Developing an Abundance Mentality

Having an abundant outlook is something I have struggled with a lot over the years.  Opening up and accepting that there is more than enough to go around for everyone seems to go against some force of habit I have to make sure my needs are met before I can think about meeting the needs of others.  This is the scarcity mentality.

Although I’m still growing in this area, I feel as though I have grown a great deal over the last few years and that the growth is taking on an upward curve.

I’d like to share why this is happening.

First, what does it mean to have an abundance mentality?  An abundance mentality, made popular by Stephen Covey in his book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, is the belief that there are more than enough resources for everyone, which means it is possible to find win-win resolutions.  This is in contrast to the scarcity mentality, which leads to people believing that only one side can truly win in a transaction.  

Second, what are the benefits of an abundance mentality?  The intangible effects on our character occur each time we think and act with the attitude of abundance.   We move closer to reaching our full potential as human beings.  With the exception of feeling good, most the tangible benefits of an abundance mentality are not immediately apparent.  Benefits such as improved relationships, material objects, etc., come much more slowly, but they do come.  This is the law of the attraction so many successful people attribute to being the “secret” to their success.

So how do we achieve this abundance mentality?

Actually, an abundance mentality is not something we gain or achieve.   The abundance mentality is actually an aspect of our true nature.  It has simply been covered it up with the conditioning most of us receive in our natural development as human beings.

The reality is that our minds and bodies are deeply interconnected with the “outside world”.  Although we may know this intellectually, most of us have not had enough personal insight into this truth to break us free of our habitual attachment to the idea that our minds and bodies are somehow completely separate from everything around us.

The practice of mindful investigation of reality can help us to gradually see more clearly the deep interconnection between everything in our world.   In his masterwork, The Law of Success, Napoleon Hill, perhaps the most well-respected expert on success in history, said that the basis for the secrets to success is harmony with all around us, which comes from understanding the interconnected-ness of all things.   

As the truth of the interconnection of “things” becomes more clear, we begin to realize that we are already connected to everything we could ever want or need.  There’s nothing we have to get that isn’t already ours.

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