18: Abundant vs Poverty Mindset | The Monday Experience

Welcome to the Monday Experience! In this installment, I want to break down the difference between the abundant vs poverty mindset and how we might go about teaching ourselves to seize more of the former. Being around people who are continuously plagued by negativity and defeatism can get wearing, so let's make a change in ourselves and try to spread it around!

Abundant vs Poverty Mindset

I've always been a positive person, annoyingly much. I've had the can-do attitude which has helped me to look past a list of impossibilities to overcome and declare that we will find a way to make this possible. In spite of this, I found myself surrounded by people of the poverty mindset during a time in which I was experiencing some pretty traumatic and negative circumstances. I don't blame these people for my attitude, but I can't help wishing they'd become more abundantly-minded.

That mindset rubbed off on me during a dark time. I went from the can-do attitude to the it'll-never-happen, I'm-useless attitude. I went from looking at my blessings and things I was thankful for to looking only at the negatives and things that were going wrong. This attitude, this mindset consumed me and made me a really negative person. I wasn't attracting success, or anything good, and I was not fun to be around.

In the time since, I've worked hard to recapture the positivity I once had. I've recaptured much more of that person, but I still struggle with the poverty mindset periodically.

So what are these mindsets I'm talking about? These mindsets, ideally, extend beyond our circumstances and look into the foundation of our attitude toward our circumstances. In this case, abundance and poverty aren't referring to wealth or money from the state of what is inside of our hearts. Abundance comes from inner strength, the confidence and security to seize opportunity, offer words of encouragement, and positively influence others. There are more than enough resources for everyone, but when we start acting like there are not, suddenly a game begins to form. Opportunities become scarce because we compete in brokenness and our outward lens is shrouded in negativity.

The first step to overcoming a poverty mindset, honestly, is just admitting that's where you are. It is a difficult swamp to climb out of, but once you start opening your eyes to the people around you and looking for the positives in spite of your circumstances, that insurmountable mountain in front of you becomes a molehill. Attitude affects aptitude. Summon that inner positivity and see the differences in the attitudes you attract.