The Power of Embracing Scarcity

I have something today that I think you may not like very much. Or perhaps you will. But regardless, it needs to be said.

In the LOA community, everyone is saying to open up to your true abundance. And this isn’t horrible advice, as I’ll discuss later.

But it is misguided advice. In some ways, I believe this might be at the root of why many people experience the resistance they do—and not only that, but the negative manifestations they face as well.

In this post—get ready for this… I’m asking you to embrace your scarcity. 😦 I know, I said the forbidden “scarcity” word. Just hang on for a moment to see where I’m going with this.

The Illusion of Abundance

So I first want to discuss how the illusion of abundance can often hurt us.

I know that sounds crazy, but what happens I believe is this: you get all hyped up on the feeling of abundance, perhaps through a visualization, some affirmations, an inspirational speaker, or whatever. You feel unstoppable.

And so you use that feeling to guide your decisions. And you make decisions that perhaps an abundant person might make, but the problem is that this abundance is just a temporary state of mind. It’s not your true essence, at least not right now. It’s a façade that you’ve built upon your true inner thoughts and feelings, to try to pretend your way to abundance.

And you may not even think it’s a façade. I remember when I was new to the law of attraction and really listening to Abraham-Hicks, I got on board with this idea that there’s no difference between creating a castle or a button. So Christine and I were walking home from somewhere one day, and discussing what it’d be like to have a million dollars. And so of course, by the time I walked in the door at home, I was feeling pretty awesome.

And then Christine asked me about some financial decision we had to make, which I don’t remember right now. But my response was something like, “Well yeah, NOW I feel like I could do anything.”

But of course, within a few hours of that heightened state, it had all disappeared and I was back to my old way of thinking.

But what would happen if I had actually made a decision from that place of heightened abundance? Likely I would have made a decision that I would have regretted, or that would have caused me stress later on.

But you might ask, “So why can’t you just always stay in that state of abundance, and then you don’t have to worry about what will happen later on?” And indeed that’s a common approach many people try to take. But the problem with that is, firstly, it’s a ton of work. You have to monitor every single thought to make sure no scarcity thoughts slip through. And when they inevitably do (because they will), you have to hype yourself back up. And each time it gets a bit harder.

But secondly, you’re missing the point. The point is that this hyped up state of abundance is still not your natural state, no matter if you fake it for a few minutes, or attempt to fake it for an entire day. You’re just trying to force a state that isn’t common to you, and that will never work.

I’m going to discuss three areas of life where I’ve seen this principle in operation, to hopefully make the point clearer.

False Abundance in Money

This is perhaps the easiest example because, well, when we think of abundance, we tend to think of money.

I’m going to tell a story about my mother. For as great a person as she is, she just stinks at money. And she wouldn’t take any offense at that, because she knows it to be true. When it comes to money, she is my negative role model—the one I said I never wanted to emulate.

Well anyway, I remember over the years that it was common for approximately this situation to take place with some regularity:

She would just get paid. Now at her previous job, she actually made quite a bit. She was always a great salesperson, and so she thrived at commission-based jobs that she believed in.

So she’d have a bundle of money, and she’d feel abundant. There’s all this money in her bank account.

Naturally, then, she’d do that thing she’s been wanting to do, or buy that gadget she’s been wanting to buy, and it’d be great.

Until… a sizable bill came. Car insurance was due, or the gas bill, or electric, or something. It would come out, and she’d say something like, “Oh, I barely have anything left.” And then we’d struggle until the next paycheck.

And I’d often say to her, “But you knew that bill was going to come due; why would you spend so much and then be surprised?”

I think it’s a great example for what often happens. You get some lump sum of money, and you feel rich. You’re on top of the world. So you treat yourself somehow—because after all, you’ve been working hard. I get that, of course.

But then the bills come due, or some other expense pops up that you were unprepared for, and suddenly that feeling of abundance is gone.

The feeling of abundance was false. It arose from a wrong conclusion: that you had free money that wasn’t tied up somewhere else. You just saw the bank balance, but not what that balance would have to do next week.

The question is, why wouldn’t the law of attraction solve this for you? If you felt abundant, why wouldn’t you find more reasons to feel abundant? I’ll answer this important question later. But first, let’s move to another example.

False Abundance in Health

For this example I’ll use Christine (sorry Christine 😉).

Christine has been experiencing chronic pain for the last several years. She’s had numerous (as in, over twenty) surgeries on her eyes due to congenital glaucoma.

But often she pushes herself to do things that would be a stress on her body, because she doesn’t want to be held back, which I can appreciate. She’s one of the strongest people I know.

Well a few weeks ago she was going to her father’s house for I think Memorial Day. The issue was that her father wanted to eat outside to enjoy the nice weather. It’s a problem because hot weather really aggravates her pain.

So I told her, “You have to respect your body and its limitations. Just tell them you can’t eat outside, or at least go inside if things start to get bad.” And she agreed.

Later on she told me that even just the willingness to respect her own limitations was enough that she really didn’t have to go inside that much. She did sometimes, but that was OK with her, and everything just worked out perfectly.

She’s often trying to stretch herself beyond healthy limits, usually to try to help someone else, but she’s come to learn over time that it’s just not healthy. So now she’s more apt to respect her own limits and say “no” to someone when she just can’t be there for them.

So how is this an example of what I’m talking about?

She respected her own scarcity (or limitations). She didn’t try to act from a place of false abundance and do what she knew wasn’t possible, or healthy for her. And it paid off. 😀

False Abundance in Relationships

I don’t have much experience of this in my personal life, but I’ve certainly seen it in my clients.

Let’s say you want to meet your ideal partner. But you feel unworthy, or not good enough, or somehow undesirable.

Of course I never think you should feel those ways, but sometimes you just do.

But say you do some visualizing of the perfect meeting, or you affirm to yourself about how worthy you are and so forth. And so you’re feeling pretty good about meeting someone.

And then you do get into a situation where you might approach someone, or someone might approach you, and all those old feelings flood back. You fear rejection, or else you somehow see evidence of your old beliefs being true.

You tried to flood your mind with positive thoughts and feelings, and they gave out on you when it came down to the line.

So What’s Going On? What About the LOA?

So you might be asking, “But I thought the Universe brings you whatever you are thinking or feeling?”

Sort of, but not exactly. I know that’s super helpful.

In my private courses and membership, I’ve been getting away from the term, “law of attraction”, because there are so many exceptions and caveats that it’s not exactly a “law” as stated.

Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely believe you can create your own reality, but just that the common teachings that flood the LOA community are so over-simplistic, and often just wrong, that it’s ruining the term.

I’ve often wanted to call it magic, much as Genevieve Davis does in her books, but that term is not appealing to many people.

Anyway that’s beside the point. What’s the answer to the question above?

I’ve always been a proponent for being honest with yourself about what’s here now. If you have $200 in the bank now, then that’s what you have. If your body has limitations that you need to respect, then that’s what’s true right now. If you feel worthless or not good enough, then that’s what’s here now.

We think that we can wish away these things with some affirmations or nice thoughts, but that’s not how it works.

Abundance isn’t imposed from the outside, whether by thoughts, or affirmations, or vision boards, or something else. Abundance is our natural state, which must arise from within.

You can’t just talk about abundance, feel great, and expect good things to happen. People have been fantasizing for about as long as people have existed, and it hasn’t gotten them anywhere.

You must get in touch with the innate abundance that you are, before thought, and then things will naturally start to change for you. It has to be an inside out job.

Embracing Scarcity

But what does any of that have to do with scarcity?

Well, we are spiritual beings, but we also live in the physical. We have thought, but we also have a body. We are formless, but we are also form.

There is this inherent duality about our being in this world. And yes, I do believe that ultimately form arises from formlessness, so there is really no contradiction or duality at all, but we still have to deal with the appearance of duality in our world.

So that means that while yes, in your true essence, you are perfectly abundant, matter is inherently scarce.

It’s sort of like this: imagine you’re building a house. Now the idea of that house (formless) is limitless, because you can make that house any size, shape, or structure you desire, at least in your mind.

But the reality is that you have to eventually limit it into form. You have to decide on how big the house will be. Some of that will have to do with how much money you have to put into the building of the house, but it also has to do with the upkeep of the house, as well as the size of your family. If you’re one person living alone, then you probably don’t want a mansion. But if you’re a five-person family, then you also probably don’t want a single bedroom house.

Eventually you have to decide on the form. And that form is inherently limited. You can only fit so many rooms in that house. The structure of the house may limit certain decisions as well.

While yes, you can build anything in theory, it’s not helpful to say that when you need to decide what rooms you want in the house.

As another example, a while back Christine and I really wanted to get a sectional couch that wrapped around. My mother had gotten one in her house and we both loved it. There was so much room for people to sit, which our house lacked.

But the truth of the matter was, the way our living room is set up precluded the possibility of a full sectional. No amount of wishing would have changed that.

We ended up getting something kind of close: a couch and chaise sectional that was the closest to what we could get for our living room.

Life is full of limitation. Perhaps you want to go on vacation and have $1,000 to do it. Perhaps you can go on a nice weekend getaway for that budget, but you’re probably not going to get first class tickets to Hawaii, plus a five star hotel, on that budget. If that’s what you want, then you have to save more and possibly postpone the trip.

That’s reality.

None of that precludes magic. Certainly $3,000 could show up tomorrow, allowing you to take the vacation of your dreams. But in my experience, miracles like this only tend to happen when we’ve come to terms with the limitations of what we have now, and have fully accepted and even embraced them.

And so we have to live as abundant, spiritual beings, while making peace with the scarcity of the material.

And don’t get me wrong: scarcity could still even show up if you have $10 million. You will almost always want more than what the money (or other circumstances of life) can allow for.

So if I pretend that in this moment, something is possible that clearly is not, when taking present circumstances into consideration, I am deluding myself. I am being dishonest with myself about what is here, now.

It’s only when you make decisions in the present moment, in alignment with what is realistic according to your current circumstances, that the Universe tends to join you and bring even more opportunities.

In other words, when you embrace the scarcity of this moment, you open up possibilities that you may not have previously seen.

But don’t do any of this to force that abundance to come. The scarcity of the moment will make you admit what is possible, now, and what has to wait for the future. And when that is OK, then life can open up entirely new avenues. Those wishes will come true so much faster than you could have ever expected.

I’m not telling you you can never have the things you want. I’m saying to be honest with yourself about what things you can have now, and what things will have to wait until later. I’m telling you to look at the reasonable steps you can take now, without any wishful thinking in play, and then let the Universe do its part. And I’m telling you that when you do this, you’ll often be surprised at the outcome.

If you’d like to learn more about how to stop letting money control you, and really get control over your financial situation, I am restarting my course, Effortless Money Manifestation, in just a few weeks.

In this course, I’ll guide you through what you need to do to truly get a handle on money and reach any goal that you set for yourself. I’ll show you how to reduce your stress around money, and actually have a positive relationship with it.

Just go here to learn more:

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How About You?

Now it’s your turn. What scarcity are you experiencing in your own life? What results have you seen from embracing this scarcity? Let me know your thoughts in the comments.