The abundance mentality comes from your belief that there is enough to share. It drives your success in both business and life. Without it, you possess the scarcity mindset, a primal way of seeing the world. While racked with scarcity-think, you’ll hoard what you have, be jealous of those who are doing well and repel opportunities from your life.
I believe that the abundance mentality is MUCH more driven by our environment than our personality. All things being equal, kids are natrually generous with each other. Over time, based on their context and experiences, they either maintain that perspective or trade it in on the scarcity mindset.
These days, it’s pretty easy to create an environment that induces scarcity-think. You turn on the news, and they bang the drums of gloom, doom and despair. You hang out with people that declare the sky is falling. You surf social media sites, often being drawn into bad-news or tragedies of the day.
In Vegas, there’s a prevailing idea: Keep the betters at the table long enough and the house wins. This works the same for you: Keep eating negative information and eventually the forces of Scarcity win the battle for your mind. And you stop giving, loving and caring. You adopt unnatractive personality traits like envy and selfishness. You compete when you should be collaborating.
How do you avoid this? FEED YOUR MIND GOOD STUFF. You should be as careful about what you put into your head as you are about what you put into your mouth. You should avoid all types of media that are designed to grab your attention VS those designed to feed your mind helpful information. If you’d like my entire system of Good Mind Food, download this free chapter from Today We Are Rich.
One last idea: Your mind’s breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Don’t load up on info-carbs like your email Inbox, social media and TV news. Instead, spend a 1/2 hour or so reading out of a book that expands your mind, makes you better at your job or gives you a glimpse into the future.
Norman Mailer called his morning reading ritual “combing his brain.” That’s a great way to think about what it takes to stay positive, confident and generous.
For more, check out Mojo Rising: Get Out Of Scarcity Thinking on Vimeo.
