The Abundance Mindset Test

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The words you say and the thoughts you believe can affect your abundance.

If you’re anyone that immerses them­selves into personal devel­op­ment or spir­i­tu­ality like myself, I’m sure you’ve came across the idea of “abun­dance”. You know, that thing everyone keeps talking about that seems to contra­dict every­thing the media and “economy” is saying. How there’s plenty of every­thing in the universe to go around for everyone, and the notion that there’s a lack of every­thing we need to be happy is totally false. That the universe, God, or who/whatever created enough energy or “stuff” that it’s impos­sible for us to run out.

Well, it’s true.

While I person­ally believe this to be the truth based on pure physics and math — and the logical conclu­sion that whoever’s “running the show” just wants people to live in fear for the sake of  better control — the fact remains that most of us have grown up with middle and lower class fami­lies that have a lot of ingrained beliefs about scarcity.

Such beliefs as:

• There’s not enough to go around
• Other people are starving so you have to eat every­thing on your plate
• You’re lucky if you can find some­body that likes you, so hold on to them
• Money doesn’t grow on trees
• Our family has never been wealthy, so just take what­ever “safe” 9–5 job you can
• All the good ideas/women/jobs are taken
• The Economy sucks & nobody has any money to spend on your product

These even extend beyond personal and familial beliefs, as they have been constantly drilled into our world and soci­etal conscious­ness for centuries. As anyone can see, that even for the most enlight­ened of gurus there’s plenty to over­come in order to consis­tently have a raised vibra­tion of abun­dance… and keep it there. I mean, even as far along in my own personal devel­op­ment as I am think I am, I STILL consis­tently have to deal with limiting beliefs like those everyday. I’m lucky to have tools to clear and over­come these false limits once I’m aware they exist, and each learning and release takes me a step higher.

The idea that there’s all this abun­dance every­where, that there’s all this money ready to flow to you, and there’s copious amounts of beau­tiful women waiting to beg for your atten­tion… sounds fantastic — or like complete rubbish.

After all, if you’ve lived most of your life in lack (in a scarcity mindset) then that idea sounds like a newage fairy tale. Might as well have unicorns, puppies, fairies with magical happy dust, and super model sirens singing songs that make double rain­bows piss golden Mario coins. But I digress.

Even if you DO believe that there’s abun­dance, or that it might be possible, if you don’t expe­ri­ence and see evidence of it in the real world, with your own eyes — it’s not going to be a real, powerful belief that molds your reality into one ripe with volup­tuous oppor­tu­ni­ties and happi­ness. And trust me, living 20, 30, 40 years of a life that’s been satu­rated with events and “evidence” of lack and scarcity ain’t no walk-in-the-park to over­come for the average person.

Good thing you’re not average, eh?

So until you take care of all these uncon­scious limiting beliefs and emotions and start seeing the world through the eyes of abun­dance (because we all know the mind will always find evidence to support what­ever belief it has, might as well make them empow­ering ones), how do you begin? How do you keep your mindset that one of abun­dance when the world around you shows mostly scarcity?

Well here’s a quick little “trick” I use when I’m faced with scarcity-based behaviours.

The Abundance Mindset Test

This is a very simple, yet extremely powerful, mental “check” that one can do anytime you feel like you may be acting out of need­i­ness, scarcity, or a place of lack. I orig­i­nally learned and applied this to my dating life, and found anyone can actu­ally use this powerful reframe in other areas where lack (or not) of abun­dance would alter one’s behaviour.

The basic idea is that most people will behave differ­ently when they desper­ately need some­thing compared to when they have plenty of it. What we want is to be able to live life as we want to, without being in a reac­tive mode that changes our behav­iour into some­thing sub-optimal, depending on the current ‘supply’. So we just compare our current situ­a­tion to that of one where we would be abun­dant to see if our behav­iour would be different.

For example:

Let’s say I’ve been single for a while and meet a new woman and we start to (very casu­ally) date. We hangout one night, and then I feel the urge to call her the next day to hang out again.

Now here’s where the abun­dance mindset test, or double check, comes into place:

I ask myself “If I was seeing 5 other women right now, would I still be doing this?”. I’d imagine myself in that situ­a­tion, and come up with 2 possible answers: yes or no. If the answer was ‘no’, then that meant I was changing my behav­iour based on need­i­ness, attach­ment, scarcity, etc… and then I’d STOP, and not call her that partic­ular moment. If ‘yes’, that means my behav­iour was NOT influ­enced by scarcity and she was just that awesome that I wanted to see her again… in which case I would call her and hangout.

This has nothing to do with dating or waiting games; it has every­thing to do with making sure you’re behaving from the right place. Did I want to see her again just because I felt clingy or desperate that I finally met a new woman? Or was it because I genuinely wanted to see her soon because we had such a fantastic connec­tion? I’m sure any high self-seteem woman would agree the later is a much more authentic and attrac­tive reason.

Let’s take another example:

I’m with some friends at a nice restau­rant and see some­thing I want on the menu for $70 and some­thing else for only $40. I notice that I start playing math games in my head and start ratio­nal­izing how I could do x, y, z with the other $30, but can’t tell if I’m just trying to justify settling for the 2^nd cheaper dish, or that dish is the one I really want to eat.

I’d ask myself: “If I had an extra $100 right now to spend on food, would I still pick the $40 dish?”. If ‘yes’, then that means I’m congruent with that meal and that price (or state of scarcity) wasn’t the deciding factor in getting it — I really did want that dish instead. But if the answer was ‘no’, then I’d realize I was coming from a place of lack rather than abun­dance, and that was (nega­tively or posi­tively) influ­encing my true desires.

Now this doesn’t mean right away I’d spend money I didn’t have just to indulge… you really don’t HAVE to have a $70 dinner. In fact, most (truly) very wealthy people are incred­ibly smart and respon­sible with their money. Average people would charge it anyways and go into debt. Be smart, of course. But if I DID have enough money and still noticed myself coming from that place of scarcity I’ve had earlier in life, that would be an awesome aware­ness to have when I’m actu­ally living in abun­dance but not behaving that way.

The point is simply to start recog­nizing that your behav­iours are influ­enced by your percep­tion of abun­dance or scarcity, and to start catching your­self falling into nega­tive habits and then to change them now… not live like a glut­to­nous spoiled brat that demands every­thing from the universe for nothing or make instant grat­i­fi­ca­tional (yes I just made that up) decisions.

So, the test is specif­i­cally as follows:

1. Notice your­self possibly changing behav­iour out of scarcity.
2. Figure out what situ­a­tion would be one of abun­dance (or even more) compared to yours.
3. Imagine your­self doing the same behav­iour in the abun­dant situation.
4. Compare that to your current one and notice if you behave the same or different.
5. If different (no), don’t continue the current behav­iour or at least be very aware you’re doing it out of lack. If you’d still be doing the same behav­iour in both (yes), then you’re not acting out of scarcity or need and go ahead with your orig­inal choice.

Let’s apply this real quick:

You have an amazing idea for a new busi­ness for Magical Widget X (why do we always call them widgets?) Everyone says the economy sucks, you don’t have funds, or nobody would buy it because of x, y, z. You decide to scrap the idea. As you do, you do the Abundance Mindset Test to make sure you’re not scraping the busi­ness for the wrong reasons.

1. Noticing your­self scraping the idea, you think it might be out of fear or lack.
2. You think what kind of situ­a­tion would have abun­dance: enough loans to start it and people with extra money.
3. You imagine your­self in that abun­dant situ­a­tion deciding to start or scrap the new idea.
4. The choice you make in the “imag­i­nary abun­dance” (in quotes because there actu­ally IS abun­dance) will either be the same or difference.
5. You can either realize that you were just afraid of people not affording it and keep/change your present deci­sion or that you would cancel it anyways because the idea actu­ally did suck even as you were coming from abundance.

Please remember this doesn’t help you make safer or educated deci­sions: this only checks to make sure you’re coming from a place of abun­dance. Be smart and respon­sible whether you’re in lack or abun­dance, and use this as an aid to really seeing the world as a loving and abun­dant place.

Everyone’s reality is correct — so why not make yours a happy and empow­ering one now.

Let me know now in the comments how this worked for you in your everyday life, won’t you?