Scarcity Mindset vs Abundance Mindset

Do you have a scarcity mindset or an abundance mindset? 

When I began my career, all of my decisions were driven by scarcity. I wasn’t making very much money, and I didn’t have very much saved up, so everything I did was through a scarcity lens. My favorite coffee drink was a hot Americano, because it was the cheapest. My wardrobe consisted of vans and flannels, because those were what people bought for me. Even in my work, I had to make decisions based on who could pay me cash the fastest. There wasn’t any time left over four long-term projects, because my cash flow scarcity didn’t make that possible.

After living like this for a while, I developed a genuine scarcity mindset. 

Friends would invite me to dinner, and upon paying the bill, I would do some mental math to figure out what percentage of my monthly budget that meal had just come out to. I wanted to be present with friends, but my scarcity mindset led me to be thinking about other things.

Eventually, I started making more money. What’s funny is that my scarcity mindset lingered. On one hand, it’s good to avoid lifestyle shift when you start making more money, so you can save more. But I was still thinking and living as though I had to pinch every penny. 

Over time, I caught myself thinking this way, and tried to change it. I tried to change into an abundance mindset. An abundance mindset is a decision making lens in which we have more than we need. We can spend extra resources or time or energy on something that’s more important over the long term, because we don’t need to make money today. When I started making more money, this was true, but I didn’t see my life through this abundance mindset. So it took me a while to pursue long-term opportunities, because my mindset wouldn’t allow it.

Take stock of where your mindset is today. Do you see things with long-term lens? Or is everything based on scarcity?