301. Scarcity Problems

I’m Jody Moore and this is Better Than Happy, episode 301: Scarcity Problems.

Did you know that you can live a life that’s even better than happy? My name is Jody Moore. I’m a master certified life coach and a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. And if you’re willing to go with me I can show you how. Let’s go.

Hello everybody. Welcome to episode 301. We’re going to talk about scarcity today and we’re going to talk about abundance. And I know that those two words are buzzwords that you hear a lot in the world of coaching. And if I had different words to replace them with that I thought did a better job of describing these topics then I would. But the truth is they are really important relevant words.

I think the reason we hear them a lot or the reason that I kind of cringe at the idea of using them is because they’re sometimes used as a way to hook us in because they imply that if you come with me I’m going to help you make more money. And that’s not the message I’m trying to send today, of course that is available to you from abundance. But I don’t even really want to talk about money. I’ll give one money example but mostly what I’m going to talk about today is all the other ways that scarcity and abundance show up in our lives.

I actually think money is the least interesting way that scarcity and abundance show up. I mean certainly we have a lot of emotions around money and it’s the most obvious example. But there’s so many other ways that I think are really fascinating and sometimes easier to go to work on to get your brain into a more abundant place than just starting with money. We can start with something maybe a little bit easier, less emotional, a little bit easier to believe. And then you can move into a more abundant mindset which can eventually affect your money, but anyway that’s what we’re going to do today.

The work that I’ve done on my own self with regards to scarcity and abundance has possibly been the most impactful of all the work I’ve done. I mean it’s affected my life in the most dramatic way. And again I’m not just talking about money. I’m talking about so many other things and just my overall sense of peace and joy has increased so much from working on my mindset when it comes to scarcity and abundance.

So we just created a brand new workshop that I’m going to be teaching next week. I’m trying to think when this podcast airs. Hold on, I’m going to look at the calendar, about a week and a half from now I should say, in Be Bold. So if you want to join me for that the doors to Be Bold will be opening tomorrow, if you’re listening to this episode the day it airs on Friday the 23^rd. So the doors will be open on April 24^th, which is my husband’s birthday. Happy birthday honey, we’re opening the doors to Be Bold for your birthday.

And they’ll only be open for about six or seven days and then I’m going to dive right into teaching creating abundance. Is that what I called it? Becoming abundant, that’s what I called the workshop, becoming abundant. So I’m going to teach you how to do that. But I’m going to give you a lot of really good head start today. So listen to this first. And if any of this resonates with you and you’re not in Be Bold you might want to think about coming and joining me for that workshop.

But here is what I want you to think about, like I said, scarcity and abundance show up in all different ways, not just with money. And it’s one of my most favorite things to observe both in myself and in others. I observe it in others just because it helps me get a better understanding of it. I try really hard not to be judgmental of others as I’m observing it because I know that we all do it at times. We’re all just humans. So please don’t judge yourself as I talk to you about this topic. It is not useful to judge yourself you guys.

The things I’m teaching you here on this podcast are meant to give you awareness, because the more aware you are of yourself the more control you have over creating the results that you want. I’ve used this analogy before but it’s similar to if a musician is going to record something, if they’re going to sing into a mic they put on headphones.

Even as I’m recording this podcast I put on headphones because I can hear my voice better through the headphones and it allows me to adjust myself and to notice if there’s, like every time I hit the desk it makes a noise, things like that. It helps me just do a better job of speaking to you and it certainly helps somebody singing do a better job with their voice when they can hear themselves.

Now, imagine if I was singing, I put on the headphones, I’m hearing my voice and I’m judging myself. I’m thinking about how terrible I sound. You know what I would probably want to do? Take those headphones off and stop singing. Or we might say that if I’m singing and I’m listening to myself and I’m judging myself I’d probably start singing worse. I don’t start singing better from judgment, I sing a little bit worse because maybe I get nervous and my voice cracks or what have you.

So I want you to think of what we’re doing here like putting on headphones for yourself in just how you show up in your life. But if you’re going to start judging yourself you’re not going to improve from judgment and you’re not going to want to keep listening, or observing, or becoming aware of yourself. So we’re just listening with curiosity. We’re paying attention, not just listening, observing ourselves, noticing ourselves from a place of that’s fascinating. Sometimes I’m like, “That’s hilarious, look at what my silly, silly human brain is doing today.”

So it helps me stay out of judgment, I sort of am amused by myself or laugh at myself. So that’s how I want you to think about this today. Now, I’m going to give you a bunch of examples of things that I have noticed, again many of them in myself, some in others of where scarcity shows up. How scarcity creates problems for us, you might call them problems or in many cases it’s just us limiting ourselves. We’re making ourselves smaller. We’re making our life experience less amazing, less joyful, less successful in whatever way that you want to define success.

So the first and most obvious example of course is money. And this is one I’ll take from my own personal experience that before I found all these tools, before I had a coach, I had lots of scarcity around money. And I was worried about money all the time, I was stressed about money. I spent too much money. I wasn’t good with money, that was my thought but also it showed up in my action.

And one of the main things in hindsight that I can see that that whole approach did for me is it made me want to never look at my bank account. I never looked at it. I tried to avoid it at all costs anyway. Sometimes I had to but mostly I avoided it and I hoped my husband wouldn’t look at it either. And if you’re trying to be better with money, or you’re trying to make your money go further, or whatever, probably a good idea to check your bank account, probably a good idea to keep an eye on your money.

The more closely you pay attention to your money the more careful you’re going to be, the more intentional certainly you’re going to be about how you spend it. Now, that can probably – there’s probably a tipping point at which we are overly graspy with it out of scarcity. But certainly never looking at my account when it’s not like I had unlimited funds in there, wasn’t serving me. So notice that being worried about money, thinking there’s not enough money doesn’t actually help you be better with money. That’s the most obvious way it showed up for me. It can show up in a lot of different ways.

Some other ways that I see scarcity show up though, I see this a lot with just other individuals that I know like maybe colleagues, I call them colleagues because they’re fellow entrepreneurs or fellow business owners, fellow coaches. Sometimes I see this with contractors or vendors that I work with. But I hear people say things like, “Well, it’s just not possible.”

Now, I’m not talking about like hey, I want to jump out of a window and fly. I’m talking about things that people say aren’t possible that I say, “Yes, it is possible, it’s totally possible. Of course that’s possible. What do you mean that’s not possible?” It’s not possible, like I’m going to a family reunion for example. And I can’t just not eat junk food when I’m there, it’s just not possible. Yeah, it is possible actually. Or I just can’t get my website up and running without spending x amount of dollars, it’s just not possible.

I can’t get that URL that I want, it’s not possible. Yeah, it is possible. Now, it doesn’t mean we’re always willing to do what it takes to get there but it is possible, which brings me to – I forgot, I was going to explain this. So let me just kind of take a pause.

What I have discovered as I’ve looked at all of these examples of scarcity and abundance, which I’m going to share with you today is that I really think that scarcity comes from a lack of belief in two different areas. The first area is a lack of our belief in ourselves, lack of a belief in our ability to do or create what we want, to follow through, our ability or our willingness to follow through. That’s the first way that it shows up in scarcity. I’ll talk about that more in a minute.

The second lack of belief that creates scarcity is a lack of belief in God, or the universe, or our heavenly parents, or the eternal perspective, or the law of atonement or whatever higher force of spirituality you believe in. It’s either one or both of those things when we go to scarcity. We’re not having faith in ourselves or we’re not having faith in God. That’s pretty much of it for almost any situation. Now, there’s a couple of other things I’m going to touch on but I want you to keep that in mind as we go through examples.

So if I’m saying, “It’s just not possible for me to eat healthy while I’m on a family vacation.” Notice that comes from a lack of a belief in myself because of course it’s possible; people do it all the time. But if I don’t believe in myself, if I don’t believe in my own ability, if I don’t see myself as capable, and willing, and believing, it’s sort of like when I’m in scarcity I notice that I need to pause and go, “It’s okay girl, I got you. I’ll take care of you, I got you, don’t worry. I’ll make it work. I’ll figure it out.” That’s what gets me to abundance.

Scarcity is I can’t trust me. I’m not going to be able to do what I said. A similar version of that I hear people say is, “Well, people just don’t do that.” Who cares what people do or don’t do, what are you going to do or not do? We try to get evidence from outside of us about whether or not we’re capable or it’s possible.

And again I like to try to go to abundance and just believe in myself, believe in my own commitment to myself and my willingness and ability to follow through. And by the way, you don’t have to have any evidence from your past to choose to just believe in yourself and commit to yourself.

How about this one? Let’s talk a little bit about time scarcity. If you’re somebody who stresses about being on time, maybe you’re running late and you get really upset about that, that’s coming from scarcity. Now, I’m not saying it’s wrong to want to be on time. If you want to be on time, great, I like to be on time. I like to do my very best to plan ahead and be on time and respect people’s time, I’m all for that.

I’m talking about when it crosses a line into scarcity. You know what I’m talking about. You’re running late, you’re stressed out, you’re yelling at everyone. Everyone’s fighting with each other. Everyone’s upset. Somebody can’t find their shoe, now we’re even more mad.

Everybody’s upset and crying or whatever it looks like in the car on the way to church. That’s my favorite thing. I’m like, “Wait a second, if you’re going to church, why are you going to church again?” Maybe to take the sacrament, maybe to learn about Christ or whatever you believe in, maybe to feel the spirit, maybe to be at peace, to be with your family. So let’s create a ruckus on the way is what we’re saying. That makes no sense. It’s coming from a lack of faith, a lack of faith in yourself and a lack of faith in a higher – a bigger picture let’s just say.

Here’s the bigger picture, it’s okay, we can be late. Sometimes we’re late to things, we try not to be but sometimes it happens. It’s not worth getting upset over. We don’t need to have scarcity of time. We’re not going to miss out on something super important. And if other people have judgment of us as we walk in late, that’s okay, that’s alright, that’s about them. Let’s put some belief in the bigger picture. Do you see what I’m saying?

Now we get to abundance of everything is going as it should, everything is fine. There’s no crisis here, there’s nothing to freak out about. We’re just running late. This is one that I noticed the other day, it was like I said, I’m so fascinated with this topic, I’m constantly like, “Look at that example of scarcity, that’s fascinating.”

So in our bathroom above the bathtub we have a blind that has a motor attached to it because it’s kind of far to reach across the tub. We can’t be bothered to do that certainly. So it has a little remote control button that you push and it automatically raises and lowers the blind. But it takes a lot of batteries and those batteries run out it seems more frequently than I wished they did. And it’s kind of a pain to change the batteries because getting to the blind and they’re up high and it’s not my favorite task.

And I like to raise the blind while I’m getting ready in the morning especially if it’s a sunny beautiful day outside, I want to see outside. But sometimes as I’m getting ready I notice the blind is closed and I think, well, I’m not going to open it because if I do it’s going to use up some of the battery. And then I’m going to have to replace the battery or if I don’t I won’t be able to open the blind and see outside. So I won’t open the blind and see outside because I’m afraid that I might one day not be able to open the blind. Do you see what I mean? This is what scarcity does you guys.

Notice how that’s a lack of a faith in myself, and my abilities, or my willingness to just get up there and change the batteries, my ability to find batteries or remember to buy batteries and then to go in and put them in and to be able to handle the discomfort of doing that. It’s not a big deal. This is a little thing, I realize this. I just notice it because I’m like look how fascinating that is. The scarcity is causing me to miss out on something. I know it’s a little thing but this is just what I mean.

You can start with a little thing like this, what if I just have some faith in myself, like listen, you go ahead and open that blind any time you want to Jody. And if the batteries go low I will find batteries and replace batteries, I’ve got you. We’re going to enjoy looking out the window any time we want to. That’s abundance.

Another way I see scarcity show up in a lot of people’s lives is by holding on to things, not being willing or able to get rid of things. And this can actually be a really emotional serious problem. At the extreme end it looks like hoarding. That comes from scarcity. But sometimes it doesn’t have to be that extreme even; it can just be I don’t want to get rid of this because what if I want it later? What if I need it and I’ve gotten rid of it. Notice that that is a lack of faith in yourself.

This is one area where I really made lots of progress years ago is I started telling myself, at one point I had lost a bunch of weight. And I had some clothes that didn’t fit me anymore, they were too big and I thought well, I don’t want to get rid of them because what if I gain the weight again and I’m going to want those clothes back? So I’m not trusting in my own ability to maintain a healthy weight but I’m also not trusting in my ability to get different sized clothes, if I need different sized clothes.

So I told myself, “Listen, we’re going to send those clothes out into the world. We’re going to donate them to someone else. And if we need them again one day we will get some more clothes.” And this isn’t just when I had lots of money by the way. This is when I didn’t have money to spend on clothes. But I told myself, “We’re just going to have faith that if we need more clothes we will be able to get more clothes.” Let’s go to abundance. You’re allowed to just choose that you guys and not even know how.

Let things go into the world. Sometimes we do this with buying things too. Do you ever do this like at Target? Oh my goodness, that thing is so cute. If I don’t buy it I might want it later and it would be gone. Or I might need something kind of like it, or want something kind of like it later and not be able to find it. I should just buy it now. That is a lack of faith in yourself, in the world, in the universe. So I like to go, “No, listen, I don’t really want to send my money on that thing right now. I don’t need that thing right now.”

I’m just going to have faith that there will always be cute wonderful things and I will always be able to find what I want, and need, and can delight in. If I don’t want that thing right now, if I don’t want to buy that thing right now, do you see what I’m saying? Let it go. If I can’t find it, if I come back tomorrow and it’s gone then I was never meant to have it. And there’s something even better that I’m going to want eventually to spend my money on. That’s abundance. Do you see what I’m saying?

Scarcity also sometimes shows up as this rush that we’re in to achieve a goal or to get to some point in our lives. So if I’m in a real hurry to lose weight, or I’m in a real hurry to make money, let’s say I’m thinking I have to lose this weight before that vacation. I have to lose it before our family pictures. I have to lose it before my daughter’s wedding, whatever it is.

When you give yourself a deadline like that, and again it’s sometimes deadlines, sometimes giving yourself a timeline can be motivating. It can give you a target to shoot for. I’m okay with that. But when it crosses over into scarcity is when we feel this rush, no, why is it going so slow? We start getting frustrated, it stops being fun. That’s when you know you’re in scarcity land, when it’s not fun anymore.

So again if we were abundant about the idea that we are allowed to feel however we want to about ourselves. We’re allowed to look at ourselves in any picture and say, “You look beautiful right there. I love how you look right there.” And we were willing to practice doing that then we wouldn’t be in a big rush to lose the weight. If we remember that we don’t need to make any certain amount of money to prove anything to ourselves or anyone else. Again, all of these things have sort of tipping points on either direction.

Of course we need a certain amount of money to live off of. But I’m talking about once you have your basic living expenses met. Why are people still in so much of a hurry to achieve a certain monetary goal? It’s only because they’re living in scarcity. Scarcity that, hey, if I just had more money I could have different experiences or buy different things, then I would be happier. That’s not true. You’re capable of happiness right now no matter what.

Let’s see what else; I have a whole list of examples here. So this is one that I find fascinating. Whenever I’m low on gas in my car, or battery in my cell phone, or battery in my AirPods or something like that I notice myself slip into scarcity. I notice that I start feeling behind in all kinds of little ways. So maybe I’m low on gas and I notice myself sort of going, “Uh”, at times as I’m driving around, worrying about things. My brain sort of gets confused, wait, am I running late? Is my cell phone low on battery? No, I’m just low on gas.

This is what the unconscious brain does, it just goes move into scarcity mode. Honestly I do this when I’m like, “My AirPods are low, they’re about to die.” I’m sort of addicted to my AirPods, I told my kids, my AirPods were lost, I’m like, “We have to find them. I love them only slightly less than I love you.” So anyway when the AirPods batteries get low I get into scarcity, my brain goes into like oh no, something bad is going to happen. That’s what the brain thinks. That’s what scarcity is.

Instead of again having faith in the bigger picture, in the universe, whatever you want to call it. You know what? Everything’s going to be just fine. And I’m going to charge those AirPods. And if I don’t have them for a little while because they’re charging, I will be okay.

Do you ever get scarcity around sleep? This is so crazy. You wake-up in the night or you’re just lying in bed because it’s 1:00am and you haven’t fallen asleep yet. And you start moving into scarcity around sleep. You start thinking thoughts like oh no, I have to get to sleep because I have to get up at this certain time. And I need energy for tomorrow. Tomorrow’s an important day. I have this going on. I can’t be tired for that. And what happens when we start thinking that way? It makes it harder to go to sleep.

Scarcity around sleep keeps you awake because it puts your brain into scarcity mode. And the brain says, “Pay attention, we need to make sure nothing tragic happens.” It’s very hard to go to sleep when your brain is on high alert. So the alternative is abundance. Remember, abundance is just faith, faith in yourself, faith in the bigger picture. So on this one I like to go to it’s fine, maybe I’ll be tired tomorrow, that’s alright, I can be tired. I’ll get some sleep eventually. I can totally do it tired. I can do what I need to do tomorrow, tired if necessary, it’s fine, I’ll just stay awake.

I can go a pretty long time without sleep I bet. I have to genuinely be willing to not fall asleep for it to actually work.

The final example, I keep adding examples to my list here because I keep thinking of more. The final example, and again I noticed this in myself when I was first building my business was people would come along with opportunities. And I used to have lots of scarcity around opportunities. So somebody would come along and say, “Hey, do you want to be a part of this thing, this virtual conference, or do you want to come speak at this thing, or participate in this thing”, or whatever.

And I’m not saying it’s wrong to say yes to opportunities but there’s a difference between saying yes out of abundance and saying yes out of scarcity. And I used to say yes to things because I thought, well, this is a great opportunity, I can’t let it pass me by. Notice the scarcity in that thought? I can’t let this opportunity pass me by. I shouldn’t let it pass me by as though there’s not going to be a lot of other opportunities. So again, I say yes to many, many things but I’m a lot better now at noticing whether I’m saying yes from abundance or from scarcity.

When I thought I don’t want to let this opportunity pass me by, this seems like a big thing. There’s going to be a lot of people there. This is a lot of exposure. This is a good opportunity. That’s coming from scarcity you guys, it sounds very logical and everything. But it’s coming from scarcity, in other words I need this person to lift me up in this way. I need this help to create what I’m trying to create. And if the event or the opportunity aligns with your mission then for sure do it. But if it doesn’t really, if it’s not really a fit then it’s probably coming from scarcity.

And I know I said yes to many things in the beginning that I realized later, okay, that was sort of a distraction, no harm done, but it was a distraction from what I was trying to do. And it just slowed me down. One of the things that you can do to be more abundant is just start practicing it in little ways. Start noticing it in little ways.

What is the energy and thought around things that you already do like paying your bills? When you go to pay your utility bill are you bugged that you have to pay it or do you think I’m so glad we have utilities? I’m so happy to pay for this because utilities are something I value and I will pay this every month, I hope they keep letting me.

When you tip, how do you tip? Are you a generous tipper or are you kind of tight? I like to be a very generous tipper because I used to be a server. Even if I get terrible service I tip, pretty stinking good. I just like to. And again I’m not saying you have to. If you have a reason for not tipping that you like, that’s totally fine. I’m not saying that always comes from scarcity. But for me it keeps my head in an abundant place to, when I can afford to, leave a nice big tip.

So in our business, this is another example I thought of, in our business we sometimes give away bonuses for things. We might run a promotion and say, “Here’s a bonus that you get if you sign up for this thing by this date.” Or maybe it’s like you save a little money. And we always try to stay in an abundant mindset about things like that.

Here’s what I mean, it’s sort of a tech challenge and it can be just a logistical challenge to figure out, well, if we offer this bonus to these new customers, but we have existing customers, and they come along and they ask for the bonus then do we give it to them or not? And we always – one of our values is err on the side of generosity because it keeps us in abundance. So we just basically have a policy, if somebody asks us for a bonus we give it to them.

And the other thing is there’s the tech challenge of figuring out how to protect webpages so that if somebody’s supposed to get a discount there needs to be a webpage associated with that. But sometimes people can stumble upon the webpage. So we do our diligence to protect the webpages and everything. We want to make it fair to our clients and customers who were supposed to get the discount or who paid for something. But there are some things that it’s like, hey, that slipped through the cracks, somebody got to it.

Or there’s like, hey, what if this person sends the link to their friend who didn’t pay for it? And I always say, “Within reason we’re going to protect things.” But we’re not going to spend a lot of time, and energy, and resources, and finances and all of that locking it down or chasing after people because I think that’s coming from scarcity. We just take the approach, listen, if somebody got it in a sneaky way or sent it to their friend, or was dishonest about it, or whatever else, then they must really need it and I’m so glad they got it.

That’s it. We just try to be really abundant about things. I don’t mean that this happens automatically. Sometimes we have to stop and slow down the scarcity part of our brain and rethink it. But we try to stay in abundance around things like that in our business.

I had a friend years ago who said that she had bought a jacket that she really liked, it was brand new. And then she went to a work conference and she’d taken her jacket off and someone stole it. And she was telling me how she was so mad because she really liked that jacket and she can’t believe someone would steal it. And she was just upset about it and going on and on. And sometimes my friends go, “Okay, I know you’re a life coach.” So doesn’t it give me permission to go life coach a little bit on them?

And I said to her, “Who do we think stole that jacket?” And she said, “I have no idea.” I’m like, “Okay, let’s just make it up in our heads. What if it was a woman who is a single mom and she’s really struggling, and she’s doing the best she can and she is having a hard time getting food on the table. And she has a teenage daughter who gets cold when she goes to school. And she can’t afford to buy her a jacket and she feels so terrible about it and she saw your jacket. And knew her teenager would love it because it was so cool and so she took it and she’s given it to her daughter.”

And my friend was like, “Oh my gosh, if that was true I’d be so glad that she has it. I would want to give it to her.” I’m like, “Yeah, let’s just decide that’s the case then.” Because like I said, you can just choose to live, listen, if somebody stole that, they don’t even have to match that scenario I just gave. If somebody stole it, they must really need it. I’m glad they got it. I want them to have it. That’s a much more abundant way of thinking because it requires that you have faith in yourself that you’re going to be able to still provide what you need for yourself.

And again the bigger picture of the universe, or God, or however you think about it and it just feels so much better. It’s so much more fun. Scarcity feels terrible, it tightens us up and it prevents us from moving forward, it keeps us stuck in the current or the past.

Another way that I find keeps me in abundance with regards to my time is I don’t let myself feel busy. Did you hear that? I choose not to feel busy. I do a lot. I get a lot of stuff done. I do a lot in my business. I have four kids. I’m very active in all of their lives. I spend a lot of time with my family. I do lots of self-care and I have lots of hobbies. And I just don’t go to the busy place in my emotions because I don’t think about my life and my time in a way that aligns with scarcity. I think about it in a very abundant way. I think that there’s plenty of time. I can do all the things I want to do.

I don’t have to do anything that doesn’t align with me living my best life. And that abundant way of thinking about my time, and my schedule, and my life creates so much peace in my life. And it’s available to you guys. It’s a choice. Again I’m going to be teaching you how to do this in Be Bold if you feel like you’re not sure how.

Again a lot of these examples are coming from my business because that’s where it comes up the strongest, the scarcity or abundance. But I hope that you can apply these in your life and in your families in many different ways. I know you can. It’s just around making plans. But there are times when we are planning something and we don’t know the future.

We all experienced that certainly on a more emphasized version of that over the last year and a half with Covid where it’s like do we plan this? Because we don’t know, what if it gets cancelled? What if we can’t make it happen? What if this doesn’t work out in this way? That happens all the time in my business. We’re planning an event, we need to figure out what size venue to get but we don’t really know how many people are going to come to the event. So we have to take a leap of faith, there is where abundance comes in.

So I like to, of course we gather as much information as we can. But then we go to abundance, in other words I say, “Let’s just assume it’s all going to work out perfectly. There’s going to be the perfect number of seats. We’re going to have the perfect number of people there. That venue that we booked is going to be the perfect size.” We can just put faith in the bigger picture and in ourselves.

I notice this too with hiring, but again for me it’s hiring staff but it could be – I’m thinking about as my kids get older it’s going to be going to college. It’s going to be making friends. It’s going to be finding a spouse. It’s going to be – sometimes even right now, it’s like them finding a friend or a hobby or something like that. Scarcity says, “Oh no, oh no, we have to figure it out. We have to find the friend. We have to find the employee to hire. What if we can’t find them? There’s just not enough good people. It’s just hard to get into college these days.” That’s all scarcity.

Abundance says, “It doesn’t matter. We only need one. We need one acceptance letter from one school.” You only need one person to marry. It doesn’t matter, if there’s a huge sea of people to choose from, you’re only looking for one. We don’t need the market to be totally blowing up. We only need one buyer with one offer to buy our house.

Back from my days of being single, my husband and I didn’t meet until we were 29 and got married when we were 30. And so we were in singles wards for quite a bit. In hindsight there was lots of scarcity at that point. Scarcity around am I going to be able to find a spouse? And it showed up in all different ways for people. Sometimes it showed up like I can’t date this person because – I don’t want to date them seriously because somebody better might come along and I might miss out on that. So I have to just stay available. That’s scarcity.

I’d better hurry and marry this person because what if no one else comes along and I end up not married? I really want to get married. That’s a very scarce way of thinking and that probably isn’t going to serve you best. It’s probably not going to find a happily ever after that you’re looking for. Maybe it works out but not ideal probably.

I want to speak also, just last one here too. I mentioned how in the beginning of building my business I said yes to lots of opportunities that probably weren’t the right fit, that were just kind of like a distraction. But now I notice that first of all I’m much better at saying no to things that aren’t a good fit. But I also say yes to things that I think I should be doing out of abundance that I might have said no to before.

For example somebody just reached out and said that they work with women in a prison and they wanted to know if I would teach a Zoom class to those women in the prison. I don’t know if I would have said no to that before but I might have from scarcity, I might have thought, well, they’re not going to pay me. And those women are probably never going to be my clients. That’s not going to benefit my business in any way. That’s scarcity. Scarcity also is selfish.

Abundance is very generous and giving. Abundance is like is that something that aligns with my vision of helping people be mentally and emotionally healthier? Heck yeah. And I have to put faith in myself to say yes to it, faith in myself that I’ll be able to create the time and to do – I’ve never really spoken to women in a prison. I have to put some faith in myself I’ll be able to do a good job of that. And from abundance it’s a yes.

I had somebody else say, “Hey, I’m in Be Bold.” There’s a whole missionary series, a couple of different missionary series of courses in Be Bold to help prepare missionaries and then help missionaries transition when they come home.

And one of my Be Bold people said, “Hey, I work with missionaries, we’re doing”, I think it was a zone conference or something. “We want to show some of those videos. They’re so good, we want to show them to the 200 or whatever missionaries in our area. And we want to print the workbook and give it to all of them. But I don’t want to do anything I’m not supposed to do. I’m just one person in Be Bold, is it okay if I show it to all of them?” I’m like, “Heck yes, please show it to all the missionaries, please give it to all of them.”

Some things are very easy for me to be abundant around. Scarcity would say, “Well, I don’t know. I mean only one person paid me for that.” That’s ridiculous. My mission and vision is to help up-level mental and emotional health. I especially love doing that for my business and church. So showing it to a bunch of missionaries is a yes for sure.

So again, I hope in this episode, I have given you so many examples of scarcity and abundance, I hope you’re going to start noticing them for yourself. You’ll notice them again in your own thoughts, and actions, and behaviors. You’ll notice them in others. Make sure we’re not doing it out of judgment. Just like there’s scarcity, that’s interesting. What would abundance say instead? Because awareness really is the first step in everything I teach.

Next week in Be Bold I’m going to be teaching five steps to becoming abundant. This is some of my most favorite work to do. Like I said, it’s been the most impactful in every area of my life and just created more overall happiness and joy. So if you want to join me go to jodymoore.com/membership and we will do that workshop together and get your head in a more abundant place.

Thanks so much for joining me today you guys, have a beautiful rest of your week and I’ll see you next time. Bye bye.

Who is your life coach? If you don’t have one I would be so honored to be your coach. I created a virtual coaching program called Be Bold that I want to invite you to join me in. We can address challenges, we can work on goals, and we can do it in so many different ways.

We have group coaching, individual private coaching, and online chats along with hundreds of hours of courses and content that I’ve created just for you. When you’re ready to really take what you’re learning on the podcast to the 10x level, then come check out Be Bold at JodyMoore.com/membership.