Be wary of abundance
I’ve seen and been sent a whole plethora of advertisements from people selling books, courses, masterminds and many other products and services that say that they will help me increase abundance in my life.
I’m sure you’ve seen them, too. They sound good. Who wouldn’t like more abundance in their lives? There are definitely things that I would like to be more abundant in my life. Money. Inspiration. Time.
Except that while it sounds good, abundance is not the unalloyed good that we like to think it is. Both individuals and societies have a much harder time dealing with abundance than they do with scarcity.
A classic example is a lottery winner — I’m sure you’ve seen the statistics, like I have, that lottery winners, with very, very few exceptions, end up worse off, both financially and socially, than they were before winning. The abundance of money is far more difficult to deal with than the scarcity of it.
There’s also plenty of stories about retirees who look forward to retirement and not having to work, but as soon as they retire and have an abundance of uncommitted time, quickly have failing mental and physical health, because they don’t know what to do with themselves.
And then there’s the epidemic of obesity in most of the Western world — humanity spent the vast majority of our history with a scarcity of food, but now that we have an abundance of it, we aren’t dealing with it very well, and we’re making ourselves fat and sick because of it.
In the larger society, we’re still trying to deal (and not very successfully) with the internet suddenly making information and connection hugely abundant. It’s changed our politics and economics to such an extent, that there are still “experts” pretending that nothing has changed, because it invalidates too many of their pet theories that were developed when information and connection were still ruled by scarcity.
So what are we to do…? Do we drop any pursuit of abundance and live a life of austerity?
No, that’s not a good solution, either. But there are some things we can do
- remember that abundance brings its own problems. It might be want you want, it isn’t necessarily what you need.
- Pursue slow growth, not fast. Put the brakes on, even, if necessary. A slow move into abundance is easier to deal with than a head-long rush
- Be flexible in your approach. What works in an environment of scarcity often doesn’t work in an environment of abundance. The most difficult thing about abundance is often the need to identify what isn’t working, and experiment to see what will.
Go ahead and chase after abundance — I’m not advocating against that — but be wary of it, too, because if you succeed and gain abundance, either through luck or skill, it’s going to be hard to deal with. Probably harder than you think.
Thanks for reading!
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