“Abundance is not something I acquire, it’s something I tune into.” Wayne Dyer
If you have been reading my emails and my posts on Facebook and twitter, you probably know that my favorite leadership law is the Law of Magnetism. Many of my posts center around mindset and what/who am I attracting into my life by my thinking.
Working at a non-profit, the one mindset that holds many non-profits back from explosive funding is the scarcity mindset. I used to think that way, too. I remember the cure…I fought hard for a speaker for our fund-raiser whose fee was $10,000. Gulp, we’d never paid that before. But I was sure…I felt deep down in my Knower that he would bring great results. I’d read his books and I knew how much faith he had. He believed and expected to achieve the absolute impossible. If he could, we could.
AND WE DID. That speaker was a magnet for great things. That experience started the decline of my scarcity thinking and today, it’s gone…well, most of the time.
The Scarcity Mentality is the zero-sum paradigm of life. People with a Scarcity Mentality have a very difficult time sharing recognition and credit, power or profit—even with those who help in the production. They also have a hard time being genuinely happy for the success of other people. These are the people who never have enough time, money, energy or resources to achieve their goals. They frame their challenges around what they lack. Preservation rather than expansion is the lens they look through. They like familiar– “we’ve never done THAT before,” rather than risk. They set goals based on what they were able to achieve, rather than what may be possible. In a culture of perceived lack, people become nervous and afraid to make a mistake and creative thinking suffers.
The Abundance Mentality, on the other hand, flows out of a deep inner sense of personal worth or security. It is the paradigm that there is plenty out there and enough to spare for everybody. It results in the sharing of prestige, recognition, profits and decision-making. It opens possibilities, options, alternatives and creativity. A person with the abundance mindset doesn’t settle with “We can’t afford it,” they ask “how can we afford it?” That kind of thinking opens up myriads of possibilities! A person with an abundance mindset thinks about what they want and expects that there is a way to get it. Abundant mindset people are optimistic and choose to see obstacles as opportunities. They see the glass half full rather than half empty.
Leaders create the culture of our workplaces or homes and mindsets are awfully contagious. Which mindset do you want to operate out of? Which mindset do you want your team run on? We as leaders need to model the behavior that we want to see in our team.
Steven Covey, author of “Seven Habits of Highly Effective People,” says, “There is enough pie to go around, so break that nasty habit of comparing yourself to others. Repeat after me: There is plenty for everyone. Say the sentence often enough, and it’ll become second nature.”
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