A long time ago I read a book called Scarcity - Why Having Too Little Means So Much. This is a book written by Sendhil Mullainathan Eldar Shafir.
Before reading the book I was stuck on the idea of it was me that did something wrong, since I couldn't earn enough money, meet the right man or stick to a healthy diet. Don't get me wrong, my life is 100% my own responsibility, and this post is no way near an attempt to disclaim my own part of this, but more of a big AHA moment.
The two writers took it upon them to look deeper into the scarcity mindset and what it does to us. What they found was fascinating. I don't want to go into it all, but I feel like sharing what I took with me from this book.
First of all, scarcity seems to be highjacking our brains. Not the other way around. So when you feel like lacking something (money, love, food, energy etc) this idea of lack highjacks your brain to fix this acute emergency and put everything else on hold. you develop tunnel vision where all you see is this problem. No sense of perspective, nothing else is important.
Most people (like myself before reading this book) seems to believe that poor people make bad decisions and therefore they are poor, but living in scarcity mindset actually make your intelligense drop.
Another thing I took with me from this book was that scarcity is contagious. Lack in one area of your life often leads to the feeling of lack in all other areas. So when people are on a diet (lacking health) they often come to terms with not having enough money to pursue a more healthy diet.
This Scarcity mindset is everywhere so it is really hard to let go of. Turn on the news and you get the message about not enough money to support the poor, not enough medicine, not enough to save the environment and so on.
Our world is mostly made up of "not enough" concepts.
The danger comes when we are taught that scarcity in the norm and being abundant is out of our reach. It is not. First step is to acknowledge the fact that scarcity has highjacked our brains and that it is time to take back the control.
Before reading the book I was stuck on the idea of it was me that did something wrong, since I couldn't earn enough money, meet the right man or stick to a healthy diet. Don't get me wrong, my life is 100% my own responsibility, and this post is no way near an attempt to disclaim my own part of this, but more of a big AHA moment.
The two writers took it upon them to look deeper into the scarcity mindset and what it does to us. What they found was fascinating. I don't want to go into it all, but I feel like sharing what I took with me from this book.
First of all, scarcity seems to be highjacking our brains. Not the other way around. So when you feel like lacking something (money, love, food, energy etc) this idea of lack highjacks your brain to fix this acute emergency and put everything else on hold. you develop tunnel vision where all you see is this problem. No sense of perspective, nothing else is important.
Most people (like myself before reading this book) seems to believe that poor people make bad decisions and therefore they are poor, but living in scarcity mindset actually make your intelligense drop.
Another thing I took with me from this book was that scarcity is contagious. Lack in one area of your life often leads to the feeling of lack in all other areas. So when people are on a diet (lacking health) they often come to terms with not having enough money to pursue a more healthy diet.
This Scarcity mindset is everywhere so it is really hard to let go of. Turn on the news and you get the message about not enough money to support the poor, not enough medicine, not enough to save the environment and so on.
Our world is mostly made up of "not enough" concepts.
The danger comes when we are taught that scarcity in the norm and being abundant is out of our reach. It is not. First step is to acknowledge the fact that scarcity has highjacked our brains and that it is time to take back the control.
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