In this second workshop of the "Economy of Abundance" series, Virginie Glaenzer guides participants through a practical shift from a scarcity‑driven worldview to an abundance mindset. She begins with a brief recap of the first session’s definition of abundance as "having enough" rather than merely having more, and contrasts it with the pervasive meta‑narrative of scarcity that shapes everyday behavior. Glaenzer outlines four inter‑related facets of abundance—intellectual understanding, perspective, feeling, and practical living—and then leads four timed, reflective exercises: (1) identifying what participants already have in abundance and feel gratitude for across environmental, emotional, relational, and material domains; (2) defining what "enough" looks like for them in finance, material goods, environment, living beings, and emotions; (3) exploring how much certainty they need to know about their environment, emotions, others, and future; and (4) a cooperation analysis that maps supportive relationships and networks across life areas. Between exercises she introduces two key ideas: (a) cooperation as the fundamental engine of life and human resilience, challenging the competition‑centric view of evolution; and (b) a broadened concept of wealth that includes financial, social, temporal, and physical well‑being. The session concludes with a collective brainstorming of daily practices that embody abundance—mantras, present‑moment awareness, nature connection, gratitude, vulnerability, and community support—followed by an invitation to a June 28 LinkedIn Live where the focus will shift to building abundant organizations. The workshop blends instructional prompts, reflective questioning, and motivational framing to help participants internalize abundance as a lived reality.
Chapters
Welcome to workshop number 2 of the Economy of Abundance. In our first workshop, we talked and defined what is abundance. Today we're going to focus on how do we shift to an abundance mindset and live in abundance. And then the last workshop will be on June 28th. It's going to be a live LinkedIn, and I'm going to focus a lot more on how to build a business in the abundance economy. So for those who missed the workshop number 1, I'm going to do a very quick recap. So first we started with a definition. We need to redefine abundance because most people understand abundance as having more of what they need. To me, and in the context of this book, abundance means having enough. There's enough on the planet for everyone. And then in the workshop number 2, we explore this meta-narrative that controls our action, which is about scarcity. This is actually running the show. We've been conditioned to see the world as a scarce place, and we've been conditioned to believe that scarcity should dictate how we live. Just think of your everyday action and behavior. When you go to the store with one item on your list, it's likely that you'll buy more. And it's only because we keep thinking of the future. Um, and of course we can expand that behavior in every aspect of our lives. We spend our time gathering more than what we need, and our lives are filled with stuff. And then we dived into what is abundance. And abundance is not just one thing, it's four different things. It's an understanding, an intellectual understanding, it's a perspective, it's a feeling, and a practical way of living. And I'm not going to dive into this, um, again, you can look at the video which lasts only 15 minutes where I actually dive into each of those elements. Now today we are going to talk about, or we're going to practice, how to shift to an abundance mindset and live in abundance, because shifting involves changing our perspective. With Danielle, right before we begin, that's what we were talking about. And so when we change our perspective and focus from a scarcity mindset to one that is focused on abundance and possibility, that's when things start to shift. So I have a series of 4 individual exercises which I'll time for 2 minutes with a little bit of music. So I invite you to take a piece of paper and a pen, and then in the middle of the exercises, I'll present a couple of new ideas that I want to plant and introduce to you, and then we'll end with a collective brainstorming. So here's the first exercise. With a question, question: what do I have in abundance that I'm grateful for? And I'm going to invite you to answer that question in a context. So from an environment standpoint, what do I have in abundance that I'm grateful for? From an emotion and feeling standpoint, what do I have in abundance that I'm grateful for? Regarding the living beings around me, what do I have in abundance that I'm grateful for? And finally, from a material things or material perspective, what do I have in abundance that I'm grateful for? So let's just put 2 minutes and answer that question.
Trahisé au mot vrai, j'aurais bien aimé, j'aurais bien aimé, mais non, c'était bien hier. Où es-tu? Y a ton odeur comme seule trace de ton corps. Où es-tu? Tes mains me manquent et moi j'y crois encore. C'est les matins comme ça qui me font pleurer, leur vérité me tue car la nuit à su me faire oublier. C'est les matins comme ça qui me font pleurer, dès mon premier regard face à la nuit solitaire que j'ai passée.
Okay, this time the question is this one, a very simple open question: what is enough for you? It's not an easy question, but again, I'll give you 2 minutes. And that question also invites you to think of various contexts. What is enough for you financially? How much money do you need to have at any given time in your checking account, saving account, 401k, whatever you have? How much is enough? Material things— how much is enough from a material standpoint? Environment, what is enough for you? Living being, looking at all the living beings around you, what is enough for you? And finally, emotions and feeling, what is enough for you? It's organized in a different way. So let's give ourselves 2 minutes, play the music, and let's get started.
Car la nuit a su me faire oublier. C'est les matins comme ça qui me font pleurer. Dès mon premier regard face à la nuit solitaire que j'ai passée. Un perdu, 10 de trouvés, non mais j'y crois pas. Le vent se tait, toi avant t'étais à moi. Quelques heures ou quelques verres et je dormirai, je dormirai jusqu'au prochain matin. Où es-tu? Y a ton odeur comme seule trace de ton corps. Où es-tu? Tes mains me manquent et moi j'y crois encore. C'est les matins comme ça qui me font pleurer. Leur vérité me tue car la nuit a su me faire oublier. C'est les matins comme ça qui me font pleurer. Dès mon premier regard face à la nuit. The third question.
So we answered, what is enough for you? Now, how much do I need to know? Now, that's an interesting question because a lot of our worry, fear comes from this desire or this need— we think it's a need— to have certainty, to know. And we all know that the future is an illusion and, and the past is a story that we tell ourselves. So every time we go into the future, that's when anxiety starts to kick in because we're trying to control something that we've been told can be controlled. And there are some aspects of the future that we can control to some aspect. But so the next question is, how much do I need to know in the context about my environment? How much do I need to know regarding my environment? How much do I need to know regarding my emotion and feeling? And this is an interesting context. How much do I need to know about others, other people? And finally, how much do I need to know about my future? So let's see what our mind comes up with, with this question. Okay, before we go into the last exercise, I want to bring this new idea in, in front of you, the idea of cooperation. And I'm going to read— the next few words that I'm going to say is an extract of the book on the topic of cooperation. Most of life cooperates. The old ways of thinking twisted Darwin's idea about evolution to focus on the brutal competition. But somehow that doesn't quite explain the long-term existence of the tree-toad sloth. The butterflies or the sea slug. What's interesting is that competition might be where the sizzle happens, the friction, the sense of victory that sometimes we yearn for, but we hyperfocus on it at our own expense. Besides, we can't compete in sports without first cooperating on the rules of the game. So interestingly, most of life happens in cooperation. Humans are deeply wired for cooperation. We long for connection and we're strongly influenced by each other. And this isn't a weakness, it's our greatest strength and resilience. It's even how we have out-innovated those humanoids that were physically stronger than us, we band together and we skill share. So the last exercise is about doing a cooperation analysis, which is something that my co-author Jean Russell came up with, which you'll find in the book. And this is also something that I'm going to address in the last, the last workshop on within the LinkedIn Live. We'll talk about What does it take to build an abundant organization? So the exercise is this: if you ask yourself, how do I build a supportive relationship network? What are the answers about your environment, about your emotion, about others, and about your future? So look at you and people around you. And trying to find who do you regularly rely on and who support you in crisis. Who are your biggest supporters? playing along. This exercise I find is much easier than the previous one. Um, on my end, I looked at various areas of my life, like food-wise, who do I build relationship in order to, find this support. So local farmers, people with similar desire, emotion-wise, how do I build the support? Family, and that's where I realize it's about building relationship, um, with the family members. Job-wise, finding the right platforms to bring me the, the support that I need, um, etc. So this, I think, is an interesting question. Now, before we open up to a collective brainstorming on a very specific topic, I want to also bring another, a second idea to you, which is how we experience wealth. What's interesting is that we have to rethink abundance in wealth what is still invisible and make this visible. So we think of wealth as the financial wealth that we accumulate, but in fact wealth expresses itself as many things. It can be a market value, financial wealth. It can be a social value with social wealth. Freedom, time is also something that is a way of experiencing wealth, and physical well-being is also another aspect of experiencing wealth. And this is a tight— actually, I could have presented this slide before the last exercise because it was about how do we create the supportive environment in order for each of the areas of our lives to become wealthy. So I'm gonna pause the recording in order for us to go into this brainstorming on daily practices using the power of collective, and then I'll do— once the meeting is, is over, I'll share the slide that we come up with. But what I'd like us to do in the next, for the next 10 to 15 minutes, is open up the conversation and find a number of daily practices. We've seen that understanding that there's abundance in the world can be a percept— a belief or an intellectual understanding, but at the end of the day, at least for me, it has to be something that I can live by. I can wake up in the morning and my belief of being transformed into my habits, my behavior, and the reality that I'm experiencing. So last, and during the last workshop, some people shared some of their own practices. Like, for example, having a daily mantra. When the mind gets scared and you start thinking in negative thoughts about something, repeating ourselves, I have enough and I will always have enough, is a way to calm the, the mind. Another daily practice would be to live in the moment, to be reminded, to remind ourselves to be in the present moment, because as I shared earlier, most of our fears and anxiety comes from thinking about the future because we cannot control the future. So I want to thank you for this conversation. It was really inspiring, and I wish I had actually recorded all the brilliant answers. I captured some daily practices from daily mantra: I have enough and I will always have enough. Being grateful to being alive, to daily practices, living in the moment, being connected to nature and to animals because it's a reminder of being connected to something greater than ourselves, cultivating our past miracles to remind ourselves that we are— we've had enough in the past, we've had plenty of virtual opportunities. And reading, practicing knowledge of interconnectedness, and feeling that we all are connected, and the magic of serendipity, expressing vulnerability, and finding other people who can support us and who can also help us work our pain out. The, uh, so a big thank you for being here and for sharing, uh, your own journey. The last session will be on June 28th. I'll send an invitation. This is going to be a LinkedIn Live. It's going to be a lot more about, as a business owner or part of an organization, how do I make that organization, um, open to being in the economy of abundance? So I really want to thank all of you for being here and for making this possible. And that's also the abundance— you're helping me express my own abundance through your abundant gift of time and mind share. So thank you. I really enjoyed this conversation. I've learned a lot, and I hope that you did too. Thank you.
