Scarcity and Abundance...and Sufficiency

I recently came to a realization around a mindset that I have been carrying with me for some time now...this discovery came out of the blue during a conversation and the more I spoke the more I was able to see just how this has directed my actions for a large part of my life.  The lenses that I have been looking at more closely have to do with my perception of scarcity and abundance in my life and how my way of thinking has been influenced by both.

The idea first came up in a discussion around relationships and experiences with toxic friendships and romantic partnerships.  As I spoke I suddenly realized that I had entered into and hung onto toxic relationships throughout my past as a reaction to a fear of scarcity.  A fear that if I didn't enter this relationship, who knows when another opportunity might take place, and that if I ended or let a relationship go I would be on my own again and back to the place of being fearful of being alone.  A feeling of scarcity around the idea of there being people who might care for me or even love me drove me into relationships that I would have done well to steer clear of, or end much sooner than I did.  This also extends to friendships where despite knowing that you are not being treated as an equal or with the respect deserved, you also fear losing a connection and the ability to make a new one.  For many with our current state of being locked down and forced to distance from others, this fear of scarcity is nothing new and I fear it is causing some people to be driven into toxic relationships or to stay in ones where the negatives outweigh the positives.  Despite being surprised by this new perspective, I also feel empowered as I feel that this knowledge will help me to flip the script and come to an understanding that there are actually an abundance of potential partners and friends in the world and by living your truth and being yourself you will connect with those who see and love you for who you really are.  It may take a while longer these days for those moments of connection to occur, and although the delay may seem to last a lifetime, looking back it truly will be just a blip in time. 

Another area where I have noticed this same distortion between scarcity and abundance taking place is with my ability to manage my time.  Despite being home for the majority of our days it can still be hard to actually feel like we are managing our time and creating a necessary balance that includes time to recharge and replenish ourselves.  For me this takes place because I keep telling myself that I have an abundance of time to accomplish a goal and that allows me to ease up and perhaps disappear into a social media rabbit hole, or something similar.  The feeling of having all the time in the world to do something nice for myself makes actually doing these things harder to get to.  I was on a webcast at work regarding mental health and the speaker said that we should aim to "Take 2 for You".  This means that of the waking hours in our day, aim to allocate 2% of that time towards something that revitalizes, recharges and replenishes you.  When I first heard that I thought "wow, that sounds like a lot of time" (quick math has never been my forte), but when you work it out - if you get 8 hours of sleep at night you are left with 16 hours where you are awake...if you take 2% of that you are left with approximately 20 minutes...and even in a super hectic day, I hope that we are all able to find 20 minutes to allocate to ourselves.  This is where we can also start to flip the script on scarcity and abundance.  What if instead of telling ourselves that we have an abundance of time to spend on those activities that bring pleasure and instead decide that our downtime is scarce, would that help to bring those activities up the importance ladder?  Would it also help us to protect that time instead of letting it slip by so easily?

The more that I mulled over these ideas around scarcity and abundance the more I decided that I want to find the places in my life where I have had these turned around, where I have been protecting the actions and thinking that is counter to the more positive outcomes that I want for myself.  The more that I plan on ensuring that when at all possible I protect the "good stuff" that truly is scarce and let the more abundant negative or non-productive actions and thought patterns simply start to slip away. 

**Writer's Note - I have had this post in a draft format for a few weeks now, as other ideas have come to mind that I felt more strongly about posting.  What I found interesting was that while I have been holding onto this one, I started to listen to Brene Brown's audiobook The Gifts of Imperfection. I had read it some time ago and was finally finding the opportunity to listen to it on my walks lately.  What struck me as I listened was her idea around SUFFICIENCY as a mindset.  How we often overlook what we have as we strive for more and attempt to reach that point or place in our lives where we will finally be enough.  Whatever that looks like for us.  The goal that she suggests is to realize that what we have is what we need, that we are enough as we are....the idea of sufficiency.  I like this idea even more than offsetting scarcity with abundance, as those two feel much like a black and white, this or that type of outlook.  Something that I am trying my hardest to move past.  Sufficiency feels like more of a comfortable grey area where that longing for more or fear of not enough both ease up and we can just sit with ourselves and what we have in our lives and be thankful for it all.