How to Overcome Your Scarcity Mindset

“What in the world am I doing?” I got up, flung the sleeping bag open that I was laying in, and stood to my feet. I opened the door to the small 10’ X 10’ office that I had rented to house my fledgling start-up business. It was a one-office suite inside of a larger office building owned by a mortgage company. I walked out into the hall with nothing but a pair of shorts on and started pacing up and down the hallway. It was around 9p.m. No one else was in the office and I was trying to sleep but I couldn’t shut my mind off.

Back and forth I walked as my mind raced with thoughts. How could I be so crazy? Here I was starting a business in a town a hundred miles from my house, in an industry I had only discovered existed a few months ago, and during what was arguably the greatest recession since the great depression.

It was May of 2009. I had spent three years prior building an executive recruiting business that I ultimately just dissolved at the beginning of the year when many of my clients had gone out of business following the crash of the stock market in September of 2008. I was faced with the very real reality that if I didn’t pivot and figure out some new way of making money, I would run out of savings and pretty quickly.

After a few months of research, I discovered the growing need to serve the elderly population with home care services and, thus, started a new business: Total Care Connections. (www.totalcareconnections.com)

But, now that I had started this business, I was having second thoughts. It was overwhelming sleeping on a concrete floor on a cot, inside of a sleeping bag, during the days I would spend out of town working to get this business off the ground. Part of me believed that if I just worked hard and kept going, I would succeed. The other part of me felt like I just wouldn’t make the cut. I had seen my days as a successful entrepreneur and now it was just time to fail.

I would pace the halls of that office most nights when I was out of town wrestling with my thoughts.

The ironic thing, though, is that I still wrestle with some of these types of thought patterns. Even after building that business into a multi-million-dollar company, I still have days where I struggle to believe that I’ll continue to be successful.

I’ve learned, over the last 10 years of being an entrepreneur, that I’m not alone. In fact, I’ve seen many people suffer from their own scarcity mindset and it completely dominates the trajectory of their life. Instead of believing in themselves, they become victims to their situations and succumb to whatever life throws their way.

This may resonate with you.

Maybe you grew up poor and now you don’t believe that prosperity is even something you “should” want.

Maybe you experienced a bad relationship or a divorce and now struggle to believe that true love is even real. Instead of hoping for it, you actually run away from it.

Maybe you suffered a huge financial blow and now you hold onto everything you still have with a tight fist, fearing it will all be taken away from you. Instead of living generously, you harbor everything out of fear.

Maybe you have a dream to write a book or start a business but, every time you think about actually taking action, you give yourself a great reason or excuse as to why now is just not a good time.

If you relate to any of these scenarios, you very well may struggle with a scarcity mindset.

But here’s the deal:

Your mentality will perpetuate your reality.

It can become a vicious cycle. Everyone experiences both success and failure in life. It’s inevitable for everybody. But, when you do experience trials, failures, or setbacks, you have to be aware of your potential to develop this scarcity mindset.

I’ve learned over the years that there are specific and tangible ways to overcome this cycle of thinking. It isn’t overly complicated or sophisticated. But sometimes, the most simplistic of principles can be taken for granted. And, when they are, many people live with this scarcity mindset for their entire lives. Instead of living each day with hope, many people plan for the worst and fearfully wait for the proverbial ball to drop.

There are three specific ways that you can use to overcome your scarcity mindset:

1. Choose gratefulness.

No matter what setbacks you have faced in life, you have so much to be grateful for. But, human nature seems to cause us to take these things for granted. So, I challenge you to choose gratefulness on a daily basis.

To do this, I keep a list on my phone of everything that I am thankful for, every challenge that I’ve overcome, and every prayer that has been answered. I continually add to this list and many times throughout the week, I will open my phone, pull up the list, and thank God for every good thing that I have been given.

It’s amazing what this does to your perspective. Even on the most difficult days, gratefulness recalls the moments of relief you felt when you heard good news from a doctor about some potential medical issue. Gratefulness brings back the memories of moments when you prayed with everything in you for a solution in your life and it was given to you. Gratefulness will give you hope for your future and that hope will propel you forward in life.

2. Stop planning for the worst.

If you’re like me, you are a planner. You like all of your ducks to be in a row. It provides some false sense of control that seems to absolve any anxiety that us “type A” people often have.

But, without thinking about it, you may not realize that your plans are actually predictions for your future based upon your past. And, your past does not define you.

Sure, you learn from your experiences and the wisdom you gain helps you to make better decisions in life. But, if you are mapping out the next year and your only hope is to avoid the pain or angst that moments in your past have brought you, you are looking at it through a dark lense. Instead of believing for the future to be better than your past, you are actually trying to accept this idea that life isn’t going to get any better and if you just kill any hope left inside of you, at least you won’t be disappointed. This, my friend, is a scarcity mindset.

You have to take life one day at a time. If you’re having a bad day, don’t start projecting that the rest of your days are going to just as bad. Instead, listen to the wise words of Taylor Swift and “Shake it off”.

Your momentary failures are just that: momentary. Tomorrow may be the best day of your life. And if you will believe for great things, you will experience them.

3. Re-train your brain.

Nobody’s life is perfect. We all have the opportunity to adopt negative ways of thinking. But a scarcity mindset will tell you that your thinking is a result of your situations and, thus, it is completely out of your control.

This is a lie.

You have to stop your negative thinking in its tracks and start re-training your brain. When you hear your mind tell you, “prosperity isn’t for you. In fact, it’s not even real.” Or “you’ll never have a great marriage” or “stop pursuing your dream — you’re not good enough anyways”, you have to immediately stop your train of thinking and start telling yourself what is true.

You do have potential.

You are valuable.

You are able to do great things.

Your life is not an accident.

The rest of your life can and will be better.

You will succeed.

You are the architect of your life. When you embrace this reality, you will begin to realize in the midst of a life that may seem out of your control, you are still in control of you. You can choose gratefulness. You can choose to believe the best and always strive to make each day better than the last.

Let go of the past and embrace a mindset of abundance. You’ve been given so much more than you realize. It’s when you embrace this mindset that you can truly live free; free to be generous, ready forgive, and filled with hope.

That is my hope for you.