It’s not always our choice as children to be emotional deprived, which is the feeling that we’re not loved enough or are important enough, which can persist into our adult lives. This results in having a mindset of scarcity. This is the feeling, that we never have enough of the things that we want or need more of. That we’re always lacking.
What this sense of insecurity does, is it harms our closest relationships, as what we’re expecting is that they’ll let us down somehow. We never express our needs directly to them, while also avoiding intimacy. We feel deprived of emotions such as love, time, or money.
We act as if we’re constantly in panic mode, as we penny pinch even if we don’t need to. We’ll schedule every moment of our day. These are the thoughts of having a scarcity mindset. That things will get worse, rather than get better.
You wake up, get of out bed and instantly feel that you don’t have enough time. You wake up feeling you didn’t get enough sleep, and then deprive yourself of all the important things that you needed to do that day.
You’re bad at time management. You then have no idea how the days, weeks, and years of your life have slipped away so fast. You over schedule appointments, while spending too much time changing them. You’re always late paying your bills.
You think you’re losing it, but you’re just incompetent at managing time. These issues fall under the laws of scarcity. It’s found that those living with limited resources, who are poor, are more likely to make these types of bad decisions.
This occurs especially when it comes to money and relationship issues. It’s found to be instinctive and not always their fault, as that’s how the brain responds to scarcity.
Once we develop a mindset of scarcity, what doing so does is it narrows down our time frame, which causes us to make short term erratic decisions, which are usually impulsive.
Doing so throws our long-term goals in disarray, such as we’ll delay paying our credit card bills, hoping that they’ll disappear, or not answer the phone thinking it’s bad news.
Farmers who have a scarcity mindset, will become stressed when planting their seeds, but will relax once they’ve had a successful harvest. They become short on money, constantly worry about the weather, and worry about the market conditions.
Once someone is forced to deal with extremely limited resources, what that does is it increases the problems and the barriers that they need to deal with, which results in mental fatigue.
Those who are constantly deprived of what they want, develops an unhealthy obsession of overvaluing the things they don’t have. The nature of scarcity itself, however, impedes our efforts of coping.
The stress and the anxiety that’s associated with scarcity, interferes with our motivation, which causes us to become more vulnerable towards temptation.
This is the reason why some will purchase items on sale, even if they don’t need it. This can occur right after an emotional period such as the holidays, when they can’t really afford it.
The reason for this, is because of scarcity thinking. We think that we’re unable to resist the limited time of the sale, which the marketers prey on.
Those who are alone, will often see themselves and others in a more negative pessimistic light. They may avoid joining social gatherings and activities, based on the fear of rejection.
So how can we correct living in this scarcity mindset, while not becoming overly complacent. To feel more comfortable at the various levels of scarcity, and not feel deprived.
• Practice Gratitude – Always focus on what’s currently good about your life, which includes all those who support you. The community you live in, and your healthy active lifestyle. What doing so does, is it takes the focus off scarcity, such as time and money.
• Never Compare Yourself To Others – You’ll always meet someone who’s better than you. They will have more money, time, or possessions than you. You may then feel a tinge of envy. But in reality, you have no idea what it’s like to be them.
So never compare how you’re feeling inside, to how someone appears to be physically. What your struggles have created, are internal strengths that you don’t completely appreciate.
Breaking away from this cycle, requires plenty of preparation and effort. Create a plan so you won’t catch yourself ruminating. What getting active does, is it activates the left hemisphere of the brain, which avoids moodiness and depression.
So instead, decide to go for a walk or a run. Call someone. Tidy up your closet or garage, wash your car, or read a good book. Just keep busy.
• Take Precautionary Measures – Make a grocery list whenever you go to the supermarket and stick to it, so you won’t impulse buy.
Set up prepayment withdrawals for all your bills to be automatically withdrawn from your bank account. Leave your credit card at home. Remove all the sweets and refined sugar products from your home.
• Never Become Greedy – Whenever there’s a feeling that resources are becoming scarce, what most will do is get competitive with each other. This since they believe that if someone else gets more, that they’ll get less.
Once you decide to help someone grow their business for instance, they may in return be more than willing to refer new business to you.
Being helpful towards others, leads to gaining greater respect and reputation, which develops deeper relationships, while creating exchange and making new allies.