Throughout my life, I have been fortunate to receive wisdom and guidance from a variety of people who have been successful in their respective fields. I tend to define “success” as a means of freedom. Financial freedom is the most obvious, but the freedom and comfort of choice in what they choose to do every day is the most impressive and impactful to me. Throughout the chats, guidance, and good stories, there is always a common denominator among these mentors: an abundance mindset.
The easiest way to describe an abundance mindset is to describe its counterpart, the scarcity mindset.
Scarcity mindset is a zero-sum way of seeing the world. A belief there is only a defined amount of good in the world. Even deeper, the way for you to enjoy that good is at the cost of someone or something else’s good. There can never be a world in which we both benefit; there is no such thing as mutualism. That is the mental block we need to throw out the window, bury, and never dig up.
The first example of this that comes to mind is the four-minute mile. For decades, the world deemed it merely impossible to achieve. But then, on May 6th, 1954, a bloke by the name of Roger Bannister broke that barrier by running a mile in 3 minutes and 57 seconds. Now, I have friends going through a midlife crisis who hire a running coach, and with the right determination, they are coming close to scratch that goal or even achieve it. The moral of the story is that these barriers, or “truths” we had come to accept as facts, are merely what we had accepted in society.
An abundance mindset is the opposite.
It is the belief that there are enough resources, wealth, happiness and success for everyone in the world. I believe that we create more wealth and potential happiness every day. There will always be more, or we will always find a way to create something new, better, and more efficient as a species whenever our backs are against the wall. For evidence, I would simply point to people living longer, GDP per capita, or the fact that I can instantly message/facetime someone on the opposite side of the world in two clicks.
These are the kinds of things I have learned growing up that have kept my mind sane when I look at the daily news and I am told the world is ending.
At the end of the day, no one likes to hear the word “no.” Furthermore, I find people tend to not like being around pessimists either. I can attest, at least in the markets, that it is a whole lot harder to make money being negative. We like to be inspired, fascinated, and wowed, and the only limitation to that in our society is whatever thoughts that we as a society have deemed as finite. Think brightly in 2025.
January 2025
