#252 How Scarcity Mindset is Holding You Back (and How to Break Free)

Hey, everyone. Hope you've had another great week. This week, we're going to tackle something that might be silently holding you back in your career, your investments, and even in your personal life. It's called the Scarcity Mindset. We're going to talk all about that today. I know you get a lot out of this episode, so stay tuned. Welcome to the Passive Income MD Podcast, where we talk about creating your ideal life through multiple streams of income. If you enjoy hearing about this stuff, make sure to hit subscribe. Now, let's get on with the show. So have you ever caught yourself thinking like, I can't afford to take that risk. I just couldn't do it, or there's never enough time, money, or opportunity for me, or I don't have the resources. I just can't do it. If you ever heard yourself saying any of these things, you might be operating from what's called the scarcity mindset. And the truth is, it could be holding you back more than you realize. In this episode, we're going to talk about what the scarcity mindset is and how it affects your decision making. Number two, we're going to talk about how it limits your financial growth and personal fulfillment, and most importantly, how to break free and start shifting to something called an abundance mindset. Instead, we're going to talk about how you get to that mindset that says there's more than enough for everyone. Everything is possible, including me. So I know what some of you are thinking. What exactly is the scarcity mindset or something called Scarcity mindset? Doesn't sound great now. It's the belief that there's never enough. Whether it's time, money, resources, opportunities. The pie is only so big. It's the fear that maybe if you lose something, you might not get it back. This is something that I deal with, you deal with. Everyone deals with at some point or in some way in their lives. Now, here are a few examples of what this might look like financially. It might look like you're. You're afraid to invest because you're worried that you'll lose money. And even if you have, like, a solid savings cushion and if you lose money, you're going to really impact your future career in life and your family is going to go down and you're going to run out of money. That's a big fear that all of us have had. I'm sure at some point in your career, it might look like you have to stay in a job that you don't love or in a place that you don't want to be because there aren't any better options out there and you're scared to lose that position in your personal life. It might show up like you compare yourself to others and feeling like there's a limited amount of success that's available out there for people or a limited amount of happiness to go around. So there's always this level of competition. You have to put somebody down to make yourself feel better. Now on the flip side of that, and the exact opposite, is something called the abundance mindset. That abundance mindset says that opportunities are endless and success doesn't come at the expense of someone else's success. It's about focusing on growth, on collaboration, and maybe that belief that says you have the ability to create more. You ever see those people ripping people online and always putting other people down? A lot of times they're operating from what's called a scarcity mindset. Have you heard that saying that there are two ways to have the tallest building in town? Number one is to build it yourself, or number two is to tear everybody else's down. Those are two different mindsets that you can come from. And which do you resonate with? Which is the one that you'd want to adopt more in your life? So let's talk about why all this matters though. This is just all mindset stuff. We're physicians, we're focused on science and achievement. Why does all this mindset stuff even matter? Well, let me tell you. This impacts all aspects of your life and it does impact the way you run your job, your life, your family, your finances, all of it. It doesn't just affect how you think about, it ultimately affects how you act. And it can limit you in ways that maybe you and I don't even realize. So when you're operating from that scarcity place, you might make decisions based on fear instead of strategy, instead of vision. For example, you might avoid like a great investment opportunity because you're so afraid of losing money, you're so worried about the downside that you can't get yourself to invest or see the possibilities that are open to you once you make that investment. Even if the deal aligns perfectly within your long term goals and you know it's the step necessary to help get you where you want to be. Maybe that fear based decision making will keep you from doing anything. Also, scarcity thinking can lead to self sabotage. You ever experienced this before? Where you might hold yourself back from taking risks or maybe pursuing opportunities because you feel like you're not good enough? You're not ready, you don't know enough. Maybe you wanted to negotiate at work. You felt like it's time for you to get a step up in your salary, but you thought, oh, there's not enough room in the budget. Oh, maybe I'm not good enough. There's somebody else that might deserve it more than me, so they're going to say no. That's kind of that scarcity mindset coming in and self sabotaging you from, from doing what you need to maybe improve your situation or help get you where you want to be also. I don't know if you've experienced this, but when you're stuck in the scarcity idea and mindset, you focus so much on short term survival. Like you have tunnel vision. You are focused on one thing that miss out on long term growth. For example, when you're worried about how much money you have and you need more, you just focus on cutting those expenses, cutting out things that actually bring you fulfillment in life as your only strategy instead of thinking about ways to diversify to increase your income. This whole concept of scarcity can also affect how you see other people again. If you see success as a zero sum game, meaning that someone else has to lose for someone to win, then this can lead to jealousy, some mistrust, bad decisions. It can strain relationships both personally and professionally. I went to a college that was known to be pretty cutthroat and that whole idea of cutthroat comes from this whole scarcity mindset that I have to bash on other people to get ahead and that's the only way that I can be successful. A news happened to me one time because we had to put a science report in a box and it was actually an open box for, for us to get graded. And I remember that I got my grade for the quarter and it was obviously not what I expected. And I said, what happened to my grade here? And they said, well, you didn't actually end up turning in that report. Well, I remember turning in that report and it wasn't just me, but a few other people there had noticed that their reports had not been turned in. In fact, somebody had gone in and taken it out of the box. That's somebody who has a scarcity mindset who feels like they have to take other people down to get ahead.

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And start discovering what's next. See you there. Now, before we talk about solutions to all this, I think it's really helpful to understand where this kind of mindset comes from. I mean, for many of us it starts really early. Like maybe you grew up in a household where most the of money was tight or resources were pretty scarce, or you had some struggles early on and those beliefs can stick with you. And it's totally understandable. This was your upbringing. So even later on in life, your financial situation, even though it's improved, you can still carry those things from your childhood. Also, how you grew up, like culturally, can reinforce some of these scarcity thoughts. Especially if you are grew up in a foreign country or a certain area of town, you can be constantly bombarded with messages about competition. You need to get ahead. You need to take other people down, whether it's for jobs, success or even happiness. I know in my culture, often, especially in the Asian culture, it's a lot of competition is a big thing. You always have to be the best. And that was ingrained in me so many ways. It meant that you would have to take control, do what you needed to do to make sure that you got to the very top. I mean, not that you would hurt other people, but you had to just grind and grind and grind. And if you weren't at the very top, then you weren't going to be successful. Also, there's this fear of not knowing what's ahead of us. And often it's human nature, it's survival instinct that we all have as part of our primitive brains in us to focus on fear and stay safe and stick to the familiar. Even if it's not serving us. We all want to stick to what's known and safe. And that's just human nature. That's part of us. And of course, if you've had some past failures, if you've experienced some financial situations, you made bad investments, you've had some instability in your job, or maybe you've had some setbacks, you've had some challenges, this can easily creep into your mindset, become part of who you are. So you think to yourself, maybe I need to hold on to what I have because I might not get another chance. I might screw up again. And some of these past failures or losses can stick with us for a long time. All right, so let's talk about solutions now, because I think we all innately know we want to switch or shift from that scarcity mindset to abundance mindset. Who wants to say, raise your hand that they have a scarcity mindset? I don't think anybody does. Everybody wants to feel like they're living out of abundance and. And enjoying life. And I believe that there are some actionable steps that can help us get to that place. And I think the first step is recognizing when that scarcity shows up in your life. Now, I've tried to give you a bunch of examples where honestly, a lot of those things, they show up in my life. I find myself saying it. And I've gone to this place now where I've started to get aware of it, meaning that when I say it, when I hear it, I recognize it. I hear the words coming out of my mouth, and something triggers in my brain to say, wait a minute, maybe you're thinking about this in the wrong way. Then the next step, I start to figure out, how can I refocus this? Maybe not focus on what I could lose, but what I could gain. So instead of saying, I can't afford to invest, maybe it's, how do I make this investment? How can I actually make that happen? Oh, I could never possibly do that. I'M just a physician. Maybe you could switch to, hey, how can I do these things and enjoy my career and enjoy my life? Maybe overflow. Do all of these things increase the size of the pie? Not just feel like I'm limited to some small space or a small area to play in. And this next one is something that I've again had to focus on and work to learn. Honestly, if you spend a lot of time in gratitude, you end up feeling abundant. How many people do you know that maybe have all the things in life that you'd want? They have the money, the cars, the house, whatever, the family, the life, but they still feel unhappy. I think if we look at a lot of celebrities out there, we can see that where they have everything, but then they have challenges. And of course, sometimes they go to the darkest places. And even though they seem to have everything, it doesn't really matter what you have. It's how you see those things that you have. And if you can find gratitude in that, of course you feel abundant. And then the next thing is you want to surround yourself with people who think like this. Your mindset's definitely influenced by the people you spend time with. I think anyone who has a child, you know that you want them to spend time around certain people because people rub off on other people. We all know that. When you're in certain mastermind groups like the one we have, Momentum md, or when you're part of a network, when you're a pind con, you're at a conference with people who are focused on growth, on abundance, on thinking of possibilities, you gotta start thinking about it too. And if you can find people that will actually keep you accountable, that's even better. Meaning that whenever you say something like that, you give them the permission to basically say back to you, hey, I think that's scarcity mindset thinking. Not because they're trying to criticize or judge you, but out of love, because they know that you can do more and are capable of doing more. And last thing is to diversify your income. Scarcity often comes from having all your eggs in one basket. So if you can diversify your income, then it feels like, you know, you can tap a lot of different sources. If one source dries up, then you can go to another way. You can also diversify your identity, which we talked about before. You're not just a doctor, you're somebody who can figure things out. You're creative, you're resourceful. There are many ways to create passive income. Develop new strategies to expand your sense of security, financial freedom, and definitely purpose at the end of the day. So if I'm gonna recap all this scarcity mindset, right, it's the belief that there's never enough and it can hold you back by fueling your fear. It can limit your growth and it can definitely keep you stuck in this whole survival mode. I know all of us don't like that feeling, but we can start to break free with things like awareness, catching ourselves, reframing our thoughts, taking small steps towards abundance, whatever that means, taking small, calculated risks, surrounding yourself with a community who will push you and help you expand beyond that. And so this week, I challenge you, take one action, whatever that might be, to shift your mindset. Maybe it's a gratitude journal. Maybe it's again, taking a small, calculated risk or surrounding yourself or joining a community of people who inspire you or committing to doing that. I hope this is in some way added value to you. I know that I often experience challenges with this and so I'm just sharing what I'm learning. I hope this helps you in some way. We'd love to hear. Until next time. Let's talk again soon. Thanks everyone. Enjoy the show. Let me know by dropping a review in the podcast app you're listening to us in. And if you haven't already, make sure to hit subscribe. Join thousands of physicians who are also on this journey to creating their ideal lives through multiple streams of income. Learn more at our website, passiveincomemd.com thanks again for allowing me to be a part of your journey. See you next time.