How to develop an abundance mindset

If you want to be happy and successful in life, you must have an abundance mindset; otherwise you may catch yourself in a vicious greed-based competition or in (symbolical) self-castration and procrastination – both making you unhappy. The abundance mindset consists of the three crucial elements:

(1) Seeing all the possibilities the world has to offer in order to create, connect, grow and enjoy, (2) knowing that you deserve love and prosperity, and (3) realizing that if you’d experience only plentitude in life, it would be boring as hell and you wouldn’t appreciate anything you have at all.

The opposite of the abundance mindset is a scarcity mentality. The scarcity mentality doesn’t only lead to an impoverishment of life, it also makes you take malicious actions towards yourself and others.

Knowing that limited resources are a part of life on this planet and experiencing not having every single thing you want can be a great teacher in adult life, and can make you appreciate things you do have. However, learning and personal growth can happen only if they’re supported with an abundance mindset.

If it sounds confusing, here’s an example from the financial area of life: Being broke is a temporary situation in life. Being poor is usually a state of mind. If you are broke and have an abundance mindset, you’re aware that you have options and that you can do something about it as well as learn about yourself and life while being broke.

But being poor and drowning in the victim mindset is based on a scarcity mindset and doesn’t bring anything good into your life. Even more: you become blind to learning and personal growth.

There is a big difference between suffering the scarcity mentality and experiencing a temporary shortage in life, while keeping the abundance mindset.

If you aren’t sure whether you are suffering from the scarcity mindset, here are the signs of a severe scarcity mentality:

• Aggressive competition where other people and also you might get hurt (physically, emotionally)
• Trouble sharing with others (things, power, credit, profit)
• Greed and gluttony, there is simply never enough
• Envy and jealousy
• Desire to control people
• Being obsessed with how much other people make and what they own
• Hating it when other people succeed and being happy when misfortune happens to them
• Self-castration and procrastination
• Shyness, bitterness, depression and isolation
• Avoiding any kind of responsibility and commitment (in relationships)
• Having a victim mentality
• Scarcity mentality is closely connected to the fixed mindset

In this article you will learn:

• How the scarcity mindset develops
• Why is the abundance mindset so important
• The difference between the scarcity mindset and a temporary shortage of something
• What you can do in general to develop the abundance mindset
• A few tricks to develop the abundance mindset in different areas of life
• How not to confuse the abundance mindset with foolishness

A word of caution: this is not a short article. But you know, there is no easy way to switch from the scarcity mindset to the abundance mindset. It’s not like you only have to spend a little more time with people who have the abundance mindset and you will miraculously develop it; or do “10 other things” that most blog posts recommend.

Well, spending time with people who have the abundance mindset may definitely help you catch the right way of thinking, but first you will probably drown in envy.

The bottom line is that the abundance mentality can only help you focus on the right kind of things and actions and be happier in life in general. You have to strategically develop your mindset step by step and simultaneously support new thinking with actions.

If the abundance mentality is not supported by action, it’s not a real abundance mentality. It’s naivety and shutting your eyes to the facts of real life. Yes, it’s a very long and demanding process to switch to the abundance mentality; but also very rewarding.

But first things first. If you want to overcome any negative internal emotional and mental state in your life, you have to first understand it very well. So let’s analyze how the scarcity or the abundance mindsets really develops. It will help you tackle the problem at its core and deal with it once and for all.

How the scarcity or abundance mindsets develop

The essence of the scarcity or the abundance mindsets development as a part of your psyche is how your needs were being met when you were growing up. In the first few years, right after you were born, the emotional availability of your parents was the number one thing that imprinted into your subjective map of reality of how much the world has to offer to you and how much you deserve.

If there was plenty of love and attention in the early years, you developed trust in yourself, life and people, and later you can see all the abundance the world has to offer in terms of relationships. If you weren’t exposed to that kind of attention and pampering as an infant, emotional scarcity developed. You now assume people aren’t trustworthy and that there isn’t much love for you out there.

Only love isn’t enough, of course. The second important aspect of your upbringing is whether there was any consideration for what you really want (not what others thought was best for you) and if there was any encouragement present for your needs of discovering the world.

If you were only an extension of your parents, strictly under their controlling behavior and criticism, if there was no room for your autonomy and initiative, your own ideas, creativity, play and sports, you slowly become blind to all the opportunities the world has to offer.

You become blind, because instead of seeing yourself as an individual with your own needs and wishes and all the right to meet them in a respectful and healthy manner (one of the purposes of life is constantly fulfilling your needs), you feel guilt and shame following something you really want. Because deep down you aren’t sure if your parents would approve of it. Probably not, if it’s not medical school.

It’s much easier to become blind to the opportunities than to become aware of your toxic feelings that block your assertiveness and cause symbolical self-castration.

But there is more, of course. After emotional needs, we have intellectual needs. As you start to talk and become more and more aware of the world, curiosity develops.

You develop a need to understand the world, to develop your intellect and competence. If you didn’t have an environment that helped you develop your intellectual potential, creative and analytical one, inferiority and identity confusion may develop. Especially now in the creative age.

You don’t see all the opportunities because you think you aren’t capable of competing with others when it comes to using your mind. Again, it’s easier to become blind and live in denial rather than to face the fact that you are maybe more capable than you think you are.

The good news is that if your emotional and intellectual needs were properly met, your spiritual needs are usually also well-developed. The spiritual aspect of life gives you a sense of hope, purpose and contribution. The spiritual aspect is based on a deep trust in yourself, your competences, your values, life in general and your mission. You can only imagine how a lack of those hinders you in life.

Body, emotions, mind and soul. If they were exposed to an abundance of attention, love, information, encouragement and a positive and stable environment, they all greatly contribute to the abundance mindset. It’s a lot to take in. But we aren’t done yet. There are two more important categories of life.

First, we have the social aspect. We are social beings and as soon as you’re exposed to other people outside of your home, you have a need to belong to different social groups. How well you fit into social groups especially depends on your values. If there are people around you with the same values, you feel like a part of a group. In such a case, you can have many friends and even more, you have a tribe to protect you.

If your values are so different from the majority that you don’t find a group to belong to, you tend to isolate yourself. Isolation is usually a strong sign of the scarcity mindset. As a kid, there isn’t much you can do. If you don’t feel like you get along well with your schoolmates and other people in your life, you simply must suffer.

Consequently, you develop the scarcity mindset. In your subjective reality map, there is no group you could belong to, because you never experienced real social belonging.

Last but not least, we have money and material abundance. Well, emotional and intellectual poverty aren’t discussed as often as the financial one, because the financial one is so much more obvious.

There have been many studies done, clearly showing how much damage poverty makes. The fact is that unfortunately, poverty in most cases leads to the scarcity mindset. Because of poverty, you develop the mindset that there isn’t enough out there and especially not for you.

The scarcity and poverty mindset don’t develop only because you’re exposed to a deprivation of material things, it’s usually also transferred together with different toxic beliefs about money. Money doesn’t grow on trees. Rich people are corrupt people. If you are rich, you will never go to heaven. Just to name a few.

This is how the scarcity mentality develops – being exposed to emotional, intellectual, social, encouragement, attention and financial poverty. Consequently, you think there is not enough out there and even more, that there isn’t enough for you.

Before you get mad, I know, no parents are perfect. Actually, there must be errors made in upbringing, because errors bring friction and internal frictions drive personal growth. But there is a big difference between making a few errors or raising a kid in a toxic environment. There is a big difference between the two.

You may further argue, for example: how can I expose my kid to material abundance if I’m drowning in debt? You see, it actually isn’t how much you really buy for your kid. It’s how you make your kid feel when you buy him something.

If buying something for your kid is associated with how much you had to suffer and sacrifice, logically material guilt will develop and with it the scarcity mindset. When I get something I want, people I love have to suffer. Isn’t the internal conflict obvious?

If we go from financial scarcity to the emotional and intellectual one, I know it often doesn’t happen on purpose, but because parents have to deal with their own shit and they probably lived in the same kind of poverty, so they don’t know how to do better, they lack knowledge and so on.

Here are just a few examples of what you may have experienced in your home environment and how your scarcity mindset developed. Ironically, sometimes this happened even when parents thought they were doing what was best for you and your future.

• Parents making all the choices instead of you, without considering your wishes and needs
• Overprotective and over-controlling parents
• Depressed parents occupied with their own shit
• Switching all the emotional attention to a younger sibling when they were born
• Overly critical parents
• Parents stifling your curiosity and creativity
• Here you can find more types of toxic behaviors

If you were exposed to that kind of environment and consequently developed the scarcity mindset, I am sorry. But now you’re an adult and you can do something about it. As mentioned, becoming blind to opportunities, focusing on the negative and feeling sorry for yourself is much easier than dealing with mistrust, guilt, shame and inferiority.

But you are reading this blog post, so you have the courage and will to do something about it. The good news is that you can come out of the scarcity mindset stronger and greater than ever.

Because you will understand both mindsets very well, and you will become much more empathic. If you aren’t completely sure yet, let’s further examine what kind of damage you’re doing to yourself and others with the scarcity mindset.

The maliciousness of the scarcity mindset

Here is a big epiphany. Abundance is not the root of all evil. A lack of the abundance mindset is the root of all evil. There are three reasons why, 3 Cs:

• Compensation
• Control
• Competition

First of all, with the scarcity mindset you try to eagerly compensate for your early deprivation, whichever kind of deprivation it was – emotional, financial etc. It’s called greed. The scarcity mindset leads to a never satisfied soul that wants more and more of something only to feel fed somehow.

The scarcity mindset leads to a never satisfied soul that wants more and more of something only to feel fed somehow. The scarcity mindset leads to a greedy soul. It can be greed for money, knowledge, attention, food, getting high or whatever.

Money is not the root of all evil. Lack of money is the root of all evil.

And don’t be fooled, there is no direct connection. You may have suffered financial poverty when you were young and later became overwhelmed by financial greed or any other type of greed.

You may have suffered emotional scarcity in an early age and you may have become a sexual addict or, for example, money is the compensation helping you cope with your deprivation pain. There are many possible combinations.

In any case, greed causes a lot of damage to you and people around you. With a greedy soul, it’s hard to set limits, it’s hard to ever be happy and satisfied, you just need more and more to somehow quench all the thirst.

When greed takes over, you have no problem taking from the hands of other people, even in a very aggressive and demolishing way. People often do it not only in immoral, but also illegal ways.

Then we have control. If you feel like you don’t have enough, because you didn’t get enough when you were young, you want to have as much control as possible over the things you do have – every relationship, every job, every dollar available to you, and so on.

You cling to it like it’s a matter of life and death, even if you’re only trapped in an emotional cage – in a job you hate; an abusive relationship; money that isn’t yours or whatever.

When you can’t control something, you go crazy. And you’re trying to control things that need to flow, not stand still. Money needs to flow, love needs to flow, markets need to flow. They can’t be controlled. When you’re trying to do such a thing, you’re going directly against the natural order of things, only hurting yourself and others.

Last but not least, there is a fierce competition. If there isn’t enough out there and you have to compete with others for that little something, healthy competition becomes an overly aggressive one. Markets can definitely be tough.

But seeing everyone as an enemy, as someone who is trying to take something away from you and you have to stamp down, is definitely not a nice life to live.

With the scarcity mindset, nothing but aggressive competition, seeing danger in everything, over-controlling behavior and greed develop. You also don’t see opportunities at all and you feel like you don’t deserve things in life.

Developing an abundance mindset

Now it’s time to take action and to see how you can switch from the scarcity mindset to the abundance one. As mentioned, first you have to distinguish if you were exposed to real toxic deprivation in the early years – a lack of something in the combination with severe negative feelings – or were only small mistakes made in your upbringing.

Secondly, you won’t achieve anything by feeling sorry for yourself or being mad at your parents, life, God or whoever. Now you are an adult and you are responsible for everything in your life. Even your scarcity mindset. The only winning situation is if you start doing something about it. And forgive, but that is a matter of another blog post.

The important fact is also that you were probably only exposed to one kind of scarcity in your life. Maybe you were raised in a materially rich, but emotionally poor family. Or vice-versa. Maybe only your intellectual potential wasn’t stimulated.

You have to see the good that was done to you in your upbringing, not only what you lacked. It’s the first step towards the abundance mindset. But it’s also true that the more areas that were influenced by poverty, the more work waits for you. On the bright side, you will learn so much more. So let’s start.

An error in your subjective map

The first thing you have to see is that the scarcity mindset is only a big error in your subjective map of reality, supported by a bunch of toxic beliefs and severe negative feelings. With the scarcity mindset, you are focused on what you lack in life most of the time.

This is strongly corroborated by damaging (unconscious) beliefs and negative feelings of why you deserve such a thing. By focusing on something you lack, you’re either blind to all the opportunities or there is never enough, nothing can satisfy your thirst.

Besides severe negative feelings (doubt, shame, inferiority etc.), there are many different toxic beliefs that can support your scarcity mindset. Here are a few examples of toxic supportive beliefs:

• We are here on Earth to suffer, so I must also suffer (emotional scarcity)
• There are so many people in poverty, so why would I deserve to be rich (material scarcity)
• Rich people are corrupt and evil people (material scarcity)
• Happy people are spoiled people who don’t know the hard realities of life (emotional scarcity)
• Emotions are bad and only make you weak (emotional scarcity)
• I must take away from others to have more in my life, so others will suffer if I take more (emotional scarcity)

And:

• It’s eat or be eaten and I’m not playing this game (material scarcity)
• It’s eat or be eaten, so I must be tough on the people I love, and they will survive better
• I don’t deserve to have that in life, because I’m a bad person (material scarcity)
• Nobody really loves me; everyone just wants something from me (social scarcity)
• I am not a creative person at all and I don’t know how to use computers (intellectual scarcity)
• There are no right job opportunities for me and I don’t have good business ideas (competence scarcity)
• I will never meet the right spouse for me and even if I do, there is not much I can offer in a relationship (emotional scarcity)

There are hundreds of similar toxic beliefs that can support your scarcity mindset. They help you cling to the scarcity mindset at all costs and prevent you from seeing any different reality – usually because it’s too painful to see what you deserve and can have in life.

So let’s try to find a few counterarguments that can collapse in ruin toxic beliefs.

Proof of abundance in the world

Let’s start first with the actual data about the world, the data that you probably somehow don’t see when your scarcity mindset is active. Here is the actual proof of abundance in the world:

• There are around 7,000,000,000 people in the world, all your potential lovers, spouses, friends, social groups to join etc.
• There is more than 4,000,000,000,000 USD in circulation (M0). Let’s not even mention all the virtual money and other material assets (land, gold etc.).
• There are around 1,000,000,000 webpages and more than 130,000,000 books you can learn from – and more than a million books and new webpages published every day.
• Only in the UK, they throw away 7 million tons of food and drink every year. It’s the first data I found online, I’m not singling out the UK for any specific reason.
• There are more than 190 million registered companies you can work for in the world, 45,000 of them listed on the stock exchange.
• There are more than 190 countries you can travel to and around 2,000,000 cities worldwide.
• There are more than 200 different types of hobbies, more than 1000 different sports, more than 70 religions and belief systems, more than 30 different types of art, and so on.
• You can buy the cheapest smartphone for around 30$.

7,000,000,000 people and you would suffer in isolation; 4,000,000,000,000 USD and you don’t have any idea of how to contribute to the markets to make money; 130,000,000 books and you can’t find a book to be curious about; 190,000,000 companies and you don’t know how to find a job; 2,000,000 cities and you don’t like the place where you live; 1,200 different hobbies and sports, and you are bored. It can only happen if you are captured in an emotional cage.

There is enough – for everyone. Also for you (if you don’t suffer from greed). And you deserve it. This doesn’t mean that poverty is not a real world problem (more about that later). But don’t let your scarcity mindset shift focus now. There is enough. For you as well. Period.

See all the damage you’re doing with the scarcity mindset

Now you know that there is enough for all of us in this world. Also for you. Now don’t fight it. Let’s take a step further instead. What is the real benefit of the scarcity mindset you have? Ask yourself honestly: does the scarcity mindset bring any good into your life, the life of the people you love or the world in general? It definitely brings the following things into your life:

• You have to compensate for a shortage of something with greed in other areas of life
• You are usually (unconsciously) envious of other people
• You don’t contribute to the world as much with your talents as you could
• You become a more and more bitter person and spread bitterness around to other people
• If you don’t have it, you can’t give it and share it with others
• Others won’t be better off if you sacrifice yourself, because there is enough for everyone
• Last but not least, there is no room for failure and error with the scarcity mindset, because the risks are so much higher.

Do you see all the bad that the scarcity mindset brings into your life? On the one hand, you have to compensate for your fears of not having enough, because you didn’t get enough as a small child. And usually you need to compensate exponentially.

You may need to constantly feed your hungry soul with more money, sexual partners, social status etc. Because there is never enough. There can’t be.

On the other hand, if you don’t feed your greed and somehow follow your goals and needs, you may become bitter, shy, extremely introverted, you symbolically castrate yourself not to do anything at all in life and you waste your potentials with procrastination, and so on. No good comes from the scarcity mindset, one way or the other.

Find me one good thing that comes out of the scarcity mindset. None. So why are you clinging to it so hard?

It’s not a zero-sum game

As mentioned, the scarcity mindset develops because you were exposed to some kind of poverty. When there is a lack of something in life, fierce competition always develops.

The underlying belief is that if you want something in life, you have to take it away from others, even with aggression. You don’t deserve it just because you are. Taking a toy from the hands of your sibling, doing a stupid thing as a kid to get attention from your parents etc.

Even more. Because you didn’t get what you needed when growing up, you have trouble believing that people will give you what you need in (personal/business) relationships now that you’re an adult – love, attention, respect, payment.

You don’t believe that people will give you all these things just because you are and you deserve them per se (because you can provide value and thus you are valuable), so you enforce politics, manipulation, control and drama in your relationships.

You try to make sure you will get what you need, even in a shady way if necessary. You may even be doing it unconsciously, only to win the game, only to be on top of others and make sure you don’t lose.

It may work if you’re good in domination and fierce competition, but what kind of a life is that, always watching your back to see who will try to out-throne you?

The scarcity mindset is based on feudalism. There isn’t enough for everyone, so I better enslave others before they enslave me. If I want to have something, I must take it away from other people. But is life really a zero-sum game? Is there really no healthy alternative?

• Is there really no way you can have enough and also share it with others?
• Is there really no way to compete in a healthy way and encourage others instead of stifling them? And, of course, protect yourself with domination only when really necessary.
• Is there no way you can give all the love needed to all your kids equally?
• Is there really no way to see all the jobs you can work at, all the people you can connect with, all the things you can experience in life, without being scared? There may be a way.

What do you say about the abundance model?

Now let’s see how a life with the abundance mindset would look like. The abundance model is based on the following facts:

• You deserve to take care of your needs in a healthy and respectful manner
• You focus on all the opportunities you have and on becoming the best version of yourself
• There are no limits to how much love, creativity and encouragement you can share
• You can satisfy your material needs based on the market economy, not trampling other people
• You can share material surpluses you make with the people you love and with communities
• You use domination exclusively when you must protect yourself and are in danger

If you aren’t greedy because of the scarcity mindset, you do have healthy limits as to how many material things you need in life. You deserve to live a quality and comfortable life, and you don’t need billions for that. With healthy limits, there is enough for everybody.

You can make money for comfortable living by providing value to the market. You develop your talents as much as possible and the more value you provide, the more you can earn. There’s nothing wrong with that, if it’s not based on greed, where you want more and more, and outwork yourself to exhaustion and step over dead bodies to make another few dollars.

Money has a tendency to concentrate, so if you are good, you can make a lot of money. Much more than you need. It’s not like you can limit how much your stock worth will increase. But with the abundance mindset, you shouldn’t have any problems sharing your surpluses with others. You can invest, donate money, build new businesses, there are many ways of doing good with a surplus of money.

You just have to see how lucky you are. You live in the best times ever. A few hundred years ago, in the slave-based economy, that wasn’t even possible. Now in capitalism, you have the opportunity to be paid as much as you create value. History was based on the primitive scarcity mindset together with fear and violence. That’s why it’s so dark. That isn’t a mindset you want to operate on; and you don’t have to.

The abundance mindset doesn’t mean that you should have unlimited material resources in life. It means that deep inside, you feel that you deserve good things in life; that you see all the opportunities you have and are grateful for them; that you have no problem sharing; and that you act out of prestige not dominance when fulfilling your needs, all in order to achieve a win-win situation in your relationships.

With the abundance mindset, you know there are many people you can be friends with, you can always make new friends if you desire or a potential spouse. You trust yourself, you know you deserve love and you aren’t afraid of rejections or losing. You are aware that every rejection only means that you have to meet other people who are a better fit for you at the time.

In relationships, you have no problem giving and receiving. You know there has to be balance. You aren’t envious or jealous, and you don’t compete with the people you love. Because there is enough for everybody.

If you lose a job, you know you will find a new one. If you need more money to buy yourself something, you know there are many ways of making more money. If you feel lonely, you can always make new friends. With today’s technology, everything is accessible to you. You just have to see it; you just have to change your focus.

With the abundance mindset, it still hurts when someone betrays you. It’s not easy if a love wears out. It’s not easy when you experience a setback in career or your finances. But it’s not the end of the world. You let yourself emotionally work through failure, and then you focus on the positive and life goes on. Without self-pity. Without aggression. Without self-castration. With gratefulness for what you have experienced in life and what you have.

You let yourself emotionally work through failure, and then you focus on the positive and life goes on. Without self-pity. Without aggression. Without self-castration. With gratefulness for what you have experienced in life and what you have.

Do you think that is a model you could live by? Something far away from the zero-sum game mindset? If you think so, let’s look at a few tricks that may help you achieve that.

A few tricks to develop an abundance mindset

As mentioned many times, the first step you have to make is to see how much harm you’re doing to yourself and others with the scarcity mindset, then you have to become aware of the alternatives you have and, last but not least, you have to slowly change your mindset and destroy the underlying toxic beliefs, everything supported by action and execution.

I honestly think that if your scarcity mindset is really strong, therapy is one of the best ways to tackle the problem. But if your thinking is only somehow damaged, there are a few tricks of developing an abundance mindset. To be more positive, here is the best news ever regarding the abundance mindset:

It doesn’t cost you a single penny to update your mentality from the scarce to the abundance one. All you need is a little bit of courage.

General tricks

One very useful thing you can do to rattle the scarcity mindset is to write down all the things you already have in life and are grateful for. You have to focus on what you have if you want to attract even more into your life.

You have to see that you deserve abundance on all levels and if you appreciate all the small things you already have, you can change your inner state to deserve the big things as well.

The second thing you can do is to play with your fears. The scarcity mindset is especially based on the following fears:

• Fear of rejection
• Fear of abandonment
• Fear of humiliation
• Fear of being dependent on other people
• Fear of missing out
• Fear of being alone in life
• Fear of your needs not being met

Play with all these fears. Face them. Get rejected. Isolate yourself in monk mode. Be vulnerable. Try to curb your temptations. Practice minimalism. But be careful, the idea is not to stifle your needs and wishes even further, the idea is to face your fears, so you can more easily accept the abundance mentality by mastering your fears.

The next thing you can do is to compare the life areas where you operate out of the abundance mindset with the areas you operate out of the scarcity mindset. Usually there are some areas where you have a strong mindset, you see all the positives and are a real peaceful warrior, and others where you struggle with the scarcity mindset and an emotional cage.

You may, for example, have no problem earning and enjoying huge amounts of money, but on the other hand, you struggle with intimate relationship, not seeing all the opportunities or having many friends and social groups in life. Or vice versa.

Find your strong convictions and your weak ones. Compare those two areas in your life. What are your underlying beliefs? Why do you have the abundance mindset in one area and not the other? How can you transfer the abundance mindset you’re enjoying in one area of life to all other areas where you struggle with the scarcity mindset?

What you can also do is to have a good sense of how to distinguish between temporary states of lack and the general scarcity mindset. Everything in life and nature happens in cycles. Weather seasons. Market movements. An exchange of abundance and lack is always present. Nothing goes up forever.

Even with the abundance mentality, you usually have to face the pain of shortage of resources from time to time. Remember, being broke is a temporary state, but being poor is a state of mind.

Your job here on this beautiful planet is to learn and grow. Learning and growing can happen when you’re enjoying abundance and when you have to face limited resources. Both abundance and scarcity are great teachers.

See the positive side of scarcity. You can learn many things about yourself and life from scarcity, much like you can from abundance. If you had an abundance of everything all the time, life would be boring, there would be no challenges and soon you would get used to it, so it wouldn’t even feel like abundance anymore.

Scarcity is a part of life, with purpose. It’s a way to be more motivated and grateful for what you have. As you know, it’s quite hard to be grateful for something that you always had, because you don’t have a different experience. But don’t confuse limited resources with the scarcity mindset.

With the abundance mindset, you should finally realize how little you need to be happy in life.

Money

Now let’s move from general advice to money. First of all, read statistics on how much money is out there. Read how much people spend on gambling, entertainment, food, investments etc. When you read about those numbers, you get the right perspective of how rich the world actually is.

Then tackle your inner money beliefs. Start with sentences like Rich people are… and I am poor, because… and Money is…, and write down everything that comes to your mind. You will start tackling toxic beliefs.

Ask yourself “why” 5 times, after you complete each sentence. You will get really good insight into your limiting convictions. Remember, being broke is a temporary situation but being poor is a state of mind.

Have an amount of cash in your wallet that makes you uncomfortable (and you won’t seriously damage your finances if you get robbed). Make sure you never spend it. It must only serve as a reminder that you deserve it and that you can have enough money in life, the only thing preventing you from enjoying abundance is your scarcity mindset.

When you get used to the amount in your wallet, add a few more bills.

A similar thing you can do is to ask for a raise (if you deserve it), charge more on an hourly rate, find a better paying job or clients, and so on. You may not earn more working with the same people as you do now, but you can start working with new ones who are prepared to pay you more, if you only provide enough value.

Or try to find one client that will pay you 10x more than what you’re currently earning per hour. Just try it, to rattle your inner beliefs of how much you deserve.

Visualize money flowing into your life and having enough money on your bank account. Make sure you internalize how good it feels when you have money in your life. It’s not that it will actually happen if you only visualize it and do nothing.

The purpose of this exercise is to change your inner state, your inner feelings about money. If you feel uncomfortable when visualizing big sums of money (I don’t deserve it…), it means that your scarcity mindset is controlling you.

Read a lot about money management. I mean really a lot. By reading, you will update your money mindset by default. You will see how people with the abundance mindset think, what their money management strategies are, and so on. If reading any kind of money makes you throw up, you know you have big problems with the scarcity mindset.

Also read biographies of people who were poor and became wealthy. Try to see whether their property is based on greed or on a healthy money blueprint, superior management and admissible assertiveness (do they share, do they exploit or provide value etc.).

Analyze if they are doing good with their money or not. In addition to reading biographies, observe people and money beliefs of people who surround you. How where they raised. Do they act out of the scarcity or the abundance mindset? You will learn so much about yourself.

Do things that annoy your toxic money beliefs and then analyze them through self-reflection. Don’t give a tip in a restaurant, if it’s not legally mandatory. Or give a much bigger tip than you usually do. Take all the change with every single penny when you make a purchase, if you don’t always do that. Or leave a few coins if you always take every single coin. Do the opposite in very small doses and observe how you feel.

Career and competences

Prepare a list of all your skills and strengths. Analyze which talents you can develop further, what the market demands are and how you can provide the most value to the world. Hang a list of your competences somewhere you can always see.

In the second step, prepare a list of 50 companies you’d like to work for. Go through different directories, lists, companies you buy from etc. For every single company on your list, write down why you want to work there, how you can contribute and help them grow, and so on.

Prepare a list of 100 business ideas for how you could make additional income in your life. Write down 20 people who can help you get a new job, can vouch for you or you can sell them something. Prepare an outstanding CV.

Put everything in front of you and see all the options you have in life.

Relationships

Now comes the hardest part – relationships. It’s the hardest part because the scarcity mindset is developed out of relationships. The only real step you have to make to develop the abundance mindset is to increase your capacity of love, giving and receiving. Anyway, if that sounds too abstract, here are a few things that help manage relationships when you’re an emotional midget.

First of all, go to a social skills course or take one online. Being good with people in general is a skill everybody can learn and nothing else. It’s only practice that you have to do and do it a lot – how to shake hands, smile, break the ice and hold a conversation.

It’s a skill and so learn how to master it, no matter how scared and introverted you are. It will give you the courage to face your deepest fears and negative feelings.

Secondly, know that we are all already connected. There is actually no ice to break. We all share the same planet, we are all made from the same material, we all have our own struggles and fights. Just show genuine interest in people and know that you’re already connected with everybody.

Look for shared interests and values. With every new person you manage to truly connect with, you increase your capacity for love a little bit.

Then always keep in mind that there are approximately 7,000,000,000 people in the world. Among them, there are your many potential friends, lovers, business partners. It’s impossible to be lonely with so many different people on the planet, as long as you don’t allow fears and the scarcity mindset to prevail.

The toughest part to deal with are rejections. If someone rejects connecting with you, it can definitely hurt, especially if you suffer from the scarcity mindset. But it only means that this isn’t the right timing for this particular connection to be made. Luckily there are 6,999,999,999 or whatever number of other people you can connect with.

Only rejections can lead you to the right people you have to connect with.

One way to deal with rejections is to get more exposed to them. Face your fears. Your fears show you where you have to grow in life. Meet new people, open new conversations, be curious and proactive. You may throw up after the first few rejections, but you know, if you’re going through hell, keep going.

To find the perfect spouse, brush up on your dating skills. It’s as necessary as learning social skills. Don’t be naïve and hope that a love fairy will do all the work instead of you.

There are so many courses out there on how to be better at dating, you just have to be serious about achieving what you want in life. Raise your sexual market value, learn how to flirt, open new conversations, and so on.

And as we mentioned, the scarcity mindset is a mindset of fear and control. So you may naively hope that love will do everything instead of you and bring the right person into your life, and then you can keep that person in your life with manipulation, control, only giving and not receiving or vice-versa, and so on. Work hard to start distinguishing between real love and connection and a desire to control people.

It’s no different than tackling the scarcity mindset in other areas of life. Shift your focus to the positive. Take action. You deserve it.

What the abundance mindset isn’t

There is one more topic we have to cover before we finish. Let’s analyze what the abundance mindset isn’t and how you can apply it into your life in a completely wrong way.

As mentioned many times before, an abundance mindset is not a mindset based on greed. Greed comes from the scarcity mindset. If healthy competition, collaboration, sharing, positive feelings and prestige are involved, the abundance mindset is in play.

If manipulation, exploitation, aggression, greed and humiliation are present, the scarcity mindset is in play.

Positive = connecting and sharing

Having an abundance mindset doesn’t mean that you delude yourself into thinking that there is no poverty in life and that there is no great gap between the rich and the poor. It exists and it’s a big problem.

But only if you have abundance in your life, only if you serve as a role model, only if you are in power can you do something about it; and it’s your duty to help make the world a better place for generations to come.

It’s better to light a candle than to curse the darkness.

The abundance mindset is also not a naïve mindset that life is perfect and that you won’t encounter any problems. The world is tough. There is competition. Some resources are limited.

There are people who will try to trample you, people who will disappoint you. It’s not that you should forget about it. You have to protect yourself. You have to be assertive in life. But it’s not how you should live the majority of your life.

• You shouldn’t be a pussy in life, drowning in self-pity and procrastination. Life wants you to fight and become the best version of yourself, and make sure you provide enough value to acquire enough resources to live a quality life as well as share with others. You can achieve that by creating, not exploiting other people.
• You have to focus on the positive and see all the opportunities you have in life and what the world has to offer to you.
• You must make sure you don’t become a greedy person who fights to win by trampling down and destroying others.

There is a fine balance between both extremes – greed and self-castration. Both are run on the scarcity mindset and in the middle lies the sweet spot, based on the abundance mindset. There come times when you have to be tough, sure. There will be times when you have to show that you have a spine of steel.

But now you know. When people try to hurt you, they act out of the scarcity mindset. Now you understand that better. You can talk to them; you can explain to them what’s happening. And if it doesn’t work, don’t let haters ruin your life. Maybe you are the one clinging to them, because of the scarcity mindset.

You can choose who you will spend time with. In your personal and professional life, you can definitely find people that will make your journey really worthwhile. You can always find people you respect and they will respect you. You can always find people with the abundance mentality and teach others how to live the positive life.

Last but not least, you probably know now that the abundance mentality doesn’t mean having unlimited material resources in life. That’s not the point of the story. It’s how you experience the world.

The abundance mindset homework

You read the whole article, bravo. You’re one of the few people who reached its end. That means you are serious about changing your mindset from the scarcity mindset to the abundance one. Here’s some simple homework you should to do to apply the theory in practice.

Step 1: Rate from 1 to 10 how much you were exposed to poverty and how much to abundance in your early life in different life areas (emotional, intellectual, financial etc.). 1 means complete poverty and 10 complete abundance.

Step 2: For the areas in which you were exposed to poverty, further analyze your underlying toxic beliefs. Write down beginnings of sentences like Emotions are… and Money makes people… and so on, and write down everything that pops into your mind. After every sentence you write down, ask yourself “why” five times.

Step 3: Observe yourself to see when you’re acting out of the scarcity mindset. When you don’t allow yourself to fail, when you don’t see all the options you have and what the world has to offer to you, when you’re acting out of negative feelings. Just become aware of your actions out of the scarcity mindset.

Step 4: Attack. Go to therapy if necessary. Visualize. Do the opposite. Read. Share with others when you don’t want to. Get exposed. Get rejected. Prepare a list of how much the world has to offer. Get creative. Talk to other people. Win. Good luck.