Abundance!

You’d think fighter pilots would have a lot of rules. But even with all the training sessions, manuals, and checklists, there is really only just one rule: Don’t Screw It Up.

That’s pretty much it. Looking cool is optional. So is talking cool.

Whatever you do...just...Don’t...Screw…It...Up.

Example: one of my friends goes by the callsign Torch. It sounds cool, but it's not. That’s because one day he slammed his brakes so hard they caught fire. An hour later, he was “Torch.”

So now every time he hears his own name, he gets reminded of that one time he Screwed Up.

Same for my friend Skip. Skip flew so low, he accidentally hit the ground and Skipped (get it?)...Skipped into the air before ejecting.

Skip, Torch...heck, you don’t even want to know what my callsign is.

All that is to say, just Don’t Screw It Up as a fighter pilot and you’re fine. 

That got me to thinking. Sometimes the rule “Don’t Screw It Up” creates its own problems. For example, a full-of-gas F-18 is a rocket ship. An out-of-gas F-18 is a glider. Imagine flying a full-of-gas F-18 like it's an out-of-gas F-18. Imagine being terrified of going into full Afterburner because you wrongly thought you had to play it safe.

I can’t think of a more perfect analogy for the world we live in: a world of unspeakable abundance filled with a culture that’s afraid that we’re running out of everything.

Our Flight Brief this week is Part III in the Goal Fuel Series. If you want a refresher, Part I is here and Part II is here.

(Don’t forget, you can listen to the Flight Brief here. 5-star reviews warmly encouraged. Ahem.)

How Abundance Can Help You Accomplish ANYTHING

We live in an amazing world. There is more than enough of everything and if there isn’t, somehow we’ve always found a way to make more.

Take water for example. 

Our Earth is literally covered with water. According to a U.S. Geological Survey, there are 332 Million Cubic Miles of water on the planet. That’s Million and Miles...both with an M. About 97% of that is in the ocean with the rest of it presumably in rivers, lakes, clouds, and cucumbers.

Plus, that doesn’t even count the untold amount of water buried deep in underground caves next to Gollum. 

And yet water...yes water...is one of the things that our culture is constantly obsessing over how little we have. Especially here in California, where you can’t get past Page #2 in a newspaper without a discussion of drought this drought that.

Listen...I know the lakes are lower than they should be. I get that. What I don’t get is how you can live on the Pacific Ocean (of all places) and then blindly come to the assumption that you’re running out of water.

(This is the part of the discussion where someone reminds me you can’t actually drink the Pacific Ocean. A comment which strangely proves my point about abundance. For example, right now, about 55% of Israel’s freshwater supply comes from the (very salty) Mediterranean. They just desalinate it. So basically one of the driest countries on Planet Earth now has abundant water because of entrepreneurs. Imagine that.)

Take Food

300 years ago if you wanted fresh meat or fish, you’d have to go catch, trap, or shoot it. Today we have “meat departments” in the grocery. (Seriously, meat gets its own department with its own staff and everything.)

300 years ago if you wanted cucumbers in the winter, you better pucker up because they’re coming as pickles. But today, well today, we have “vegetable sections” even in winter.

So yeah, we have a lot.

Still, most of the world is convinced we’re “running out of food.” 

Side note: the world’s famine’s are nearly all caused by massive bureaucracies and not massive food shortages. In other words, it’s not the food that’s scarce, it’s good leadership. For example, the famous Ethiopian famines were caused by governments using hunger as a weapon. Ethiopia is a massively resource-abundant country. This is one more reason why we need new leaders pretty much everywhere.

Take Technology

It wasn’t long ago that the world’s primary calculating device was an abacus. Weird...I haven’t one of those recently. Want to know why? We don’t need abacuses (say that 5-times fast) because 3.8 Billion individuals (50% of the world’s population) carry supercomputers in their pockets.

The irony is about 99% of our culture’s complaining happens while typing feverishly into their little pocket-supercomputers. You’d think for a moment they’d realize that Twitter would be looked at as “sorcery” to someone from the 1700s. Today, it’s just another place to complain.

Which Brings Me to You

If you want to accomplish BIG things and change the world, then you better start seeing the world as it is: a massively abundant place with an unlimited upside.

This is CRITICAL to the Goal Setting process because if you come at your goals from a place of lack you will end up becoming a way-station for abundance. It will all just pass you by.

For example, most of the world’s (so-called) experts and nearly all of the news media subscribe to what I call the Single Pie Fallacy. This is the belief that there is a limited amount of everything and if you take more, someone else gets less. It’s the belief that there is ONE pie and everyone better take their “fair share” and spread it all around.

The problem with the Single Pie Fallacy is in the assumption that there is only so much. The truth is that when humans are doing what humans were created to do We Create More Than We Consume.

Read that again. Being a True Human is to Create More Than YOU Consume. (That’s my definition of an entrepreneur too.) 

There isn’t ONE single pie. There is an ever-growing abundant amount of pies, so strap on your napkin and chow down.

Here’s the dealio: if your mindset is anything other than abundance, you’re going to end up with a long list of goals that never get accomplished. Scarcity-thinking always shows up with a bunch of nasty side effects like: jealousy, anger, and resentment. (You know...pretty much what you get on Twitter.) I mean, do you really think people were upset because Tom Brady wasn’t wearing a mask or do you think maybe...just maybe...they’re upset he was eating more than his “fair share” of success pie.

So do this now. 

Make a promise to yourself that you’ll see abundance in everything And in the places where you find lack, make a 2nd promise to do something about it. You may be surprised at how much you can accomplish when you take off the rev limiter, push the throttles into afterburner, and fly low, fast, and far.

Out.

Ed