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Abundance v. Scarcity Mindset

I had dinner with a friend recently and embroidered across the front of her t-shirt was the following:

THE UNIVERSE IS FULL OF ABUNDANCE

I couldn't get away from the idea as I had been meditating on the themes of scarcity v. abundance for a few weeks. Surely, this message was for me.

I find that many people I meet view their world through a lens of scarcity.

It sounds like this:

There's never enough.

I've too many bills and not enough money.

I'll never find love.

I'll always be sick.

I'm just waiting for the shoe to drop.

I'll never get through this.

I know I've had to break myself from such fatalistic, absolutist thinking. Sometimes it's easier to not believe than to believe.

Doubts come easy. Faith requires more action and more effort but produces far better results.

Steven Covey wrote:

"People with a scarcity mentality tend to see everything in terms of win-lose. There is only so much; and if someone else has it, that means there will be less for me. The more principle-centered we become, the more we develop an abundance mentality, the more we are genuinely happy for the successes, well-being, achievements, recognition, and good fortune of other people. We believe their success adds to rather than detracts from our lives." 

I'm learning to celebrate abundance where I see it, especially in the lives of others. There's a saying that when the tide comes in, all the ships must rise. Oftentimes though, we jump ship before the tide ever comes in. We've got stay in the boat if we are going to get the benefit of increase.

In the Gospels, Jesus is quoted as saying that he came that we might have life, and life in more abundance. (Yo he venido para que tengan vida y para que la tengan en mas abundancia! John 10:10--I love how it expresses in Spanish. It has punch.) His teachings show us how to live in the place of spiritual abundance, even when we are surrounded by lack.

Take on a win-win mentality today. Drop the all-or-nothing, back-and-white thinking. Choose to live by principles of faith, goodness, hope, love, and abundance, in spite of your present reality.

Choose an abundance mindset today!

Meaningful Purpose

From Chapter 13 in Live a Legacy, a few of my thoughts on living a meaningful and fulfilling life by knowing your purpose

 

Change Your Mind

My thoughts on Chapter 12 in Live a Legacy...Change Your Mind...

 

Surrender, Accept, Enounter

This weekend millions of people around the globe will connect to each other and to the God of their understanding.

Families will gather around the Passover table remembering the story of how their people were delivered out of bondage. People will gather in churches recalling that death is never the final word, resurrected life is always possible.

Passover and Easter remind us that affliction and bondage are indeed never final. Our higher power is present with us in our struggles and available to lead us into new places of deliverance and freedom.

The difference between mere religiosity and living faith is that with faith, we move into newness of life through surrender, acceptance, and encounter with higher meaning and purpose.

This weekend, surrender. You are being delivered from bondage.

This weekend, accept. Your higher power is with you when you struggle.

This weekend, encounter. You are being transformed into newness of life.

I wish you a very Happy Passover and Blessed Easter.

 

 

Strategic Thinking

From Chapter 11 in Live a Legacy...

 

Understanding Influence

Here I talk about understanding influence from Chapter 9 in Live a Legacy.

 

Patrick and Spiritual Experience

I found my copy of The Confession of St. Patrick this morning.

I was struck again by this man's story. He was taken into slavery out of Roman Britain (probably modern day Wales) around the age of 15. He was held captive in Ireland and during his literal captivity he found spiritual liberation through prayer and meditation.

It was there that he connected to his spirit and found the Spirit speaking to him which would then lead him away from his slave master, onto a ship to his voyage of freedom to Gaul and back to Britain.

Yet once again through spiritual experience and great faith, he would return to Ireland to minister to others the spiritual freedom he had found while in captivity in that land.

I love how he framed the voice of Spirit to himself through dreams and visions:

And on another night, I do not know, only God knows, whether in me or outside of myself, I heard the most wise words which as yet I could not comprehend...And once again, I saw him praying within my soul; it seemed as if I was still inside my body, and then I heard him above me, that is, over my inner man. So that there he was praying with many a groan, and as all this was happening, I was stunned and kept marveling and wondering who he might be, who was praying in this wise within me. But as this prayer was ending, he declared that it was the Spirit.

His description resonates with me for often I don't know if it is within me or outside of me that I hear what I believe to be the voice of the Spirit. Sometimes, the Spirit sounds similair to my human spirit, indistinguishable as it were.

The point for me is not to quibble over which it is but to discern good, clear direction when these kinds of experiences happen and answer "yes" to the call. 

Sixteen hundred years later, Patrick's Confession is a primer for spiritual experience that reflects the 21st Century human condition as we struggle in a time of conflict to follow faithfully the heart's call in spite of great turmoil or opposition. He wrestled with his culture, his religion, and his God to follow his heart and live authentically.

As the poet e.e. cummings wrote: "It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are."

Patrick did just that.  His story inspires me to do the same today.