Counseling Strategies to Build Abundance and Empowerment

In this one, we're going to be talking about abundance and empowerment, and we started out today talking about strengths and helping people recognize the strengths that they have, and reframing some of their unique qualities and individual differences as strengths can help them embrace an abundance mentality. In this segment, we're going to explore how an abundance mentality can build on strengths and reframe weaknesses to help people feel more empowered to create a rich and meaningful life. An abundance mentality means you believe there will always be plenty, plenty to go around. And this is not the mentality that capitalism is really based on most of the time. So it is a paradigm shift for a lot of people. A scarcity mentality means that you believe there's a finite amount of resources that everybody competes for, whether it's relationships or money or jobs or power, that people are regularly competing and trying to store up more. That way they have the most, in case there's ever a shortage. When people become aware of abundance, they are often awestruck by the possibilities. So reflect for a minute. How does trauma contribute to a scarcity mentality? So if people experienced abuse or neglect, abandonment, death or loss because of natural disasters, or maybe a car accident that caused them to lose some of their physical abilities or a stroke, how could that contribute to escape? Scarcity mentality? A lot of times people who experienced abuse or neglect lived under a idea that there wasn't enough, there wasn't enough food, there wasn't enough love, there wasn't enough time, there wasn't enough fill in the blank. So they didn't get it. And that can cause them to grow up having a scarcity mentality. If you grew up in an environment where there was scarcity, abandonment or death, and this can lead people to have a scarcity mentality when it comes to relationships and time. People think that there's not enough time to do things, or that they've got to compete for things. Just general losses can keep people from feeling like they are going to be able to have what they need because, you know, something happened and this ability or this tangible stuff or whatever all of a sudden was wiped out. A scarcity mentality contributes to emotional distress because it is a frame of reference that tells the person, you better be careful, you might not have enough. And if you're constantly worried about not having enough, about not being able to meet your needs, then it's hard to relax and that HPA axis stays activated. They're in default mode most of the time, trying to deal with this threat of not having enough how can an abundance mentality contribute to awe and empowerment and reduce stress physically, affectively, cognitively, environmentally and relationally? Now, abundance mentality says there's enough to go around, there's enough food, there's enough housing, there's enough, you know, people and relationships. And one of the things with an abundance mentality is that when you stop competing and you start cooperating, then you synergize. And one plus one is actually more like three. So when you synergize with somebody else, yes, you may be wanting the same thing, maybe the two of you are farming the same land. But when you work together, you both have more energy to put into farming that land. So your crop is going to be even more abundant than if you had farmed that land all by yourself. Especially if you bring in somebody who has other skills and abilities. Maybe they have a horse or an oxen or whatever you use to plow that you don't have. Or maybe they're better with balancing the fertilizer mixes, figuring out what needs to be in the soil. So you do the tilling and they do the nutrients and you create something together. You use your strengths to create abundance. So yes, you're both working off the same plot of land, but since you work together, you got double or triple what you normally would have. So that's really what we're talking about with an abundance mentality. It's not just looking around going, ah, there's plenty is looking around and saying, if I work within my environment, if I work with the people around me instead of competing against them, if I capitalize on their strengths and I let them capitalize on my strengths, then we're going to produce something that is far greater than I could have produced myself. Abundance building strategies and we're going to talk about 25 of them. Abundance grows from a sense of personal worth and security. If you don't feel safe, then it's hard to share. It's hard to cooperate if you don't trust, if you don't share. So initially, we need to help people develop a sense of safety. You know, who is it that you are going to trust to cooperate with you and not undermine you? Who is it that you can work with? You can't work with everybody. You know, I'm not saying that it's. You want to just throw caution to the wind and start cooperating with everybody on everything, all the time. No, that's not what I'm saying. When you start thinking about entering a relationship of abundance, you need to make sure that you are safe in that relationship, that that person also has an abundance mentality. And that will help you have a sense of security and the sense of personal worth, the sense of self esteem. Says, I have something to contribute. You know, it's hard to synergize with somebody when you walk up to them and go, you have a bunch of stuff that I need. I don't have much to give you in return, but I want what you have. So abundance means recognizing your strengths and your weaknesses, but saying this is what I bring to the table and you have these complementary skills and I think we could work really well together. We want to recognize the power of thoughts. Optimism. Tragic, not toxic. Toxic optimism is trying to pretend that everything's fine, everything will be fine. Tragic optimism. And I love that phrase, not mine, by the way. Tragic optimism is accepting what is in the moment. And it may suck and just it is what it is, but having hope that things can get better. And that's tragic optimism. Recognizing that at any point in time, quote, everything is rarely perfect, but there is hope that things can improve. Noticing the good and radical acceptance. Embracing the good with the bad. For every yin, there's a yang, if you will. And recognizing that if you take a job, you know, maybe you get offered this job, it's one that you've always wanted. You're like, oh my gosh, that's fabulous, great. That is something that you really want. And that's the good. What's the bad? Well, it means that you may be working 50 hour weeks when you have been able to stay at home with your kids. So you may not get to spend as much time with them. Now. The good maybe this extra money means you'll be able to hire a housekeeper or something. So on the weekends you can devote your time exclusively to them and all that fun stuff and you can free yourself up from some of the mundane stuff, you know. So there's good and bad with everything when you've got dogs, and I've talked about my pack of wild creatures before, but they make a mess. You know, I've heard the phrase before and I totally agree with it. Cleaning the house with dogs when you own dogs is kind of like brushing your teeth and eating Oreos at the same time. It just seems like a futile endeavor sometimes. But I wouldn't trade their love for the world. I will put up with a little bit of dog hair and some muddy footprints because their presence adds so much to my life. So. So taking the good with the bad, empowerment with a focus on what is working and what I can control. And this is one of those cognitive behavioral things. But instead of seeing yourself as a victim, recognizing, and I use the mnemonic acronym, I don't know what you would call it. Fcp Facts. What are the facts in this current situation? C. What do I have control over in this situation? P. Based on the facts. If I do what I can with the things that I can control, what is the probability of a good outcome? Another strategy is to welcome competition as a catalyst to work harder and build more. Remember I said you're not always going to cooperate with everybody. There is still some competition. Okay, well, that can be a catalyst to help you figure out, all right, now, how can I. Who can I synergize with? How can I work with the resources that I have to be better? And sometimes you're only competing against yourself. Sometimes the catalyst is trying to be a better you tomorrow or a better version of you tomorrow than you were today. Be proactive. Set goals, learn, cultivate, and share your passions. If we just sit back and wait for life to happen, wait for somebody to offer us a job or make our life better, it's probably not going to happen. So being proactive is a strategy of abundance and strength. It encourages people to build upon their strengths. Learn, become better at what you already do, set goals, cultivate, become the best at what you do or one of the best, and then share those passions. Because as you share those passions, you'll find people that have similar passions and you can synergize or complementary passions with whom you can synergize. Develop mastery experiences through successful small goal setting. And I love this one in, well, just about everything, not just treatment. Instead of setting a goal for a month or like, I will get an A in this class. Setting a mastery experience for. I will complete my homework today. I will get a B or above on the next quiz. So people are having regular rewards for their behaviors and little mastery experiences add up if you do something well or do something more every day. Think about meditation. A lot of people have a hard time sustaining focus for an extended period. Okay, so start out with what you can do. Let's say two minutes. If you can do two minutes, great. Next time, do two and a half minutes or maybe three minutes, but that's a pretty big jump. Once you get to where you can do 3 minutes, add another 30 seconds. On adding 30 seconds every single day for a month means by the end of a month, you'll be able to focus for 15 minutes longer than you were able to do. When you started, most of the time, the meditation experiences, the mindfulness experiences are really only 10 to 20 minutes in length anyway, so you're almost all the way to that 20 minute mark. Compassion and happiness instead of selfishness and resentment, and this is just a mind switch, but also recognizing what selfishness and resentment mean. A lot of times they're representations of anger and, or anxiety. They're representations that you feel threatened in some way because somebody has something that you want or because you're holding on to something because you're afraid that people won't help you out when you need it. So instead of being resentful of people that are successful, being happy for them and having compassion for them and sharing instead of being selfish, you know, that goes a long way. You know, think about if you're working on teams and you're willing to help out one of your colleagues, you know that compassion, when you see they're struggling, goes a long way. Gratitude and thankfulness. A lot of times, you know, no news is good news and it goes a long way to be grateful and thankful. It's helpful at motivating teams and anybody for that matter. When you have interactions, you know, if you provide a summary feedback, you know, thank you for attending this meeting today. You know, you're making a whole lot of progress. I really appreciate your attention, whatever it is. But that goes a long way to people. If you acknowledge that they are effective, that you acknowledge their impact, especially if it's a positive impact. Think about possibilities and opportunities. But think big, does it mean, you know, if you think big, does it mean you're going to be the President of the United States? Well, no, maybe not. But what is it that you want to do? Think big and think, what can I do? I know a lot of people who have had meager beginnings who have thought big and created their own companies and ended up, I mean, heck, Jeff Bezos started out from very meager beginnings and he built things up from the ground up. And now he's read somewhere that he's the world's richest man, but he didn't think small, but he thought incrementally. First he started out, I don't know if all of you remember when Amazon was just a book company. You know, you could get books from Amazon, they didn't do everything that they do now. And he did that and he got that running good. And then he said, okay, what is the next step? So he was thinking big, but he wasn't trying to do what we know as Amazon from jump. He said, I'm going to do something, I'm going to master it, then I'm going to add on to it. Believe that there is plenty. If you believe there's plenty of people, of relationships, of opportunities, then when you miss one, you're not going to be as upset about it. You know, recognizing when you apply for a job, for example, if you don't get it, yeah, it's unfortunate, but recognizing that there may be a lot of reasons that that didn't happen and there are other jobs available most of the time. Embrace change. Do what you've been doing. You're gonna get what you've been getting. So look for ways to change. And change is terrifying for a lot of people. But it's important to encourage people to be willing to embrace it. Whether that means getting out there and starting to date again, or changing careers or moving or. Or whatever it is that they are thinking about doing, even changing from being somebody who has an alcohol addiction to being somebody who is in recovery, or changing from being someone who is depressed to someone who is not depressed can be terrifying. When we are at our steady state, we are how we are. We know what to expect. Even if it's not the best thing in the world, we know what to expect. Change means launching into the unknown. And that can be terrifying, which goes back to the first point on the first slide. Create safety. It's really important to encourage people to feel safe before they launch into a scary proposition. They need to have those secure attachments. Look for the lesson Things don't always go right. A lot of times we can learn from when they didn't go right. When people relapse, whether it's depression, anxiety, addiction, whatever, look for the lesson, what can I learn from this? Get organized so you can see what you have. I'm a big one because I'm a J on the temperament. I'm big on lists. I have lists everywhere, but I find lists helpful. I have lists of distress tolerance skills. I have lists of things that I like to do to relax. Because a lot of times when it's time to relax, I just kind of look around. I'm like, okay, what do I do now? I don't have anything in my planner. I don't know what to do. I feel like a fish out of water. But I have a list for it. Not everybody likes lists, but it is important to get organized. And that means making a. Taking an inventory, however you want to do it, of your resources. Who do you have that can help you? When we're talking about Abundance. We're talking about all of our resources. Financial, spiritual, interpersonal, cognitive. What skills, tools, resources, abilities do you have and what do you need? For example, I know that marketing is not my forte. It's my Achilles heel. I have all these other skills and tools and things in place. But when it comes to marketing, I know that that's something that I need to add to my toolbox and probably with somebody else. So organization can really help us figure out what do we need to build abundance. Think about when you go to make a cake. You know, first you figure out, you get organized, you see what you have. You can't make a cake without eggs. So if you recognize that you don't have eggs, you've got to figure out, you know, either how do I get eggs or what can I use instead? And ground chia seeds actually are a good replacement for four eggs if you're in a pinch. But I digress. Create, win wins. When you're working with people, if you're asking them to do something, if you want them to do something for you, that's your win. How does it benefit them? Present it in a way that is mutually beneficial. Associate with other people who have an abundance mentality. And a lot of times, if you're doing group therapy, that's not a characteristic that's really present in the room. But working with everybody in that room to develop an abundance mentality, it's fascinating how they feed off of each other, if you will, or build off of each other. And abundance flourishes when they start embracing these attitudes and techniques. Share. It's hard to feel like something is scarce when you're giving it away. And when you give it away, it usually comes back. And this can be sharing a kind word. It doesn't necessarily need to be sharing money or tangible goods. But if you are giving away good karma, if you will, it's hard to feel like good karma is necessarily in short supply. You got plenty to give away. It's a replenishing source. And a lot of times when you do good, good comes back to you. Think like a beginner. I love this one. Seek different perspectives and evolving knowledge. I remember when I was going through my first practicum, we would have these huge team meetings and we would staff all the clients in residential every week. And it meant a lot when my supervisors and the other staff would let us, the practicum students, actually ask questions and put forth our ideas. Were we always right? Oh, heck no. But they were willing to hear and consider. And there were a few times they were like, you know what? I don't know why we didn't think about that. So sometimes we get caught up in doing the same ol, same ol. You know, we see this diagnosis, we treat it this way, it results this way, blah, blah, blah, that it's one foot. We're in our default mode network. When we think like a beginner, there is no default mode because there's no schema. So when we think like a beginner, we look at it and go, help me understand synergize. And I've said that word a lot today. It's one of my favorites. Combine your unique strengths in collaboration, not competition. So if you're good at time management, you might want to pair with somebody who's not so good. When I used to have a staff, I would make sure when I put groups together that I would have complementary skills, somebody who would make sure it got done on time, somebody who would make sure that the details were there, somebody who was creative. And I put them all together. And initially it could be a little bit challenging because they were all bringing very different skill sets to the table. But once they got used to it, once we talked about how they could work together, it seemed to work a lot better and actually more efficiently because the intuitor, the meta concept person would do their part and they wouldn't get bogged down trying to go back over it six times looking for the details, because they knew that somebody else would do that and they were far more efficient, they could go over it once and be done. So it was really interesting to see how once people gave up that idea that they had to be able to do everything, that things started moving a lot more smoothly. Have balance in all things that are important to you. Part of building abundance means being happy. And if you are putting all of your energy, all of your time, all of your proverbial eggs into one basket, if that basket happens to fall apart, then you're going to feel out of kilter. If you have used your energy, and this is a concept of hardiness, commitment, control and challenge. If you have identified all of the things in your life that you're committed to and you have been regularly dedicating energy to nurturing all of those things that are important to you in balance, then when one goes haywire, yes, it's unpleasant, it's very distressful. However, you also recognize that your entire world has not just crumbled. Meditate, reflect and use guided imagery each day to prime yourself. And this is that cognitive rehearsal we were talking about. See Yourself in the morning, see yourself successfully moving through the day before. I know some of my supervisees have taken to doing this before they go into session with a client. They take a minute and they just get their thoughts together and they see themselves having a successful session, whatever that looks like to them. Unplugged. Scrolling through social feeds and advertisers reminds you of all the things that you don't have and what you should need or want. That inspires competition and scarcity. It encourages you again to focus on what you don't have instead of abundance, focusing on all the things that you do have. Cognitive restructuring helps people identify their fears that come from a scarcity mentality, respond to them from an abundance mentality. So if they have a fear that they are never going to find somebody that loves them, because whatever, thinking about it, from an abundance mentality that there's plenty to go around, there's plenty of fish in the sea, as they say, well, that is a little bit invalidating. You know, we wouldn't want to say that to somebody, but we do want to have encourage them to examine from an abundance mentality what they know. What are the facts that they know? They're afraid they won't find anybody. Well, let's look how many single people that meet your criteria are available out there and you know, what is the possibility? And from an abundance mentality, synergizing, you know, how can you cooperate with other people in order to meet people? You know, maybe that's getting involved in volunteer activities or something where you do meet other people that have similar wants, needs, aspirations and semantics. Choosing your words can help with abundance. Instead of thinking about how much something costs, think about it as an investment. So when you're getting ready to go to college, you may be thinking, oh my gosh, this costs so much money. But you can also think of it as an investment in your future. When you're going out to buy your wardrobe for your first job. Yeah, it's not cheap, but that cost is an investment in your future because it allows you to be able to go to work and present the attitude that you want. Failure becomes a learning opportunity. Now that sounds trite. If you just put it out there. Well, you fail. What can you learn from it? It's important to allow people validate their feelings of grief when they fail and allow them to process that grief, not try to take it away from them or invalidate it. You know, allow them to do that. But then when they're ready, recognize that failure may present an opportunity for them to Learn incremental becomes exponential. And that's where we're talking about those small mastery goals, making small changes, little baby steps become huge changes become transformations. And that's just one of those what I call awe inspiring words instead of looking at it as a change in things. And I don't like change my temperament. But transforming reminds me of butterflies. For some reason that feels a little bit less scary than changing. I know it's just semantics, but when we're asking somebody in therapy where they want to become happy, instead of asking them to change themselves, if we ask them or encourage them to transform into this person that they want to be, it has a different connotation to it. Problems become opportunities. People become synergizers. Instead of seeing them as competition or just in the way we see them as resources, they become synergizers. How can this person help me and how can I help them? You know, synergy is a two way street. So recognizing and that's where that self worth comes in, recognizing what you can bring and offer to others. People's status they have becomes the contribution they can make. So if they have this high status, like they're a vice president or a CEO of an organization, well that's great. Good for them. Now instead of seeing themselves as just status, envisioning themselves as being in a position to make a greater contribution because they do have more power so they're able to give back, they are in a position where they can bring more energy to the synergy and management becomes leadership. If you're on LinkedIn, you see memes about this all the time. But it is important to recognize the difference between managing, which is often thought of as pushing people around, and leading, which is inspiring people to want to do something. The same thing in therapy. You know, we could manage people's treatment and basically kind of move them around like pieces on a chessboard. Or we can lead them into the recovery process, encouraging them, modeling for them what we want them to do, motivating them, providing scaffolding, cognitive scaffolding as they move through the process. An activity that some people can do. Not everybody likes to journal, but if they do, an abundance mindfulness sheet can be helpful in the morning. Visualize your big goals. What am I going to do today? What impact am I going to have today? What are the steps I'm taking today to move toward my goals and with whom can I synergize to exceed expectations? So thinking about how can I do this in a smarter, more efficient way so I can not only meet my expectations, but exceed them. What opportunities? Remember, problems become opportunities. What opportunities do I expect to have, and how can I grow from them? So maybe the person is interacting with somebody at work who tends to be oppositional, we'll say. And they know that whenever they interact with that person, it tends to be a tense moment. So how is that an opportunity? What can they learn? What skill can they practice in that interaction? And how can they grow from it? Instead of seeing it as something that's forced upon them, seeing it as a challenge that they are embarking on, trying to accomplish in the evening. And this helps prepare people so they feel motivated, inspired and empowered in the evening. What went right today? What am I grateful for? And what learning opportunities did I have? Remember, when we reflect on our learning opportunities, we are strengthening those neural connections. We're using that neuroplasticity. So eventually that new way of interacting and reacting becomes part of the default mode. Abundance affirmations. You can have them create a list of these or just have one. Not everybody likes lists. I'm loving and lovable. I am grateful for. Fill in the blank. I deserve to be happy. Mistakes and failures can be disappointing and they provide opportunities to grow and flourish. I choose faith over fear. Each moment brings new opportunities. In DBT, I believe Linehan says every moment is an opportunity to start over. I am successful because I know what I want and I ask for it. My prosperity and health, love and money is only limited by my own thoughts and behaviors. And you can go online. There are lots of different websites where people have lists of abundance affirmations. A lot of them are revolve around wealth abundance. And the concept of abundance is so much broader than that. When we think of abundance in life, abundance and happiness. How can we have so much happiness that it almost makes our heart want to burst? Awe and wonder can help people connect to the universe around them. They can inspire people to recognize possibilities. And an abundance mentality capitalizes on awe and wonder. To reframe our experience into one of cooperation and synergy instead of competition and scarcity.