9 Easy Ways to Create Your Own Abundance Mindset (Find your own magic formula!)
We are bombarded with scarcity messages every day of our lives:
Hurry! Sale ends today!
For a limited time only!
Limited quantities available! Order yours now!
There is no time for that!
You are going to be late!
You aren’t working fast enough!
Be more productive!
You can’t afford that!
You are not that good!
The list could go on and on.
But what if instead of staying focused on scarcity, you could create a pillar of abundance in your life? What if you could free yourself from the stress and anxiety that scarcity causes? What if you built an abundance mindset?
There is no one-size-fits-all formula that will give you an abundance mindset. But you can create your own magic elixir that works most days to shift your thinking and start letting abundance shine through. Here are 9 easy ways to create an abundance mindset that have worked for me.
9 Easy Ways to Create Abundance
1. Accept that life has taken care of you so far.
You are reading this after all, right?
That means you are still here! So whatever adversity you have faced up until today, no matter how hard yesterday, or last week, or last month was, you are still standing. That’s got to make you smile if only for the moment.
I can’t tell you how many times this one thought has pulled up when I feel like the walls are crumbling. For me that list includes miscarriages, job losses, injuries, and family conflicts just to name a few darkest hours. Each one felt too hard, and too new and too different to handle. Yet looking back now I can see that I overcame them all. I am still here.
So when the next curve ball slams you, just remember everything you been through got you to today. There will come a time when this moment is also behind you.
2. Reflect on your past and find proof of abundance in your life.
It’s so easy to forget what has been plentiful when the world is screaming scarcity in your face. Reflect back to find proof of abundance in your life that has lifted you up:
a generous friend
a great feast
staring up at a starlit sky
smelling the freshness of a spring rain that makes everything feel new
seeing the thousands of tiny pink cherry blossoms
You don’t even have to look very far back to find abundance. Chances are, no matter where you are right now, you can look around and notice something in great abundance.
I’m writing this from my chaise lounger, looking out over my front garden and field, and my first thought went to the millions of needles making up my huge Douglas fir that stands watch over my driveway gate. Now that’s an abundance of nature!
What is abundant in your surroundings right now? What does it provide evidence of?
Stop for a moment and notice. Maybe it’s the abundance of books on your shelf? A fridge full of food? A dizzying array of your kids’ toys scattered across the floor? Flowers in your garden?
There is so much abundance that we don’t even register. Pause and notice. It can change everything.
3. Practice gratitude daily.
There is a lot of generic advice out there on gratitude. I am not talking about grabbing a piece of paper and writing down three things, nodding your head and saying, “yup I am grateful”.
Go deeper than this. Feel gratitude as an emotion in your body. Think of something or someone you are grateful for and discover where the feeling of gratitude lives in your body.
We are often attuned to where anger lives in us, as a clenched jaw, stiff neck, twitching eye. But where does your gratitude live? It’s an important question that takes you deeper into a gratitude practice and lets you experience gratitude both mentally and physically.
Give it a try and see if you can discover where your gratitude lives.
4. Give without expectations.
Sometimes we provide favors just to stock up on a future return for ourselves . . . I’m doing this now, and I expect that in the future, this action buys me x or y in return from you.
Giving looks and feels differently when it’s done without any expectation of return.
Maybe that looks like a random act of kindness, smiling at someone you pass by, or picking up a dropped parcel for someone? Maybe it’s giving up your seat on the bus to someone who needs it more than you do? How about a surprise gift for your partner or quietly picking up the cheque for the meal?
Generosity flows from abundance, to give freely because you know there will always be more.
5. Allow yourself to feel empowered.
Scarcity is a disabling mindset. It keeps you fearful. It keeps you playing small in life. It’s the voice in your head telling you that you are not enough.
Instead, allow yourself the opportunity to take action. What happens to your mindset when you catch yourself taking action (especially something that you’ve been putting off)? It’s a “yeah me” moment. It’s a win. Celebrate that.
And just like exercising, you benefit from what you repeat mentally too. When that repetition is centered around celebrating the times you take action, you can generate more of what you want (and less of what you don’t want).
I was really struggling with the concept that launching The Naturalized Human meant I had to become both more visible and more consistent. But I kept celebrating the little wins: Signing up on Substack; creating the title and logo; coming up with the description; making the first basic post. Each step was a “yeah me” moment in moving towards this dream of writing. By celebrating the small steps, I am here and so excited to be creating posts each week!
6. Reduce your anxiety and stress daily.
Anxiety and stress both come from and perpetuate a scarcity mindset. If you are living in a state of constant uncertainty, your whole body goes on alert. Your body cannot tell the difference between the bad things you keep imagining and something bad actually happening to you.
You can start to shift into a state of abundance by hitting pause on your stress machine (stress thinking) in your brain. There are many great ways to do this.
You can try:
Breathing breaks where you stop and take 3 deep breaths on a regular basis, even every hour if needed, to calm your nervous system down and clear your head.
Walking in nature has been prove to reduce mental stress.
Pet your dog or cat, or visit a pet store for time with a furry or feathered companion.
Try art therapy!
Personally I do all of these things regularly. When I find myself particularly stressed out, I like to pull out some pencil crayons and color. I loved coloring books as a child and the simple focus, choosing colors, and pleasing, repetitive hand movements are a winner every time for me. Breaking the habit of stress, allows abundance to flow in.
7. Find your focus.
Mindlessness and scarcity go hand in hand. When you are just doing because this is your habit, you are robbing yourself of experiencing joy and abundance which live in mindful actions.
Instead of just following your same old routine, consider what you would really like to do instead. If you are trying to lose weight, instead of eating that bag of chips, pause and think about whether that action is taking you were you want to go. Maybe a handful of nuts is what you really want to do instead.
If you are constantly lost in the onslaught of morning emails and can’t get your work done, perhaps you can delay opening emails for the first one or two hours. Focus on work you want to get done, and then after you have made progress, then go back and do email.
Sometimes just shaking up your pattern is enough to let a new way of being take hold. Catch yourself in those mindless patterns that are soul-sucking and make a change. Remind yourself of who you want to show up in the world as, and then do one thing to make that happen. Focus can generate higher states of wellbeing.
8. Build resilience.
What is resilience? Essentially it is the ability to bounce back. As you cultivate your abundance mindset, you are building resilience.
It’s easy to help this process along by assessing your vulnerabilities and then taking steps to overcome them.
If you worry about food shortages, learn how to garden, save seeds, or store food at home.
If you worry that your job is unstable, proactively build some additional skills. This will either make you more valuable at work, or let you start a side hustle.
If power outages are becoming common in your area and threatening your survival (no heat in winter; no cooling in summer), then develop a plan to cope with multi-day outages. Maybe that looks like buying a better sleeping bag or investing in alternative fuels if this is a winter heat issue. Maybe it looks like planting a shade tree in your yard, or finding or creating a community cooling shelter if its a summer cooling issue.
The point is that when you improve your ability to bounce back, you create the tools and alternative actions that make you stronger and let you live more abundantly.
9. Experience joy.
When we remain embedded in the rat-race of modern life, we get sucked into a lot of negative emotions. About one year ago, I started to make joy my go-to choice. That’s right, I actively sought joy on a daily basis.
What brings you joy?
It’s a simple question, that often has simple answers, and yet we spend our time in frustration, worry, angst, and even despair.
When was the last time you asked yourself the question: what brings me joy?
What happens when you ask yourself: how could I make this activity ( or this day ) more joyful?
My go-to thought of the day is: Joy is a Choice.
Choose joy today and see what happens.
Shift into Abundance
Changing from a scarcity mindset to abundance is not as hard as you might think. Start with any one of these nine concepts and see what happens. Once your focus shifts to the abundance in your life and in the universe, it spreads like a warm and comforting glow.
You find what you focus on.
The more you focus on abundance, the more you find it everywhere and the stronger you become.
Why wait?
If you have other tips for creating abundance, share them in the comments below.
If you enjoyed this post, please share it with a friend or share the link to The Naturalized Human. Thanks!