The issue with scarcity mindset
I coach clients who frequently say, “I don’t have the time to do X”. Not having the time to do X may be small in scale - like 24 hours is not enough to fit all the activities I want to do in a day - or it may be a bit larger in scale - like a full time job means I don’t have enough time to try a new passion.
This “not having enough” mindset is what I call a scarcity mindset, which can be associated with not only time but money or stamina. It’s a mindset you choose to explain your inactions. This mindset says, with a finite amount of resources, if there simply isn’t enough for me to take it is impossible to take as many as I want.
We can tackle this thought without addressing the root mindset. For example if our client says I want to have a YouTube channel but I don’t have the time to go out and film / edit / upload, then we can ask if YouTube is something that the client really wants? If you really wanted to have a channel, you’d sleep less / use paid time off / do other activities to shave time off of your regular day.
Tackling the main issue of scarcity mindset can help the client apply the abundance mindset, which is the opposite of scarcity mindset, to other aspects of their lives. So what exactly is the issue with scarcity mindset?
Scarcity mindset prescribes your possibilities into a range that the realistic mind can imagine, versus what the free mind can imagine without any boundaries. When you ask children what they dream to be, they say presidents or Nobel Prize winners without any hesitation. As we grow old we see what it realistically takes to become presidents or Nobel Prize winners. We associate those realistic stepping stones to achieve those dreams as out of boundary for us, and steer our lives into something that can only live in our comfort zone.
What is your dream right now? Maybe you will say to travel internationally. That’s a fine dream, but you might constraint yourself into locations you can only travel within budget, or for number of days you can afford the lodging for. This is prescribing your possibility into a monetary range. What if money wasn’t an option? What if you could literally do anything, and money/time/stamina/resources wasn’t a constraint because the world is overflowing with it? Your answer to this question will be much less realistic, but your mind can imagine it only if it is free of all boundaries defined by the scarcity mindset.
Another issue with the scarcity mindset is that it prevents our most powerful brain, the prefrontal cortex, from actively engaging and managing our primitive brain. Solving a problem creatively is one of the most powerful experiences you can have as a human being, and it is certainly what makes us a higher functioning animal among the animal kingdom. When you were a little kid and your parents set some rules against something you want, didn’t you try to cheat the rules to have that cookie or ride the bike? Your prefrontal cortex comes up with brilliant solutions to problems that you normally consider impossible.
So the next time you think you don’t have enough of something, think “what if I had an unlimited amount of resources?” Think of this answer first and engage your prefrontal cortex in how to get to that state. You don’t have to get there in one step. Even stepping into that mental zone and dreaming your wildest dreams, unbound by any tether, is an experience worth it on its own.