Scarcity thinking is when you focus on your failures and what you lack. But, what you focus on grows, so if you focus on scarcity, you will get more scarcity.

The first step to attracting abundance is to begin to shift your focus away from failure and scarcity toward success and abundance, no matter how difficult your current situation may be.

Do you procrastinate fun waiting for the work to be done? If so, then have you found that work still gets done? Do you still have time to play? If you do play, do you feel guilty and think about the work that needs to get done?

If you answered last month’s probing questions about what you would do if you only had 12 months to live, was working all the time all you would do? My guess is no. So what happens when you work all the time and never play? You create an imbalance in your life and create scarcity with respect to play and the other important balancing activities that you never get to do. When you’re stuck in work mode and never have fun, then life’s goodness drains away. This draining away prevents you from accessing the abundance available to you and instead creates scarcity thinking.

Scarcity thinking is when you think that abundance is not available to you, is not plentiful, is inadequate in supply, or is hard to get. For many of us, this thinking is how we were conditioned. Our western worldview is dominated by the concept of scarcity – scarcity of natural resources for our insatiable demands, scarcity of food for those starving in other countries, scarcity of time to spend with our children and loved ones, scarcity of money to pay off our credit card debt, etc. – these are the conditioning messages of the evening news. Unfortunately, as we’ve said before, what you focus on grows. If you focus on scarcity, then it grows in your life.

So how do you shift away from scarcity thinking?

The most important technique is recognizing scarcity thinking when it occurs. When you bring awareness to it, then it’s possible to change it. How to change this thinking?

One way, play every day! Build play into your day, or even a couple times a day. Then use the enjoyment and fun from playing to fuel the motivation for your work when you get back to working. What does “play” mean? It doesn’t require money or even a lot time. It’s about shifting your energy to energy of being abundance and fun.

Another way to shift scarcity thinking is to be clear about your life and what you want from you life. If you lack clarity, then scarcity has an opportunity to gain a foothold in your thinking. By contrast, by deepening your understanding of the questions from March ‘05 Abundance Tip, you can understand what abundance means to you. Then it’s easier for you to prioritize your activities, your energies, and your lives.

Another way to shift scarcity thinking is through creative visualization (see Reading by the Light of the Moon for April). In the chapter “Prosperity Programming,” Gawain says that scarcity programming is based on the false belief and lack of understanding about how the universe naturally works. Scarcity beliefs stem from not realizing that the ultimate power of creation rests in minds of each of us. “Unless you can create a context that the world is a good place to be that can potentially work for everyone, you will experience difficulty in creating what you want in your personal life” (47). She offers a creative visualization meditation to assist readers envision prosperity and abundance replacing scarcity thinking.

Take this next month to recognize scarcity thinking when it occurs, and actively change this thinking by replacing your inner messages with messages of abundance. Play and have fun! Next month, we’ll examine other limitations to embracing abundance.

Next Month: Unleash the limitations that inhibit your ability to achieve and embrace abundance.