Most people don’t realize that they’re in the way of their own success in life. I don’t mean just business success and the ability to make money, but also to open up to new ways of being that make one feel worthy and accomplished in life. What’s the obstacle? Scarcity mindset.
Living in scarcity means that you have a limit of what you think is available to you. It’s a cap you’ve placed on how much love and joy you may be able to receive too. So it’s worthwhile to investigate where you’re living in scarcity and actively change your beliefs to open to more abundance.
This can be a process that takes years! I know, because I’ve been confronting my own scarcity mindset my whole adult life! But there are 3 steps that really helped me shift from scarcity to abundance mindset that I want to share with you today.
I find that the majority of people I work with in my healing sessions have scarcity mindset. But they are open to looking at it as part of our “shadow work” together, so it’s pretty easy for them to follow these steps and show up more fully for an abundant life.
It may harder for people who are not already doing personal development work to notice scarcity mindset within themselves. So it’s my hope that this article will help bring it to light and start the inner reflection. This is actually the first step, so if you only get this far, that’s excellent! You’re on your way…
How To Shift Your Mindset From Scarcity To Abundance
1) Honestly investigate where scarcity mindset is showing up in your life and how you’re fueling it
Look closely at all the important areas of your life to see if scarcity mindset is limiting your potential. Do you feel…you are not enough, you don’t have enough, or that there’s no way your situation can improve? Reflect on these questions to bring your beliefs to light. Just acknowledging that you have a limiting belief allows you a ton of room to change it!
Relationships
People usually think of money first when considering scarcity mindset, but I actually noticed it first in my relationships. This can be any relationship: romantic, friends, and family. It’s more obvious in romantic ones though. Here’s a few examples of what scarcity mindset can look like for you:
- Having very high standards – you put a limit on what love looks like, about what the perfect relationship looks like. It feels like you’re always waiting for the perfect person to come in (so usually those you date are not enough for you).
- Having very low standards – it can be the other way around, that you are always feeling “less than”. You may settle for someone who is really easy to be with and doesn’t challenge you much. Maybe they are head over heels for you, but you don’t have the same passion and live with it. You may also settle for someone who doesn’t share important values with you. There is a big disconnect, but you’re still willing to be with them because you feel that there is no one else out there who can love us as much as they do.
- Feeling pressure to settle for someone because you want to have a baby and feel like time is not on your fertility’s side.
- Staying in an unloving, incompatible, or abusive relationship. Underneath all the excuses you have to stay with this person is likely the belief that you can’t support yourself alone or that there’s no one else out there who’s compatible with you.
Work
Now consider you work life. Do any of these examples speak to your situation?
- You hate your job but stay in it because you don’t believe you can make as much money somewhere else.
- You’re in a never-ending cycle of taking courses, accumulating skills, and business coaching (this is mainly for us entrepreneurs). It may feel like you’re never skilled enough.
- The opposite of above, perhaps you resist doing any personal development to help your work life because you feel it won’t make a difference.
- You are content to be stuck in your job and complain about it.
Health
Scarcity mindset related to your holistic health can look like hopelessness. Do you feel that coming up when you reflect on your physical, mental, and emotional health? Perhaps these examples will help…
- Having a hard time investing in your health because you feel you don’t deserve it
- Doubting that there’s anything you can do to change your situation – your health will always be the same or be a downhill slide as you age.
- Reluctance to try something new, exploring different tools and modalities because you have a limiting belief about how they can help you.
- Not having faith in yourself to complete a treatment or lifestyle change.
Finances
Finally, let’s consider scarcity mindset and finances. There is an overlap with scarcity and poverty consciousness – the fear that you are going to be poor and even homeless someday. I have met so many people who have this constant fear. It’s way more pervasive that you may think!
Scarcity money mindset can look like:
- Having difficulty making money
- Making money but spending it right away
- Feeling like you’re always lower class
- Resenting people who have more money than you (always complaining about rich people and how you’re a victim of their success)
- You can make a lot of money, but hold onto it too tightly. You are very picky about what you spend it on.
It’s good to ask yourself questions about how much money is “enough” to start moving through scarcity and closer to abundance mindset.
At what point will you stop worrying about your retirement funds?
What amount of debt are you comfortable with?
Start to hone in on exact numbers, massage it a little, and see if your comfort level changes. This is where the next few steps come in which will build faith that you are always supported in what’s aligned with your life purpose.
2) Expand Your Perception Of Your Higher Power And How It’s Supporting You
These next steps are a lot deeper and where you’ll experience the biggest transformation because it is on a deeper spiritual level.
Ask yourself, do you feel that there is this higher power that supports you and leads you in your life?
Do you believe you have spiritual support that brings in opportunities and blesses you with abundance?
Many people who are caught in scarcity mindset will answer is “no”. Or, they haven’t really fostered that connection so it’s hard to answer.
I have found that lack of spiritual connection is definitely linked to scarcity mindset. Quite often the person will feel that they have no control over their life that things just happen to them. It can leave them feeling very disempowered and like they are not enough, like there’s not enough they can do to stay ahead in life. Even the elements they control, they feel like they need to do it all by themselves.
This is one of the many reasons why establishing a strong spiritual connection is really important in the holistic healing sessions I offer as well as my signature program Pathway to Empowerment. It’s typically the shamanic healing work that we do, in addition to rewiring the brain and consciously changing beliefs, that helps clients re-establish this connection and develop more trust.
Once you recognize and really believe that you are co-creating with Spirit you can go deeper with this investigation. Praying, meditating, journaling on this relationship you have with spirit can help you feel into to more abundance.
What I’ve personally learned is that Source gives me everything I want. It gives us me what I can handle. So if there is something “off” in my life that I don’t like, it’s usually because I have unconsciously chosen it and may even be benefiting from the limits.
For example, I may unconsciously be afraid of having a lot of money because I don’t want to deal with the taxes, I don’t want to get help in my business if it gets big, or I’m afraid of being robbed. These unconscious beliefs are super apparent to Source, even though I may not be aware of them.
God/Source/The Universe wants you to feel safe. If you want more in your life, you’ll need to push your comfort level to change limiting beliefs. Be more mindful of what you’re really asking for! Go deeper to see why things are the way they are. There’s always a spiritual reason. Source is supporting you where you currently are and where you’re going.
3) Focus on Gratitude To Feel More Abundant
My last recommendation to you to shift out of scarcity mindset into more abundance is to focus on gratitude. There’s many ways that I’ve worked with gratitude in the past. You can read Grateful Heart, Joy-filled Life and do the embedded meditation to cultivate the attitude of gratitude.
I have another tool I want to introduce you that will help you cultivate gratitude as well. It’s the Irish Spirit Wheel. I’ve been working with it personally and I’m just starting to bring it into my healing sessions. It’s an ancient Celtic method of self-inquiry that can help you diagnose where the healing needs to be in your life.
The wheel depicts the four directions and the center point. Each has certain aspects or “airts” to each of these positions
Center is where we experience sovereignty, mastery, and enlightenment. Of course this is where most of us will want to be, most of the time! It’s where we feel whole and complete.
In the north is where we have battle: where we go to challenge ourselves and others.
The south is where we experience music, inspiration, and where there’s a greater connection to Spirit.
In the west is where we find knowledge, wisdom, and where we seek heartfelt guidance (as opposed to feeding the ego & mind).
And the East is the seat of prosperity. It’s in the East where we need to do the work to feel into more gratitude before creating more abundance. East is the direction we turn to focus on home life, to tend the land, to focus on family and for being a more hospitable host to the community. It requires us to open our heart which often only likes to be open to certain people and ideas. So the East really pushes us to be hospitable to everyone.
In time with this focus, you will feel a huge sense of gratitude for it all that is in your life. You’ll realize you’re already blessed with abundance and this will make you even more receptive to bringing more into your life because Source will see how much you honor what you have.
After you’ve processed all the lessons of the East, you’ll be able to move back into your Center to feel whole and complete again. This is where you’ll experience the most joy.
There are likely more steps you’ll need to move through to shift from scarcity to abundance mindset. We all have our own reasons why scarcity mindset set in, and so you might need certain steps to shift out. But the steps above are the main ones that I believe we can all benefit from.
I hope this information helped you! Feel free to share this article with a friend who could use this support. If you have any questions, please let me know in the comments below.
Love & gratitude to you friend!
