Deprivation Mindset

I am going to tell you one of my favorite stories.  It was back when I was working at CASES, an agency dedicated to connecting services, rather than jail time, to individuals who were recently convicted of non-violent felonies in hope that said services would prevent future criminal activity. (Sidebar: not surprisingly, it worked!)

I was with one of my clients who was without a home, and I was helping him get into a safe-house shelter. As we walked from the gritty subway, he dropped to the ground to pick something up.  “An ace of spades!”, he exclaimed.  When he told me that he had been collecting cards all over the city, with a goal to acquire a full deck, I was perplexed.  I had been a New Yorker for more than a decade and a half at that point, and had never once seen a random playing card on the ground.

“They are everywhere”, he said, “you just have to know to look”.

Since that day, I have seen countless playing cards strewn all over New York

(and if you are a New Yorker reading this, I assure you now will too).

He was right, of course.  They were there all along.  I just wasn’t looking for them.

This was a profound lesson in “what you shall seek, you shall find”.

Guess what?

This is how mindset works too.

So many (too many) of my clients come to me with Deprivation Mindset.  Whether it is around money, love, opportunity, or anything else, deprivation mindset is the mindset of not enough.  

This is particularly troublesome because our brain is hardwired to hold on tightly to anything that it thinks is scarce (like how our body holds on to calories when we skip meals).  To add insult to injury, this fear is rarely warranted. True scarcity is very uncommon.  Our brain is just tricking us into anxiety and worry, with no real basis in truth.

Guess what else?

We make poor decisions in this headspace.

Someone who thinks dessert is only permissible on holidays will overindulge in cookies on Christmas.

Someone who thinks jobs are few and far between will stay stuck in a dead end job.

Someone who thinks their beau is the only one on Earth who will love them will lower their expectations and settle for less than they deserve.

Deprivation mindset is dangerous...and...it keeps us stuck.

So isn’t it time you start seeking things that make your life better, not seem smaller?  You can ditch deprivation mindset. You can shift your attention to empowerment, confidence, gratitude and abundance. It just takes work.

You can start by simply just noticing when you are focusing on what is not enough, rather than what is available. 

What you seek, you shall find.