How you choose to view the world is up to you. You can come from an abundance mindset where you constantly feel excited, motivated and ready to capture the opportunities available to you. Or, you can come from a scarcity mindset which can trap your thinking and make you feel overwhelmed.
Our mindset determines our custom-designed path to success. We can look at everything from a scarcity mindset or develop an abundance mindset. We can have a fixed mindset or a growth mindset.
Creating an abundant mindset vs a scarcity mindset can have a huge bearing on your personal and professional success.
A scarcity mindset can lead to envy about what people have, guilt about what others have and anger about what other people are doing in the world. An abundance mindset can lead to more creativity, more joy, increased happiness and a focus on gratitude and appreciation.
In this article I’ll outline what an abundance mindset is, why an abundance mentality is important and share 7 ways to develop an abundance mindset which will help you create an abundant life that is full of gratitude and appreciation for what you have and what is available to you in the world.
How to develop an abundance mindset
If you want to create a life of abundance, creating an abundance mindset will free you up to custom design your ideal future.
With abundance thinking you will come from a place of gratitude and appreciation.
This abundant mentality will help you create more opportunity, more happiness and more fulfilment.
Abundance mindset vs scarcity mindset
Someone with an abundance mindset believes there is an abundance of everything in life, whether that be more time, more money, better relationships, more resources and more opportunities. In contrast, someone with a scarcity mindset lives comes from a zero sum mentality and is fearful that there is a depletion of time, money, energy and resources available.
You, therefore, have the opportunity to develop one of two mindsets competing for your attention: scarcity mentality or an abundance mindset.
A scarcity mindset can leave you feeling overwhelmed, depressed, and paralysed.
An abundant mindset makes you feel excited, motivated, and ready for action.
The importance of an abundance mindset
The importance of having an abundance mindset in business and life means you focus on progress and positivity.
Having a scarcity mindset means you focus on what you don’t have and what you could lose, while an abundance mindset is about having a mindset that focuses on what is available.
Someone who has an abundance mentality is focused on creativity, innovation, opportunity and creating multipliers in their business and life.
People with an abundance mentality see the world as a place with ever-increasing opportunities to create value and achieve continual personal and business growth.
Someone with a scarcity mindset believes there is a lot of unfairness in the world, they are blamers, they believe there is only so much of any resource available and believe that resource is shrinking in size.
7 steps to develop an abundance mindset
Here are 7 steps you can use to develop an abundance mindset that will free up your thinking to make your life happier, more fulfilling and allow you to achieve your biggest goals in business and life.
1. Expand your gratitude
Grateful people practice proactive gratitude.
There is an appreciation for what they have and are not envious of what others have.
This creates an abundance mindset.
They don’t feel guilty about what they have or what others don’t have.
The key is to focus on being happy with who you are and what you have.
It is all about expanding strengths, expanding your internal gratitude and appreciating the people you have in your life.
If you go into any situation with a proactive gratitude mindset you will always focus on what it great about the situation or people, rather than what is wrong.
Appreciate achievements to create an abundance mindset
A simple tool to help you build up your gratitude muscle is to list 3 things you’re grateful for at the end of each day.
Another tool is, before any meeting, think about the things you appreciate about the person before you meet.
You will go into the meeting with a very positive attitude and the person will pick up on that.
Your gratitude will expand the more you express it.
Rather than thinking about what you don’t have, focus on what you do. Appreciate everything you have and abundance will flow in.
2. Surround yourself with abundance minded people
If you want your life to support your growth and success, it’s essential to build a network of like-minded people.
You need people around you who are also committed to constantly growing and who will appreciate your experiences.
Having people who will push you forward, cheer you on, hold you accountable and be happy for you and your achievements is a key choice you can make.
They can instantly upgrade your thinking, act as collaborators and provide a community that can take you to higher and higher levels.
Find people who are looking to create their own breakthroughs and simply get you.
3. Create a life of abundance
Creating a vision of your future gives you clarity about what could be possible, your ideal future if you will.
This vision can fill you with enormous excitement and energy.
This vision helps you simplify everything and can remove a lot of complexity you may feel about where your business and life is heading and what action steps to take next.
Your vision will act as a guiding path.
Goal setting creates an abundance mentality
From your vision you can create 12 month goals and then work back and create specific, measurable 90 day goals in all areas of your business and life.
You can envision what your future business and life could look like through setting goals.
This helps establish the personal and professional improvements you want to make along the way.
Ensure you are always measuring backwards from where you started, to motivate you and ensure that you’re always making progress.
4. Focus more time on what you love to do
When you spend more and more time utilising your unique strengths and adding real value to the people that matter in your life and you will feel a real sense of abundance.
You may feel anything is possible. This ensures you become more creative, more energised, and more confident.
From this abundant mindset, you look for multipliers within your own business and life and seek other abundance mindset people to collaborate with.
An abundance mindset increases happiness
This abundance mentality increases your happiness and ensures you are always progressing.
You are constantly moving forward.
This abundance mindset means you seek ways to grow further.
To innovate.
You are always looking for further breakthroughs in both your own life and those of the people that matter to you.
More and more opportunities seem to open up because you have freed yourself up and are spending more time utilising your unique strengths.
5. Follow your passions
If you look at your business and life what things, activities and people would you like to be freed up from?
How much time are you currently spending doing the things you love and bring you the biggest return?
Conversely, how much time are you spending on low value activities and relationships that drain energy and don’t bring you a lot of joy?
If the answer is quite a lot, then you probably want freedom from these activities.
So how can you free yourself up to do more of the things you love. The high value, high joy activities.
Develop a confident mindset
Every 90 days look to remove 3 of the activities you don’t enjoy and drain energy.
Either drop them completely, outsource or delegate.
Look to add 3 activities you love to do and deliver the biggest value.
In 12 months you will have freed yourself up from 12 activities, people or commitments you don’t want to do and added 12 activities or relationships that you love to do and are important to you.
A real Win-Win.
6. Build a life of abundance thinking
Those with an abundance mindset crave learning and growth. Improving their work-life balance is a key focus.
They are looking for new knowledge and wisdom to consume.
There is a focus on improving thinking, and that requires a mind and body at peak performance.
Keys to this include getting a good night’s sleep, exercising regularly eating healthily and finding time to just rest and rejuvenate.
Take days out of your business and life for complete rest and rejuvenation when you can.
This means being completely cut off from all distractions.
You will come back physically and mentally stronger, and have more of an abundance mindset rather than a scarcity mindset.
7. Expand abundance and eliminate scarcity
Rather than trying to improve your perceived weaknesses or skills shortage, instead focus on expanding your existing strengths.
But, do you know what your strengths are?
Have you taken any time to review and assess what you are passionate about and do really well?
In your professional life and personal life you will face a number of challenges so it’s essential to understand:
- What’s the best use of your time?
- How will you add value?
- What things do you do well?
- Which activities can you be paid the most for?
- Who can help you get to your ideal future?
- What are your most important relationships?
If you can maximise your professional and personal strengths what would that mean to your business and life?
How much time could you free up and how much simpler would your life be? Focusing on being more productive on a small number of important activities is key.
Invest your time on maximising strengths, which will create a feeling of abundance. You will save time and get to your goals a lot quicker.
Summing Up
People with an abundance mindset are creators not reactors.
Those with a scarcity mindset wait for things to happen and then react.
People with an abundant mindset are crystal clear on their vision and bigger goals so they know exactly what path to follow and action steps to take.
Those with an abundance mentality are always winning or learning. There is no losing.
They look at what is working and what strengths and opportunities they have. Their focus is on expanding those strengths, rather than trying to improve weaknesses.
You can choose to live a life of abundance where you are always focusing on the positive and are excited about the endless opportunities in your future.
Use these tips to expand your own abundance mindset so you live in a world of gratitude and appreciation for what you have and the opportunities that are available to you.
This article was originally published at Lucemi Consulting.
You may also like my guide on how to become strong-minded.
About the Author
Mark Pettit is a small business coach to business owners who want to simplify their time, energy and focus so they can multiply their freedom, impact and results. Visit his website here.
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