Frankly Put: An Abundance Mentality and a Heavy Heart
The backwards law; paraphrasing writer Alan Watts, talks about how a state of constant seeking of positive experience is a negative whilst the acceptance of a negative is positive. I’ve been thinking about that a lot.
When one feels like opportunities in life are scarce and not forthcoming the advice is commonly to have this abundance mentality. To manifest to the universe or God that opportunities are enough for everyone and yours will come to you. Having this mindset of abundance and the world will give unto you the same. To apply the backwards law to that is a counterintuitive scenario but walk with me.
Abundance mentality and gratitude work hand-in-hand in creating this optimism for life. Meanwhile, I think that a general consensus is that to be human is to want more. More money. More time. More happiness. When we get some, we are on to wanting more of the next thing and I can already feel some of you recoiling to say, “ No, just enough is fine.” I hear you and share the same sentiments.
The world will teach you to be grateful for what you have and that is enough but it is difficult to live in that state. Humility and all that but what happens when we have enough? We want to share it out more with the ones we love. We want more time to enjoy it and appreciate it. We want to be more satisfied and if we aren’t, we ask ourselves a million questions.
Guilt then set in. We have created this image of “enough" that makes it seem like to ask for different, less,more or anything outside that is shameful. Those who have can be guilt-tripped into never expressing desires because “they have enough and that should be enough". This goes for more than just material things. It goes for skills, talents, gifts and abilities too.
Personally, I catch myself doing it too. It could be the rich friend complaining about having to wait to get that new high end thing that costs more than I’ve seen roll into my bank account at one go. It could be that really talented friend complain that their talent is of no use whereas I could think of ten ways that the skill has been useful to them. I take responsibility for the guilt that creates when all they needed was just to air out grievances which are totally valid to have.
I do however think that in some ways, an abundance mindset robs some people of the appreciation of things sometimes. The idea that there is enough for everyone to enjoy can ironically make us lose the idea of possible loss. We antagonize scarcity like a plague. Who can blame us though, it’s a negative thing…. But, backwards law.
Hello, scarcity mindset and benefits. Allow me to be positive about the negative for a bit. In my experience, somehow more has come from having this acknowledgment of loss than the belief of enough. I have been on both sides of the pendulum swing. On one hand, I have been called pessimistic and on the other very optimistic. As a result, I’ve had to learn to balance the two and be a little more realistic.
I will use the example of relationships, romantic ones to be precise. In my time on this earth, the common line to soothe the broken heart is “there’s many fish in the sea". Younger me ate that up for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Older me thinks, no. There’s lots of water in the sea and very few fish. There’s algae, there are molluscs, there are reptiles, there are crustaceans, mammals and heck even arachnids.
In a way, this grossly literal perspective has helped me be grounded in picking the right person. It has allowed me the deep appreciation for everything that person is. It has fueled a loyalty that stabilized choice. It has given a freedom to love because of an acceptance of lack of imitation.
This mentality has since slithered into all other aspects of my life and has morphed into a positive experience. It’s got me through some rough patches where an abundance mindset has been hard to hold on to. I think I found my redemption in giving it up.
It can be quite difficult to have an abundance mentality and a heavy heart, doesn’t mean you are any less worthy of abundance… to put it Frankly.
