A Scarcity Mindset
This week we issued a poll with just one question:
“Do you feel guilty when you spend money?”
83% of people answered in the affirmative.
We also could have asked:
“Do you feel like there is never enough money to do the things you want?”
“Do you feel like you are never going to hit your financial goals? “
“Do you feel like everyone else is ahead of your financially?”
And on and on and I bet we would have had similar results. All of this comes from a scarcity mindset. (Which is very common in budgeting culture!) With a scarcity mindset, you will find yourself focusing on never having enough.
Cultivating a Mindset of Abundance
Instead, we need to cultivate a mindset of abundance.
” I have plenty of money”
“I have a plan for my money”
“I know I have the power to accomplish __________ (insert goal here)”
“Someone else’s success has nothing to do with mine. We can all win.”
You can create a budget out of a scarcity mindset or out of an abundant mindset. When you have a budget with a scarcity mindset, you feel guilty. You feel like you never have enough. But it doesn’t have to be that way.
How do you cultivate a more abundant mindset?
- Gratitude- Make a list. You will be surprised what you already have is plenty and will start to recognize the abundance you already have!
- Congratulate others on their financial achievements- This is pretty self explanatory, but it is powerful! Their success has nothing to do with yours. If they start a business in the same field as you? Connect on it! There are plenty of people needing your service in the world! If they get a new car? Give them a genuine compliment and ask to hear about what they are most excited about. If they paid off their debt while you are drowning in your own? Take it as an inspirational story to help motivate you to do what you thought was impossible!
- Have a money plan for your money- I cannot stress this enough. Having a plan for the money you DO have is the single best thing you can do for cultivating a money mindset. We talk about this a lot in our Free Budgeting Training, but many people think a plan is a budget. That is part of it, but that is only one tool. There is a whole set of tools and systems (AKA: The Financial Growth System) that allow for a much more concrete plan that you feel confident in and will help you to switch from scarcity to abundance.
- Fear Setting- Ask Yourself, “What is the worst that can happen?” and then go through all of the scenarios and think about what you would do. It may sound a little counterintuitive since we are trying to think positive thoughts here, but often our “worst case scenario” in our head is a lot worse than the actual worst case scenario.
Recognize when scarcity starts to creep in and do something about it
Even after doing this process many times, you may have certain events that trigger a scarcity mindset for you. For example, I started to feel this coming back when we were going through the home buying process.
All of these fears came flooding in:
– “I don’t want to buy at the top of the market.”
-“There are not enough houses. We need to buy now.”
-“I don’t want this decision to ruin our financial future.”
-“What if our income goes down/lose a job right after we buy this house?”
– “What if we buy a house we don’t like and we are stuck with it forever?”
Negative thought after negative thought kept coming into my minds and I quickly realized that this mindset was paralyzing me. I couldn’t buy a house and feel confident in paying our mortgage, (even with plenty of income) without working through these feelings.
So I started going through the Abundant Mindset Process:
- Gratitude: I took a moment to feel grateful for what we already had and made a list of all the things I already had in my life. How grateful I was to even be buying a house!
- Congratulate others on their financial achievements: I made sure to congratulate my friends on their home buying experiences and show genuine interest in the things they were excited about! (This wasn’t too hard for me because I genuinely love houses and could talk about them all day!)
- Have a money plan: I went back to our plan. We had a budget for how much we wanted to spend on a house and I knew we were not going to pay anymore than that. We had a plan for the percentage of our income we wanted to go towards our house. We had a plan for how we were going to pay for home repairs. We had our financial systems set up and had hit all our other preparatory goals before this (debt free, 6 month e-fund, investing, making sure our business had hit a certain income level etc.)
- Fear Setting: A lot of my fear setting was actually eliminated when I reevaluated our plan, but I still went through my fears one by one and thought about the worst case scenario and what we would do. I will give you one example of a fear setting conversation I had with Dan:
“I don’t want to buy at the top of the market”
“Okay so let’s say we bought our house and literally the next day, the market crashed. What would we do?”
“Well, that would be terrible but we could just keep making payments on it like normal and eventually the market would go back up.”
“Lets say the market crashed AND Centsei was suddenly making $0.”
“Well we have a business emergency fund and a personal emergency fund so we could use that while we figure out what is wrong with Centsei and fix it.”
“Okay what if the market crashed AND Centsei was suddenly making $0 AND we had to move.”
“Well, we could rent out this house while we move somewhere else? Or we could get a remote job so that we didn’t have to move? Or we could get a second job to make double payments on the house? Or we could sell our house at a loss and rebuild our financial situation?”
This is a very simplified version of the conversation but you get the jist. You start to realize that even if the situation you just described isn’t the most ideal, you still have control. You can still change you financial situation. There is plenty of money. There are plenty of ways for you to get money. You have a plan. You have systems in place. This is an abundant mentality!
Money needs direction
The more negative energy you give to your money, the more you with stay financially stuck. The more positive energy you give to your money (AKA: a financial plan, a budget built on your values, gratitude for what you do have, more minimalist lifestyle etc.) the more you will start to believe things are possible.
And the more you start to believe things are possible, the more that the impossible actually happens.
We have seen this happen over and over and over again.
Make it happen for you.
Interested in learning more about our approach to finances?
Attend our FREE Budgeting Class where we outline our Financial Growth System and how you can customize it to your situation.