When is enough scarcity enough?

“ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!”

I don’t even know where this phrase comes from, but I do know that even I find myself yelling it at my children from time to time (nobody’s perfect!). Enough is enough! Enough is enough!

I find myself calling it to them when they have ignored me over and over again, when they have persisted in doing things they knew they should not be doing. FYI, my oldest is six. So I have lots of teeny wackos doing lots of “enough.” ;)

Yesterday we talked about the emotional investments we make into the scarcity mindset, and about the need to “ignore sunk costs.”

Here are my questions for today:

When is enough scarcity enough?

When do we put our foot down?

When do we look at our lives and say: “this is enough!! I’m done with this scarcity! I’m ready to be open for more!”?

When I was talking to my husband about ignoring sunk costs, he brought up a really interesting point.

He said, “We care about sunk costs because we’re afraid of making decisions and we like to revert back to decisions that have already been made, instead of making new decisions.”

How is this true in your life?

How is this true when it comes to the scarcity mindset?

Are there situations when it feels easier to continue living in a mindset of “there’s not enough for me,” just because that’s how you’ve always thought?

To what extent do we continue in old ways of thinking, just because we already decided to think that way, and continuing in an old decision is easier than making a new decision?

I would love to hear your thoughts on these questions. They are serious questions. Not just about scarcity, but about everything. What in our lives persists just because we don’t want to make a new decision? What in your life persists because you don’t want to make a new decision?

One of God’s greatest gifts to us is agency… the power to make decisions. How are we using that incredible power to choose prosperity?

When is that scarcity mindset enough? When does it become time to choose a new way of thinking?

Are you invested in scarcity?

Today, I want to talk about the scarcity investment and ignoring sunk costs.

First--what the heck is a scarcity investment and why would anyone ever invest in scarcity??

The secret is that many of us are invested in scarcity, and many of us are afraid to give it up.

What is a scarcity investment? A scarcity investment happens when we are personally invested in maintaining scarcity in our thinking and in our lives. When we feel on a conscious or subconscious level that maintaining scarcity outcomes and scarcity mindsets is somehow important. That is an investment in scarcity.

So… why do any of us invest in that?

Why do we invest in mindsets and outcomes that add stress and trauma to our lives? Because the fact is, feeling like there is not-enough is both stressful and traumatic.

We invest in these mindsets and outcomes for all sorts of reasons. Consider the following beliefs that many people hold both consciously and unconsciously:

• Struggling to get by gives my life meaning and purpose.
• Life is supposed to be a struggle; life is supposed to be hard.
• Good people are supposed to be poor.
• If things came easily to me, I would be a bad person.

These sorts of beliefs are actually surprisingly common. Almost everyone has beliefs like that floating around in them either consciously or unconsciously.

Hopefully we can look at that list and realize that these things are not true.

You can certainly derive meaning and purpose from struggle, but is struggle necessary for meaning and purpose? My first birth, that hospital birth I mentioned yesterday, was definitely a struggle that gave my life meaning and purpose to some degree… but my subsequent births were easy, nearly painless, comfortable, and joyful, and I still derived meaning and purpose from them. Struggle is not a prerequisite for meaning or purpose.

We say life is supposed to be hard because there is this idea that life is supposed to be a “test,” and apparently tests are supposed to be hard. You know, for a lot of people, tests are hard. I’ll say, I actually enjoy testing. You can be tested with having to struggle. Tests don’t have to be hard. Tests just measure. And we can be measured with joy and peace and not with struggle.

“Good people are supposed to be poor?” This is one a lot of good people fall into. I guess they are not aware that Melchizedek, the famed high priest that Abraham traveled to pay his tithing to, was actually the richest man in the world at that time. Abraham was pretty darn rich, too. We all hopefully know the story of Job, who suffered immense suffering… but then at the end, received tons of wealth and riches and got back more than he’d lost in his trials. Good people don’t have to be poor. Many of the best people are wealthy in every way.

“If things came easily to me, I would be a bad person.” Some people really feel like it would be wicked of them to have things come easily to them. Like they should feel guilty if they receive things that didn’t come through struggle. This is also antithetical to Biblical teaching. Yes, Adam was told to live by the sweat of his brow… but we also see in the Book of St. Matthew that God clothes the lilies of the field. There is definitely a place for work and effort--but also a place for trust and knowing that we will be provided for. It’s okay to consider yourself a lily of the field and allow God to clothe you. It takes a lot of faith--perhaps more faith than it takes to invest in a mindset of having to earn everything yourself. But the fact is, allowing God’s blessings to flow easily into your life makes you the opposite of a bad person. And there is no room for guilt when it comes to being open to God’s incredible blessings.

Unwilling to let go

I once had a very interesting session with a woman who had a lot of problems. I felt it over and over again in my mind: her real problem was her personal investment in struggle.

“You have a strong belief that you need to struggle,” I told her. “As long as you hold onto that belief, you’re going to have some serious struggles.”

In my work, I am able to help people let go of beliefs like that, often instantly, and replace them with more beneficial beliefs. “Would it be all right if I cleared that belief and replaced it with ‘I can allow blessings to flow into my life without struggle’?” I asked.

She pressed her mouth into a thin smile and tersely shook her head. “I have to hold onto that one,” she said.

I think that session took place about half a decade ago and I’ve thought about it ever since. That session did not make a huge difference for that friend. She still struggles pretty fantastically. I have not worked on her since and I don’t think she ever wants me to again. The idea that she would have to give up her emotional investment in struggling was just too much for her.

She had both mental and emotional investments in the concept of scarcity and struggle. These investments were so deep that releasing her need for struggle would have left her floundering and feeling like a bad person.

These days, I would have known to back up and look for the underlying beliefs preventing that one from going, but back then I was still pretty new at the work. But even so: when we are invested in feelings of scarcity, sometimes it can be an internal struggle to let go of that investment in favor of living in a space of prosperity and openness to all the blessings life and the universe have to offer us.

Ignoring sunk costs

One thing my husband loves to say is “Ignore sunk costs!” It means you’re better off ignoring the things you’ve previously invested in, in favor of looking to the future. I asked him to elaborate for me and this is what he said:

“Part of sunk costs is that you need to look not at what you’ve invested or what you’ve paid in the past, but what your payoffs are in the future. The sunk cost fallacy assumes value based on what you’ve done or what has been done, instead of what can or will happen. In that respect, it’s very easy to think, I’ve spent so much time and energy thinking htis way that it has to be worth it, or else I have wasted my time.

“When you understand sunk costs, you don’t spend so much time thinking about what you’ve done in the past, you think about what is the best option for me looking forward. It’s a question of looking forwards instead of backwards.”

Ignoring sunk costs is about looking forwards instead of backwards. When it comes to scarcity investments, it’s about looking at the ways we’ve previously been living our lives, and thinking about our lives, and asking ourselves: is this worth continuing to invest in? Is it really worth it to continue thinking this way?

This is something we’ll be discussing more tomorrow--when is enough scarcity enough?

Allie, what are some scarcity mindsets you can identify in yourself? What kind of an investment do you have in those beliefs? I would love to hear your insights. Just respond back to this email--I read every reply.

Sending the good vibes!

Allie

PS. My upcoming free email series on Conquering Scarcity officially starts on Monday. Join the Facebook group here to participate on Facebook, and invite your friends to sign up for the email list here: https://forms.aweber.com/form/75/1226416575.htm. Also, most importantly, don’t forget to have a fabulous day!

The Scarcity Shutdown

I birthed my first child in a hospital.

I didn’t really want to. My research during that pregnancy had led me to overwhelming evidence that for a low risk birth, the home is a safer place to birth, for both the mother and the baby--less exposure to antibiotic-resistant infection, less pressure for unnecessary interventions, etc. But in the end I let my mom talk me into a hospital birth, just to “make sure that everything would be okay.”

So I did it, and it was very terrible, but on top of the physical and emotional trauma associated with that hospital birth… we came home the few days later, to a bill from the hospital for several thousands of dollars.

This is a picture of my "little" guy... 10 lb 6 oz at birth, went straight to the NICU for what I later learned were side effects of the epidural. 

We weren’t sure if insurance was going to cover the bill.

Seeing that number on the paper… I couldn’t even sleep. The night we received that letter, I don’t think I slept at all. I felt so nervous. It felt like worms in my stomach, that yucky itchy crawling feeling of not enough, not enough, not enough. Thoughts raced in my mind all that night. How were we going to make this work? How would we ever scrape up enough to pay for that hospital birth? I would look over at my brand new baby and just feel terrible. That awful, feeling like a silent scream and panic and frustration and fear--so much fear. Fear of hardship, fear of humiliation, fear of having to ask for help. Fear of doing everything right and still not having enough.

It was a terrible time.

Back then, I was so stuck in stress and panic mode I didn’t even stop to think about the from a larger perspective.

But that’s how it goes, isn’t it? We get presented with these stressful times and we just shut down. It overwhelms our systems and freezes us.

I didn’t feel frozen in the moment--I felt racey and panicked. But at the same time, I did feel frozen in the sense that I felt so stuck.

When we are caught in scarcity mindsets and scarcity situations, that’s what happens: we get panicked, stressed, we feel stuck, we feel like there is no escape. I call this the scarcity shutdown. It’s what happens when we get so caught up in the sensations of not-enough that we start shutting down emotionally, mentally, and sometimes even physically, as our sleep and eating suffers due to the stress.

That story had a happy ending; we called our insurance and it turned out that the bill was not supposed to have been mailed to us, and they were taking care of it, and they did.

Sometimes our scarcity stories don’t have happy endings. Sometimes people end up on the streets, alone, with nowhere to go. Sometimes we suffer so extremely from loneliness and friendlessness that it drives us nearly to madness.

But the important thing is--all of our scarcity stories CAN have a happy ending. And that is what this upcoming free email series on Conquering Scarcity is all about it. It’s about turning our stories around, creating new stories--shifting into spaces of prosperity where we may be currently stuck in the revolving door of constant disappointment and feelings of not-enough.

Today I’m asking you a question: has there ever been a time in your life where you felt that “scarcity shutdown?” I would love to hear your story. You can reply directly to this email--I read every response.

The fun begins on Monday! So go here to participate on Facebook, and if you have any friends you think might enjoy benefitting from this series, go ahead and send them this link to sign up for this email list: https://forms.aweber.com/form/75/1226416575.htm.

Opening to abundance and conquering scarcity: upcoming challenge!

Do you ever feel stressed about money? Or time? Or other resources? When we stress about time, money, resources--or even things like love and relationships--many times, the stress is rooted in a thing called scarcity. I know you’ve heard of scarcity. The idea that there isn’t enough. Have you ever thought anything like this? There isn’t enough love for me. There is never enough money. I can’t afford that. I just don’t have enough time! Scarcity is the enemy of peace. And worse--it is rooted in lies. There IS enough for us. There is enough of everything for us. When I did this financial prosperity clearing, I did it totally live. These days I tune into the energy of a group ahead of time and make a plan of what needs to be cleared, but with that particular session everything that popped up in it was completely spontaneous and I did not look at it beforehand. One thing that surprised me in that session was the image of a Tree of Life, except it was a Tree of Money. It said: Money DOES grow on trees!

And sometimes even now I think of that image and think--wow! Money DOES grow on trees! Money can turn up when you least expect it; people can flow into your life with every resource you need and they can be happy to share it with you. There IS enough! More recently, I was at church and a speaker spoke about trees and time. I had a new image enter my mind--a Time Tree. I thought: Time grows on trees, too! I realized: just as I can create money from nothing, I can create time from nothing too. And all of us can do that. We can all create all the money we need. All the time we need. All the love we need. All the peace we need. All the resources we need. But it does require some mindset shifts. So I am excited to announce that for the next 4 weeks we are going to dive in to conquering scarcity. This is going to be part class, part challenge, part session. Free to your inbox. The fun begins this coming Monday so if you have any friends who might be interested, you’ll want them to sign up for the series here so they can participate too. You can also like my Facebook page here and join my group here to participate that way as well. … I’M EXCITED!!! So: tell your friends, get excited, and let’s conquer some scarcity this Christmas season. :) Sending all the good vibes! Allie