Moving From Scarcity to Abundance
Nearly all of us strive to expand, yet moving beyond wanting to and actually doing so can feel nearly impossible
Abundance…
Every Tuesday, I participate in a group-coaching call hosted by the team at Wake Up Warrior. This has been a place where for over two years I have consistently been pushed, challenged, prodded, and coached on how to move my life from here to there.
Last week, I was called upon to share some specifics about how my life had become more abundant, and in the spontaneity of the moment, I completely failed to articulate my thoughts in any coherent way. When the camera shined on me, I couldn’t find the words and it has haunted me since.
But before we get back into that, I think it’s important to lay a little groundwork.
Our coaches at Wake Up Warrior inherently believe we can build a Have It All lifestyle, where our life fully functions in the realms of body, being, balance, and business (i.e. physical, spiritual, emotional, and financial). We can each create a life of not only abundance but prosperity. The Warrior program has been designed to help married businessmen and women each create this in their own lives, and they have been amazingly successful in that vision.
And in following the Warrior Way for several years, I too have found a path to abundance. Admittedly, I have some way to go before I would consider myself prosperous, but scarcity rarely rears its ugly head anymore.
So what do I mean by scarcity, abundance, and prosperity?
For me, scarcity is simply defined as running from something, whereas abundance is running toward something. Prosperity, then, would be living a life where you have fully achieved and have stabilized a life that works.
Scarcity thinking exists everywhere. It’s in the fear of spending money, it’s in the fear or denial of letting yourself experience a trip or an experience because you don’t feel it will “look” right, or it will be too expensive. It’s worrying about the external opinions more than the internal opinions. It’s living based on some external rules, real or imagined, about what you should or should not do. It’s living life in fear and reaction, whatever the source. It’s rooted in a story that you are undeserving, and too often these types of stories rule our lives.
Abundance, therefore, is found in investment. It’s found in taking meaningful actions (more times than not) that are intentional, aligned, and move you forward towards the best version of yourself. It’s following the standards you have set for yourself and giving less fucks about the opinions of the world around you. Abundance is living a life based on intention and attention to a result. It’s living based on Steven Covey’s idea of “begin with the end in mind.” It’s working towards an outcome based on reverse engineering. It’s rooted in the question “who do I need to become…?”
Prosperity, fully realized, would be living a life by design, based on your terms, your knowing, and your complete intention. I don’t know that I can fully articulate what that may feel like in every realm of the living, but from a business perspective, it would for me be aligned with the idea of “fuck you money.” Physically, it would be represented in a strong, functional, lean body that is regularly tested to validate that the internal is working as well as the external. In the relational aspect, it would be a dynamic and aligned connection with a partner or spouse with whom you have and receive unwavering connection and great sex.
For most of us, most of the time, scarcity exists and it exists loudly.
For me, scarcity was rooted in two distinct patterns. First, my middle-class backgrount imprinted an inherent limitation on what I thought, or dreamt, that I could become. And second, it was always much easier for me todefine what I didn’t want my life to be than create any guiding vision of what I did want it to be.
When that began to change, and I begin to grow towards desired outcomes, it began to have ramifications in every part of the four realms of the Have It All concept.
When I began to have my own vision and expectation of health, it became easier to work towards it. When I could define what ideal looked like in my relationships with my wife and children, I became a better father and husband. When I considered what a relationship with God meant for me, it became clear how to foster that. When I defined what wealth meant, it became easier to make decisions to move me forward along a path to create it.
As I said before, it’s still a work in progress in every area, but I know now that I am moving life forward with an intentional direction. I am moving towards something, and that something is something I have defined, not anyone else.
So, how can you too begin to create a life of abundance?
There are a thousand books written on that topic, and a thousand ways to begin to move forward. For today, I wanted to share an idea that was shared with me.
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about Human Life Value. You can read that here.
Briefly, Human Life Value is thinking about your human attributes like a balance statement. In the asset column, you have all your positive characteristics. In the liability column, you have all your negative characteristics. The sum is your Human Life Value, and as you increase your assets and decrease your liability, your Human Life Value grows.
So where do you begin?
It’s pretty simple. Begin by grabbing your favorite writing tool. If it’s a piece a paper, draw a verticle line down the middle. If it’s a Word document or electronic note, maybe set up a two-column table.
At the top, write Assets on the left, and Liabilities on the right.
Just let it flow. Give yourself credit for everything that is good about you, and be brutally honest about everything you suck at (or have been told you suck at (usually, your spouse is a pretty good mirror).
Just write. No numbers. No judgment. Just a big gigantic pro-con list-looking catch-all of who the hell you actually are.
And then set it down and walk away.
After a breather, come back and look at it. What does it tell you? What does it show you? What is your current Human Life Value? Are you good with it? Are you happy with the answer or does it frustrate you? Is that what you wanted? Is that who you wanted to be?
And if not, why? What are your stories? Who are you blaming? What are you running from?
And what could you run towards? Who could you become? What could you do differently beginning today so that in a month, six-months, a year, you can repeat this exercise and have a different answer?
What do you need to read? What do you need to learn? Who’s advice do you need to seek? What do you need to start doing? What do you need to stop doing? Who or what situation are you involved with that isn’t serving you?
These are the questions that begin the course correct.
And the course correct is when abundance becomes possible for you.
So start there.
And then come back next week and we can talk some more.