Your ability to manifest abundance in your life could boil down to the 3” between your ears. Do you have The Abundance Mindset? If not, here are some “secret” ways to leverage it.
Did Your House Have The Abundance Mindset?
I was in Washington DC at a conference recently and my good friend Antonio Neves was the emcee. We hooked up for dinner one night and had one of the most intriguing (and wandering) conversations. Some of it boiled down to how we were raised and whether or not we grew up in a household that had an abundance mindset or a lack mindset.
Antonio’s was mostly lack and he described the struggle that his family faced growing up as well as some of the limiting beliefs that he thought held him back throughout his career. (And for all intents and purposes, this guy is extremely successful, so he’s clearly changed his mindset.) Still, he offered with his signature smile, there is always room for more abundance.
My upbringing was one part lack and two parts abundance.
My Dad has always been a very spiritual person. He’s a believer in the Universe delivering on requests, that we all have the ability to manifest our desires, and while growing up he encouraged books like The Way of The Wizard by Deepak Chopra. (He claimed I was a powerful wizard and needed to harness my gifts…) Books like the ones authored by Chopra (and a list of others available at the end of this post), had a profound impact on my mindset throughout my 20s and 30s.
So, while my Dad was encouraging me to channel my inner wizard, I was also acutely aware of the fact that there was some financial tension in the house. As it turned out, my parents used their credit cards a fair amount during my high school years (no doubt to keep us in fine threads and go out to eat once in awhile). The interest charges on those cards added up and I assume that there were months that the payments sent in barely covered the fees, let alone tackle the principal.
My Mom’s family life was one of financial struggle. Her Dad, my grandfather, was a salesman, politician, and chronic job hopper in the early days of their family life. As a result, the level of financial stress that she felt has stayed with her most of her life. I think (for a majority of people) that when financial concerns are present at a young age, they leave an indelible mark on your subconscious that tends to rear it’s ugly head throughout your life.
How The Abundance Mindset Showed Itself To Me
My Dad had this philosophy that “everything always works out”. He didn’t seem to stress about how things like braces or car repairs or anything else would be paid for, he just knew it would. I appreciated him saying things like “we always find a way” or “I just need to put my energy into manifesting more”. It stuck with me that there was always money swirling around us, we just needed to tap into the source of that energy and it would show itself.
The Abundance Mindset, for me, was about accepting that there are opportunities all around us. All the time, every day, every hour, there are opportunities that we are either open to or not open to.
Those that are open to, see, and appreciate the opportunities around them generally benefit from them.
Those that see only lack, poverty, and challenges around them generally suffer from what they see.
My Dad famously said to me once, and it’s proven to be true, that “I would never want for opportunities, my struggle would come from deciding which ones to pursue.”
The Books That Showed Me The Abundance Mindset
There are a few books that helped steer me in the right direction in terms of changing how I thought, what I thought about, and how it made me feel, and in turn, attract abundance.
The first is a book that my Dad referred me to about 5 years ago titled “A Happy Pocket Full of Money” by David Cameron Gikandi. Though the title suggests it’s all about money, in actuality, the book is about Quantum Physics and how our minds are constantly engaged in attracting what we most want (or what we don’t want). Gikandi talks about living in joy, practicing gratitude, and living abundantly.
The second is by one of my favorite transformational authors alive today, Jack Canfield. If you’ve listened to the Build a Bigger Life Podcast, you’ll know that I’ve been highly influenced by Jack and the program that I went through in 2014 that taught concepts from The Success Principles, Jack’s NYT best-selling manuscript on success.
As I read The Success Principles for the first time, I was struck by the simplicity of what he was suggesting. In the very first principle, Jack states that we must take 100% responsibility for our lives. That, in of itself, was eye-opening for me in the sense that while cannot always control what happens to us, we have ultimate control over how we react to that thing. I changed my mindset after studying with Jack that things don’t happen TO me, they happen FOR me. And if I choose to see the lessons and the beauty in both hurt and success, all I’ll ever see is beauty.
He suggests in the book becoming an “inverse paranoid”. While paranoid people believe that everything and everyone is conspiring against them, an inverse paranoid believes that everything and everyone is conspiring on their behalf. Imagine the power of getting cut off in traffic and appreciating the person who does it because they’re probably changing the course of your day for the better. Or getting a bill that you didn’t expect and getting excited about the prospect of coming into more money just to take care of the bill. The anticipation of great things is the outcome of both positive and negative experiences. And, as you’ll learn, the anticipation of great things will generally bring about great things.
The third book I’ll mention in this post (with more available on The Abundance Mindset reading list below) is Think And Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. I fully realize this book is listed on nearly every success oriented reading list out there, but for me it took 6 separate reads before I fully grasped what I was to take away from the book. I’ll sum up my take away here:
You must have DEFINITENESS OF PURPOSE in order to achieve your goals.
Meaning: if you’re not absolutely definite about what it is you want to accomplish, you won’t accomplish it. Being definite creates a resolute belief that whatever it is you’re looking to manifest or create.
I heard someone recently say that most people have no idea what they really want in life and kill themselves trying to get it.
How To Instill The Abundance Mindset In Yourself
There are a number of ways to develop and instill The Abundance Mindset in your life no matter your upbringing, your current financial situation, or your current surroundings.
Here are a few suggestions:
Affirmations. Jack calls this “Releasing The Brakes” and writes about it in chapter 10 of The Success Principles. Affirmations are daily sayings that you can post on your mirror, say out loud to yourself, or read a couple of times a day. The affirmations you might say to yourself could include:
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- Money comes easily and frequently
- I’m grateful for everything in my life right now, both good and bad
- Every day in every way I’m becoming more abundant
- Abundance is mine to attract, share, and multiply
- The world is conspiring on my behalf
- Something amazing is about to happen to me today
These affirmations are even more powerful when recorded and listened to on a daily basis. A downloadable app makes listening to your affirmations a snap. Just find ThinkUp in the app store, download, and record your affirmations to be read to you while you drive, get ready for bed, or workout.
Asking Powerful Questions. Famed success guru Tony Robbins is famous for saying the quality of our lives is dependent on the quality of the questions we ask ourselves on a daily basis. Where most Lack Mindset people are asking themselves questions like: Why me? Why am I so unlucky? Can’t I ever get a break? What if I fail? How come this always happens? Those that live with The Abundance Mindset will ask themselves more powerful questions like:
- What can I learn from this?
- How would I make sure this never happens again?
- What does success look like in this situation?
- What is the positive I can find in the situation?
- If I were successful at this, what would I be doing?
Just remember that the quality of your questions will determine the quality of your answers. When you ask a negatively charged question (like why does this always happen to me?) your brain will default to answering that question (because you make terrible choices, because you were born to parents who were mean to you, because you’re a Capricorn and that makes you unlucky, etc.). Powerfully positive questions will generate Abundance Mindset answers.
See The Abundance Around You. It’s said that there is nearly $7Trillion flowing around the globe on a daily basis. It only requires a very small net in that ocean of abundance to catch enough to live a wonderful life. Think about the fact that Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, is worth upwards of $120B. One man is worth one hundred and twenty BILLION dollars. He figured out that if he could create enough value for enough people, the abundance would flow his way. The reality is it doesn’t take much more than a little effort to make six figures a year. And if you realized that your ability to make $8,000 a month is so simple, you’d do it in no time.
Begin to see the massive abundance around you, and you will be opened up to the source of it.
The more you see, you appreciate, and you applaud the success of others, the faster it will beat a path to your door.
Your reading list for The Abundance Mindset
In 2015 I read the list of books downloadable below. Each of them contributed to the growth of my Abundance Mindset in untold ways. I encourage you to download the list, and order 3 books that you’ll read in the next 3-6 months. Your mindset will begin to change midway through the first book and by the end of the third, I would venture to guess that things in your life will begin to shift in BIG ways.
I look forward to hearing about your Abundance Mindset adventure.
To a BIG LIFE!
Adam
