The Abundance Paradigm

Do you have a scarcity mindset? Don’t get defensive just yet! Most of us view our lives and experiences with this mindset that keeps us from seeing the joy, fulfillment, and wonder of abundance - and the worst part is, we don’t even know we’re doing it! 

See, this mindset doesn’t just affect our thoughts and feelings, but it also plays a huge role in how we see and interact with the world. It keeps us from enjoying the fullest of the many blessings we’ve already been given. 

You’re probably thinking, “Nate, I’ve heard this before! I know about it and I’m sure I don’t have a scarcity mindset.” Well, maybe in some ways you don’t. 

But the scarcity mindset reaches so far and wide that it manifests in ways we don’t even realize. A lot of it is so deep-rooted in our society that we don’t even think twice about our automatic thoughts or perspectives. 

The good news is, your mindset can change! You don’t have to be set in your ways, thoughts, and principles. The possibility for good and genuine change is within your reach!

I’m gonna give you the tools you need to re-think and reconsider your perspective on different situations and life experiences. My hope here is that you make the choice to shed your old glasses and choose to put on the lenses to see the world through an abundance paradigm. 

What I’m going to do here is paint a picture of what it looks like when you're not wearing these glasses of abundance, and then what it looks like when you are wearing them. The more times I do this, I think it's really gonna help you get a little more clarity and reach some wonderful epiphanies that might just change your life.

The paradigm shift

Before we really get into it, I want to give you some clarity on what I mean by "paradigm shift". I use the word "paradigm” all the time but let me define it with a little more clarity. For me, it’s a viewpoint, it’s the perspective that we have. 

If I'm down at the base of a mountain, the view that I have of the sky and the trees and everything that surrounds me would be quite different from the view I would have if I climbed all the way up to the top. Even the way I feel about nature or about my experience outdoors would probably be different. 

Let’s look at it from a life experience point-of-view. Someone who’s young, maybe a bit naive, someone who sees the world through rose-colored glasses would probably see a situation differently from someone who’s 50 years old and has had a lot of experience and life lessons. The situation stays the same, but the perspective really makes a difference in how it goes about. 

Now what do I want to do? The reason I’m really diving into this is that I’d like you to be able to distinguish between scarcity and abundance. But that’s not enough. 

There has to be this paradigm shift, this change in your mindset, and it’s going to be new and maybe even difficult. I know about this because for the longest time I thought I was already operating from a place of abundance. In some ways I was, but there were others where I was completely oblivious to the fact that I’d been coming from a scarcity mindset!

Why is this important? How does this really impact our lives? You might be thinking, “What does this matter anyway?” Well, we may not realize it, but our relationships with loved ones, our business endeavors and financial status, our spiritual life, and our physical and emotional well-being are all influenced by our mindset. 

I want you to walk with me through a couple of scenarios that might seem familiar to you, but we’re gonna dig deeper into them and look at them in a completely different way than you’ve gotten used to. 

Hold on tight! We’re gonna switch gears a lot, go through different parts of your daily life, and get some perspective you might never have considered or that might even offend you. But remember, this is all so I can help you really understand and hopefully get out of the traps and pitfalls of the scarcity mindset. 

If this works the way I’m hoping, then you're gonna have a paradigm shift from a mindset of scarcity to a mindset of abundance!

Are you ready?

Using coupons vs tipping

Let’s start off with something that’s pretty common but that actually might get into your skin. Let's talk about coupons. So when we have a coupon, it’s likely that you get a discount off of an item or you get a buy one get one free coupon. 

When we use a coupon, we're always like, "Oh wow! I gotta get a discount!" Now is that attitude operating from an abundance mindset or a scarcity mindset? 

But consider it from this point of view. If you're selling something, would you rather sell it at the full price or do you want somebody to use a coupon? I'm not talking about the marketing tactic of advertising a sweet deal to get someone into your store. I'm talking about ultimately the same customers buying that product: Would you rather they pay the full price of it or would you rather they get a discount?

This is one mindset that I've had for a long time: I don't like using coupons. Why? See, I like the business that I'm buying from and I'm supporting. I want them to succeed. If they have a product that I think is worth buying, I want to continue to have access to that. I want to pay them the full price so they can make profit, simply because I know it’s going to contribute to the high quality I’m really after. 

Often, that discount that we're getting on a coupon means that they're not making any profit. We're getting it at a cost. Is that coming from a scarcity mindset? It absolutely is. 

Let's contrast that with giving a tip. So you’re ordering a nice plate at a restaurant and it costs $12.95. If you say, "Oh, I'm gonna leave a $5 bill, I don't wanna pay too much." Look at the paradigm there. Are you operating from abundance or scarcity? Have you ever given a 50% tip? Have you ever given a 100% tip? How do you think it makes the waiter or waitress feel? 

If they’ve given you good service with a pleasant dining experience and you give them a tip that’s worthy of what they’ve given you, then you’re telling them, “Keep up the good work! I’m impressed by what I’ve experienced and I want to support the hard work and quality you provide.” You’re already starting to operate from a place of abundance! 

Two-plate limit

Let’s go to a fun place a lot of us love to go to: an all-you-can-eat buffet where you pay around $11.99 for everything you can pack away. 

Now this is gonna be a hard one. Can you imagine going to a buffet and only having one plate of food? Seems crazy, right? You gotta eat until you're stuffed, so you get your money’s worth. 

Think about this, though: when you go to a nice restaurant, you pay even more than 11 bucks and you get a much smaller portion on your plate. Yet you feel like you still got your money’s worth because you probably got to enjoy good food, have a nice chat with your family or friends, and sit back in a lovely place. 

I don't wanna make any judgments, but I just wanna give you a challenge. I challenge you to go to an all you can eat buffet and limit yourself to two plates. 

So you get your salad and then you go back once and see if you can stop. I mean, I understand if you stack up your plate really high, but the point is to stop thinking you’re gonna run out of resources. That you’ve gotta milk every penny for what it’s worth. 

Getting vs giving 

See, the bottom line is the way you look at things. With scarcity, you have a focus on getting. What am I getting out of this? Am I getting all I want or I feel like I deserve?

From a place of abundance, your main concern is giving. What and how much am I giving? 

The irony is that when you focus on getting and getting for yourself all the time, you don’t really get a whole lot. People tend to not wanna talk to you or be around you.  

But if you're really there to give and you come from a place of giving and contribution, people around you obviously benefit a lot because you're giving. And the thing is, you end up actually receiving quite a lot from them! This is actually so much more exciting and fulfilling because it builds your relationships with other people and opens you up to a lot more experiences.

So think about your work. Is it all about you? When you talk to your boss, do you talk about how much you wanna get or are you focusing on making your company better? Do you just want to give your best, innovate in different ways, and create new things?

What about in the products or services that you create? Do you spend time and energy thinking of how much you can charge for it? Here’s something you can focus on instead: think about the benefits it has for your clients, how it’s going to transform their lives and take them to the next level!

Your money’s worth

While we’re on the topic of products and services, let’s talk about something you might purchase. Let me ask you a question:  Does the value of a course change by the amount of money I charge for it? You might think “Well, the course stays the same no matter how much you charge for it." 

But here’s what I’m gonna propose, and again, you gotta stay with me here: the more you charge for a course, the more the course is worth. 

I’ll back that up by giving you some figures. Now I have a course for how to succeed on YouTube, so let’s say I sell it for $100. If somebody purchases that, there's a good chance it's gonna sit on their shelf. If they just paid $100 for a course, they're probably gonna think, "Man, this course must not be worth a lot if he's only charging a 100 bucks for it. I wouldn’t put too much thought and effort into it." 

Now what about if you bought this course and you paid $1000 for it? How likely are you to actually implement it? You're a lot more likely to implement it than if you paid 100, right? You value it a lot more because the information is a lot more. This means you’ll put in more effort into studying it. 

But are you going to follow every word to the letter? Are you gonna trust every piece of advice or are you gonna skim through it? My guess is, even for a thousand bucks, you're gonna skim through it. 

Let’s take it up a notch. What if I added a 0? What if you paid 10,000 bucks for this course? How committed would you actually be? Would you take action and comb through every last word multiple times to make sure you're doing it right? 

Here’s something really crazy. What if you bought my YouTube success course for $100,000? How seriously would you take it? What would you expect in return? 

You'd probably be like, "Hey I paid $100k for this, I'd better make a million or 500000 or 7 figures return on this." You'd be committed like never before! Nothing would waver your resolve and focus. It means you are really are fully, 100%, no-backing-out committed to making an awesome channel generating tons and tons of revenue! 

Okay, so when we talk about getting your money’s worth, this topic inevitably comes up. It’s kind of a trick scenario, but let's say my YouTube course costs around $10,000. Now you and I went out to lunch and we were having a conversation, where I learned that you're not doing so well financially. You admit to me that you can't afford the 10ki course. 

Now let’s say I said, “You seem like you really need help on this, so what about this? I'll give you the course for free.” That’s a $10k course all for free! You get it at no price at all!

The thing is, do you think you're gonna implement it? Do you think you’re gonna pour your heart and soul into it, or is it going to just collect dust somewhere in your house?

I know this because I've received things for free that are really quite valuable. For instance, I know someone who had a program where you had to pay thousands of dollars to get into it. I did, and when I purchased it this person gave away a thumb drive with all of his archive courses on it.

It was a really valuable thumb drive! It had all his wealth of wisdom there. Even if it might have been outdated and replaced by a new program, there were still a lot of great principles in there. I was so excited when I got it!  I thought, “Hey, this is great! There’s so much in here!”

But guess what? I never looked at it again after he gave it to me. Why? Because he gave it to me as a bonus. I didn't even pay the full price. I didn’t put in all my hard-earned money in it, so why would I put in any effort at all? See, that’s what happens when you don’t really work at and invest all you have into a product or an endeavor. 

Competition is the opposite of creation

So when you’ve really worked for something, you want to be at the top! The first thing most people think you should do is wipe out the competition. 

But for me, competition is the opposite of creation. That's a strange opposite there, right? You wouldn’t necessarily think of those two things being at odds. 

Let me explain. If I'm competing with another company, I want to win. I want them to not win. Competition is destruction. I wanna destroy the other team. 

When we compete at this level, we're operating from a place of scarcity. This is because we think that there are finite resources. We don't think that there's enough for both of us to win.

We think in black and white. We can’t both win. If I wanna win, they have to fail. 

It's about wanting a bigger piece of the pie because we think there’s only one pie. If I get a bigger piece, that means everyone else has to get a smaller piece. 

But when we have an abundance mindset, we realize, “Hey, why can’t I just make the pie bigger?”

If I want a bigger piece, then I'm gonna make a bigger pie so everyone can have a piece of the pie! We say the market is saturated, so we’ve gotta compete and take our share. 

Well, why not just create a new market? Or make that existing market bigger or better? 

Think about a rising tide. It raises all boats. That's where the abundance mindset lies: it's not about taking down your competition, it's really understanding your own unique value. It's recognizing your strengths and it's about going to work and create. It's about innovating.

It's all about creation! It has nothing to do with destruction. 

Here's a somewhat controversial topic when it comes to destroying competition. What about getting a patent on something you created? This really makes sure you get rid of competitors. Nobody can steal any ideas from you, so you’re protected. 

Listen, I’m not here to suggest that a patent is not a good idea. Let’s just mix up our perspective and think about it from a place of abundance. 

Now you can get a patent on something or you can put it out there as an open source. You know, One great example of this is Elon Musk and all the technology he's created in SpaceX, space travel, and electric motors for Tesla. 

He put it all out there as an open source because he wants the tide to rise. He wanted all auto manufacturers to advance electrical technology. You know what, it's worked!

I’ve been a fan of Tesla since every other manufacturer was making fun of them. If you’ve noticed, now they’re all trying to catch up to it. The problem is they're trying to compete, but Elon is never really about competition. He really comes from an abundance mindset, in my perspective, with all the confidence and security it comes with! 

Pitfalls of entitlement 

Let’s switch gears for a minute. Moving forward with more examples, I want you to keep what I’m going to talk about here in mind. This will really influence your mindset and how effectively you can change it. 

The major thing that people miss when it comes to being happy, content, and having an abundance mindset can be summed up in one word: Entitlement.

Entitlement is definitely the epitome of a scarcity mindset. It manifests itself in many ways we may not be aware of! 

We're entitled to a pay raise. We're entitled to that social security check. We've been paying our taxes and we're entitled to so many benefits. We're entitled to have roads paved for us. 

It's not taking ownership, it's not taking control. It's putting the control in somebody else's hands, which means they need to take care of you. You've done your part and they need to fulfill theirs. You're putting your control in somebody else's hands. 

For me, what I propose is that the entitlement or victim mindset is the opposite of grace. 

So let's define what grace is. When I do this, I often have to bring up the term "mercy", because in a religious context we learn about mercy and grace hand in hand. 

Mercy is when we don't get what we deserve. This means the bad consequences that we earned through mistakes or bad behavior aren’t given to us. We did something wrong, but because of mercy, we don't have to suffer the bad consequences. 

But grace is when we get what we don’t deserve. When we get abundant blessings we don't necessarily deserve them, but we get them anyway!

Now how does entitlement play into this? It happens when we believe that we deserve something. We are owed a particular position or status or reward. That's not grace. 

Grace is when we realize we are so abundantly blessed even when we don’t earn or deserve it. That's coming from a place of humility. 

In that place of grace, it's about taking responsibility. It means we say, "You know what? I'm responsible for all the decisions I've made in my life. I’ve also received a lot of blessings I'm so grateful for. I'm not worthy of them, so I'm just appreciative that I have them." 

I’ve got an example that’s pretty out there. Do you remember that popular movie back in the 90s called You’ve Got Mail? It’s a good chick flick movie, but it does have a very interesting dilemma right in the middle of it. 

The basic plot is that this nice lady owns a quaint small town bookstore with a nostalgic, dreamy, loving environment. Then the “bad guy” who’s rich comes to their town and builds a big, corporate giant bookstore with a lot of books. 

Now people start getting riled up by this bookstore. They say it’s gonna put the quaint one out of business by undercutting their prices and outselling them. It’s all about competition. 

What doesn’t really come up is this important question: What does the customer want? Maybe some customers want a small and warm environment with stories being read to kids or old books piling up the shelves. But some might want better prices. They might want a bigger variety. They might want newer books.

If someone comes in with a whole new store that has a different value proposition, then the customer really gets to choose! 

So you can be entitled to have just what you want. Or you can also come from a place of abundance and think this is a great opportunity because now there’s more for everyone. 

Let me give you another example that’s a bit more personal to me. We’ve all heard the wonder of “Made In The USA”. When you read the label on something or you receive a service and it’s made in the USA, that means that it's good. That means it's better in quality, we're patriotic, and we're supporting our own country. 

Now I hire a lot of employees from the Philippines. I currently have 16 Filipinos on my team and a bunch of them are really great video editors. I pay them just around 400-500 bucks a month for the awesome work they do. 

So let’s say there’s a skilled video editor in the USA who has a degree and all these credentials. They probably need to make around 5 grand a month to pay their bills and make a good living. So if they want to apply for my team and I say, “Well, that’s great, but I have a video editor from the Philippines who can deliver what I need for a lot less money.”

They probably would say, "Hey, you can't do that! That's not patriotic! That’s not fair!" What do you think? Is it unfair? Is that American video editor entitled to make $5000 a month with the same quality of work as the Filipino editor? 

Is his demand coming from a place of abundance or scarcity? 

Look at it from my perspective. Is it smart if I say, "You know what, you're right. I'm gonna pay you $5000 a month.” even though I can hire ten video editors from the Philippines for the cost of one here in the US? Is that a fair and practical decision?

Think of the consequences of that for my clients. I'll have to increase my pricing ten times just to support my decision to hire one single video editor. 

But when you come from a place of abundance, you find opportunities! Does it mean that American video editor is down on their luck now? Does it mean he’s out of opportunities? 

The reality is, he has the same opportunity as me! With his video editing skills and expertise, he could hire a team of editors in the Philippines and he could oversee it. He could use that same leverage that I'm using. He has access to the same resources I have, so he could find a really smart way to do exactly what I'm doing! 

Desperation vs confidence 

Your mindset affects your attitude. It influences the way you interact with people and how you carry yourself. So when you have that abundance mindset, you exude confidence! That makes such a huge difference in your success. 

The first scenario that comes to my mind is sales. Let’s say you're making a sales pitch to someone. If you’re desperate to make a sale, you’ll probably keep thinking about how you need the money and how hard it is to make a sale. That really rubs off on your customer! 

I’ve experienced this personally. When I'm on the receiving end of those pitches, I can tell right off the bat when someone is desperate. Oh man, it repels me. It repels me so badly. It’s coming from a place of scarcity because you think you’re gonna run out and you have to get more sales than your co-workers. 

But if you're coming from an abundance mindset, you’re thinking, “How will my product benefit my customer?” So you go forward with that. You have an attitude of confidence. People can tell you’re 100% secure about what you’re selling. 

All you have to say is, “What I have is great, and if it's a fit, this is what the price is. Think about it and go ahead and let me know!” That reassures your customers because they know you’re not just itching to make money off of them.  

This also applies when you’re speaking on stage or when you’re teaching and training people. If you have that attitude of desperation, all you focus on is wanting people to like you and listen to you. 

But when you have confidence in your material, you get really focused on giving and serving them. You know what you’re teaching is going to make a huge positive impact on them. That’s really all that matters! 

Riches vs wealth

When we try out all these business endeavors, sometimes we’re in it for the wrong thing. Sometimes we do it so we can get rich and gain more and more riches. 

There’s a difference between riches and wealth. Riches means you've got a lot of money, plain and simple. Wealth means you have the ability to make a lot of money and you create a lot of good with that money. 

You can get rich if you win the lottery. You can go to a slot machine and if you're lucky, you can win money. But are you wealthy? No, not really. 

Have you heard all those stories of people who win the lottery and ending up broke - sometimes even financially worse off than they were before - years later? 

Why does that happen? It’s because they weren't stewards of that money. They didn't have the stewardship of that money. 

See, gambling or playing to win is a scarcity mindset. We're just hoping we somehow get lucky despite the odds. Think about it. if you're playing a game of poker with friends, in order for you to win, your friends have to lose. 

Did you really win in the end? What does that do for your friendships and your emotional maturity?

Saving vs investing

Now I have another example that has to do with your money, but this time I want you to think about the money you already have. Being a good steward of your hard-earned money and putting it in the right place is definitely a sign of an abundance mindset. 

But where is the right place to put it? A lot of you probably think, “Oh, I know this. I’ve gotta save it because saving is in the abundance paradigm!”

The thing is, when all you do is save and save and save your money, it means you're worried about losing it. You're worried about it dwindling and running out, just because you think it's a limited resource. 

With an abundance mindset, though, you recognize the value of your resource. You can go, “I have the power and the resources to leverage this. I can do good with it."

This might ruffle some feathers, but the same things apply to your debt. Don’t be scared off! I’m gonna tell you something that might just sway your fears and worries about debt. 

My good friend Kris Krohn is a real estate genius. I helped produce his YouTube channel for 5 years and over time, we’ve discussed so much real estate investment and the question. One of the topics that came up is that of debt. Is debt good or bad? 

Well, there's two types of debt. There's consumer debt and there's investment debt. The difference is, is the debt taking money out of my pocket or is it taking money into my pocket? 

If you're in a scarcity mindset, you're worried about losing money. You're thinking about how that debt is costing you so much and you just gotta pay it off. But hold on - what if the debt was putting more money in your pocket?

Let’s make the math a little clearer and easier to understand, so you can have an idea of how this would be possible. Let’s say there's a house that's worth $150,000, and you can buy it for $110,000. That’s an awesome deal, right?

Now let’s say your house payment and your mortgage payment comes to about $800 a month. You might be thinking, “I gotta put that debt first. My goal is just to pay off that debt.” 

But imagine if you bought this house then rented it out. Say somebody else pays you $1300 to live there. The debt would be making you more and more wealthy. It's actually going to bring in residual income.

Let’s talk about risks. Real estate can be risky, right? But the solution there is just being resourceful about it. If we go back to our house example, we've mitigated the risk because we bought a home that's worth $150k with just $110k.. 

What if the market goes down? You might think, “Oh no my house is now worth $125,000.” Well, that's why we made sure to buy a really good deal. You didn't wanna pay 150k for 150k house. You mitigate your risk and your chances, and you play the smart way. When you think that all debt is bad, you're really just coming from that scarcity mindset. 

Saving and investing isn’t just limited to financial resources. It also extends to the products or services we offer. So let’s dive into that a bit. 

Let's talk about the value that you give what you have to offer. Do you want to save some of your wisdom for the products that you sell or do you wanna give it all away on YouTube? 

The scarcity mindset would say if I share all my secrets and knowledge, they're not gonna buy my course. Why would they wanna buy it? I just gave away my secrets. So instead, if I have ten secrets, I’m going to share five with them and save the rest for those who buy my product. 

But think about it from the perspective of your customer. That just sounds gimmicky! That sounds like you duped them in. It makes them feel like you don’t really care about helping them, you just want their money. 

Now what if you say you’ve got ten secrets and you’re gonna share all of them on YouTube! Your customer is going to admire you for that. They’ll think, "Oh that's amazing! This is amazing content!" 

The reality is, people would love you for doing that. People have come up to me and said they love me for doing that. They think it’s amazing that I don’t hold anything out. 

When they’re ready to really implement my course or my service and they want more guidance or help, they come to me straight away. They say, “Hey, Nate, you've provided such great value, I love what you teach. I wanna hire you.” 

You end up gaining more respect and you don’t lose customers at all. That's the wonder of the abundance mindset. 

Work towards being better, not having more

It all comes down to this: when we come from a scarcity mindset, we want to have and have and have and keep it all to ourselves. We think that having or achieving something will make us happy. 

But when we think about it, having something doesn’t add to who we are. It doesn’t add to being a good person. 

When we focus instead on who we are, being happy with the life we have, and expressing gratitude for the abundance we’ve been given, that’s the abundance mindset. 

We can still work towards goals and think about our future. The difference is, we get excited about where we’re heading rather than be miserable about not being there yet. 

The process we go through and the progress we make is where we get happiness from, not the achievement of that. It’s where we grow and become better people.  

So earlier we talked about entitlement. We often think we’re entitled to blessings because of everything we’ve done. Because we’ve gotten a degree, added all these letters next to our names, and put in the work, we think we deserve more and more. We think we’re better than everyone else. That's actually coming from a place of pride. 

But from an attitude of humility, we think everything is a great opportunity. Our work, our relationships, and even our obstacles are all places to learn from. 

We realize there's so much to learn from and grow in. We see where we can grow and contribute. When we have victories, they’re much more satisfying and affirming because we give credit to everyone else who had part in that! 

Get rid of scarcity attitudes

The scarcity mindset deeply affects how we think of other people, especially those around us who succeed or win. How do we feel when other people around us succeed or win? How do we feel when we see someone making a lot of money? Is there a negative emotion with that? 

Something as simple as seeing someone who has a big house or who’s flying first class can really bring up some of those ugly emotions in us. Do we think, “Hey, those people must be jerks.” 

I'm talking from experience. When I first rode first-class, I wondered what people who were passing me by were thinking of me. Why? Precisely because I used to think negatively about people who were sitting in my seat. 

I used to think I was walking by them and think, “Who could afford that? They’re just wasting their money?” I’ve also struggled with the scarcity mindset without even realizing it! 

Feeling envy or resentment towards people who have been blessed keeps you from thinking from an abundance perspective. It makes you judge people without getting to know them. It makes you think you’re entitled to what they have. It makes you want to bring them down.

I propose if you're feeling a negative emotion that something is coming from that scarcity mindset, explore it. Why do you feel that way? If I were coming from an abundance mindset, how would I feel? 

You’d probably feel happy for them! The abundance mindset says, “Hey, that guy is doing really well for himself. He inspires me. He makes me want to work harder and contribute more.”

At the end of the day, the scarcity mindset accounts for every dollar and cent. It looks for what’s missing, rather than what’s already there. 

Abundance is comfort in knowing that everything you have comes from God. It’s a blessing, it comes from grace. We’re given more than enough resources. So our responsibility is to take care of it. We get to create. We get to give value to the world. The more value we give, the better this world's gonna be.

We’ve covered a lot here, so I’m really curious to know what you think about this. Can you think of other ways where the scarcity mindset manifests without us realizing it? How do you think you can apply thinking from a place of abundance to your life? Let me know!