Jess and I have a running joke about my inability to share my food with other people.

It was a big deal when I shared french fries with Logan for the first time.

Jess jokingly commented “Daddy really loves you!”

I was on a date once with a girl I had a brief and very eventful engagement with and she asked me if she could have a bite of my steak.

I said “No”

She thought I was joking….

She reached over with a naive smile to grab a piece from my plate.

I stabbed her in the hand with my fork.

It didn’t work out with her……..

This was a characteristic that carried with me for a long time.

It’s now been identified as a “scarcity mindset”

Oddly enough the one place I was successful in life is where that characteristic didn’t manifest itself.

The opposite of that is probably the only thing that enabled me to be a moderately successful athlete.

I was really good at just worrying about me.  I now know this leads to an “abundance mindset”

I don’t know why but I didn’t get too caught up in what other guys were doing.  I found out when I stepped on the court what they were or weren’t doing.

And then it was back to workin on me.  I think what allowed that was the frequency of “competition” or comparison.

It filled the need to “find out” if I was good or not.

That characteristic didn’t really transfer easily to my adult years and definitely not to business when we opened our gym almost 10 years ago.

I was back to worrying about my last french fry.

I’ve discussed how bad I was at businessbefore, but sometimes it takes a little bit of reflection to understand why.

       I was terrible at business for years because I was worried about everyone else and what I didn’t have. 

      I was worried that other people were better at programming, meanwhile I wasn’t writing any programming.

     I was worried that other people’s business had better cashflow, meanwhile I wasn’t balancing the books each month.

    I was worried that other people were being recognized as experts, meanwhile I hadn’t produced a single piece of content to put out to the world.

   I was worried that other people had nicer gyms and better coaches, meanwhile I wasn’t doing a single thing to improve what I had.

I had a scarcity mindset.

     I was worried that there was only limited amount of opportunity in the world, in my gym and in the area.

     I was worried there weren’t any more fries.

I don’t know when I let those thoughts go, it probably happened gradually, but it gets more exciting the farther that mindset gets in the rearview mirror.

What is usually stopping us from chipping away at our goal is ourselves.

We worry about worst case scenario, or the bad things that might happen.

Meanwhile we are stuck in the abyss of inaction.

I’ve come to realize that is probably the worst place anyone could be.  The place where we are doing nothing, just complaining and worrying.

There is more opportunity, more time in the day, more unclaimed spoils and more abundance than any of us could ever fathom.

There’s enough for all of us, and nobody is stopping us from taking action on the things we can control.

The only person that has ever stepped in and tried to stop me from taking advantage of an opportunity or executing an idea was ME.

So here’s three things that have helped me ditch scarcity and move towards abundance:

1) Worry about yourself and what you can control, this puts you in a very small minority of people walking around out there

2) Stop focusing on limitations and focus on opportunities

3) If someone doesn’t take you seriously about your food, stab them and end that relationship because it isn’t going to work out!

Fern

(full disclosure, I really like french fries and still only share with my daughter 🙂