins shared this great story about how generosity helped end his scarcity mindset.[embed width="123" height="456"]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjiwqFZG4kY[/embed]See abundance not scarcity. Be abundance not scarcity.Thanks for reading and please share if you found this useful!Ray