Lewis Howes explores how poverty and abundance mindsets shape your life differently. He shares his own experience moving from a poor environment to building wealth, and explains the specific beliefs that separate scarcity thinking from abundance thinking.
So what is a poverty or poor mindset versus a wealth or abundance mindset? What do they both encompass?
The beginning for me is a poverty mindset is when you believe you're poor or you believe that you are the cause of the situation you're in, or you believe that external circumstances have made you what you are. I never believed I was poor. I just believed our current situation was poor, really. So I just. I got to a point where I didn't want to be in that situation anymore, but there was nothing wrong with me. My mom loved me. I was a good human being. I just had to get out of this situation.
So how do you learn then to get out of a situation of, I guess, poverty or not having a lot? How do you learn? Is it a skill? Is it a shift of energy? Is it a shift in thinking that allows you to get out of that situation? Is it a shift of I need to act in a different way, I need to become something different in order to create abundance? What does that shift look like?
Yeah, that's a great question too, I think.
And how old were you when you were like, okay, I'm not poor personally, but I'm in an environment that isn't thriving.
Probably around 12.
Okay.
Because it was just such a crappy environment. And we. We had no money. And at that point, I'd been poor in my mind for four years. And we constantly move schools. So, you know, when you're an immigrant, you make a little bit of money, you live in a crappy apartment, you make a little bit of money, you live in a better apartment, and so on. So by 12, I'd gone to, like three different high schools, and my dad worked unbelievable amount of hours, like two.
Shifts and manual labor, I'm assuming, contractor, factory swept floors.
I mean, eventually he became a millwright, taught it himself. Somebody gave him an opportunity, and, you know, they paid off their house, which was, you know, the immigrant dream.
Right.
But I think at 12, I'd been living like that for four years, and we went to a better high school, and every time we went to a better school, the kids around me had more.
The richer. Yeah, yeah. You're like, so I've got a little more, but they've got a lot more. So I'd be like, I'd be in.
This high school, and we'd make a little bit of money, and I was poor. But, you know, the other kids weren't.
That much better off.
And then we moved to a better house, and now the kids were way better off, and I was just like, wow, this is. I'm never going to get out of this.
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