Tag: Scarcity

You can’t handle it

Published on by Kieran Johnson - The Generosity GuyLeave a comment

Not having enough creates a seriously damaging experience for people living in poverty.

Some people find a specific way to function and survive in it. It’s called the Scarcity Mindset – seeing things through a lens of lack and doing whatever you can just to survive. It can be helpful but if you spend too much time in that sort of environment, your brain will be wired for lack and poverty will kill you prematurely.

At the other end of the spectrum, having more than you can handle creates a seriously damaging experience, rewiring you brain for excess and it will kill you prematurely.

We don’t seem to have a safety mechanism for when we have too much. There isn’t a mindset that we can easily form to assist in survival. As Nassim Taleb suggests, “Abundance is harder for us to handle than scarcity.”

Most, if not all of us dream about being on one end of the spectrum. No one strives for poverty of course, but many strive for excess. Often those who strive for excess don’t realise that they already have it, such is the sinister nature of excess – it stops you from realising when you have enough.

One thing that can help is to have an Abundance Mindset which is not as easy to form as the Scarcity Mindset, because it takes intentional work (at least that is what I have found).

An Abundance Mindset comes from a belief that there is enough of everything for everyone, and it starts with gratitude for what you already have. Gratitude leads to generosity.

A Scarcity Mindset that creates an environment in which for me to win, everyone else has to lose, is toxic. An Abundance Mindset that comes from gratitude and encourages generosity is life giving. I know which one I’m aiming for.

“How Can They Do That?”

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It’s a question I have heard often over the last few weeks as we have seen people buying up big in preparation for the end of the world brought about by coronavirus. I must admit that it has been a bit confusing to watch people race for, and fill trolleys with, toilet paper and other inane items that 4 weeks ago were annoying necessities. What drives people to behave in such a way?

Apart from those that are purely taking advantage of this situation and profiteering (which I am choosing to assume is a very small percentage) people that are hoarding are doing so out of fear. Fear of the unknown. Fear of not having enough. Fear of scarcity. Fear of poverty. I can understand this fear. The word for 2020 so far is ‘unprecedented’. We have never experienced anything like this…in the developed world. (Millions of people go through upheavals of life regularly, but that is a conversation for another time). So, fear of not enough is understandable. But fear breeds more fear. Scarcity breeds scarcity. Scarcity subtracts.

To overcome the fear of hoarding requires acts of generosity. To look outside of our immediate needs and see those around us. Instead of acting as a single family unit we connect with those in our community and work as a larger entity. Together everyone achieves more (corny acrostic of T.E.A.M but has the added benefit of being true). When we act as a community, both locally and globally, it creates a generous mindset within us. Generosity comes from a hope that we can achieve things together that we are not capable of as individuals. Generosity breeds more generosity. Generosity multiplies.

When faced with the fear of scarcity, choose to act in generosity and it will have a positive, long lasting impact on our world.

Tunnel Vision

Published on by Kieran Johnson - The Generosity GuyLeave a comment

Do you remember the last time you were really hungry? Not just peckish, but actually ‘missed out on lunch, breakfast was small and now dinner is late’ type of hunger. It is painful, but probably the hardest thing is that the only thing that you can think about in that moment is food. You can smell it, taste it and imagine how it would feel just being close to a meal that is ready to eat. Sure, you try to distract yourself and think about something else, but when the image of the perfect hamburger pops up in your mind then it’s all over. It’s food and nothing else that has your attention.

If you have experienced that, or something like it, then you are not alone. It is the psychological phenomenon of scarcity. There was a study that was done on the impact on people when they live on a starvation diet. Over time they grew so weak and thin, as you would imagine, but the impact on the mind was what caught researchers by surprise. They discovered that all the participants could talk about was food. They memorised recipes, compared food prices and shared about their favourite meals. So they decided to distract them with a movie but all they could focus on was the meals that the characters in the movie were eating. They were so consumed by what they didn’t have, their lack, that they couldn’t focus on anything else. They couldn’t see the big picture.

Not having enough of what you need can become the only thing that matters to you.

That is why the work of Opportunity International is so powerful. Providing a small loan to mothers who can start a business and create an income overcomes the scarcity problem, allowing people to shift their focus to other important things and make wise decisions.