Scarcity Mindset vs Abundance Mindset: How to Widen Your View Without Toxic Positivity

At a workshop for parents and children I picked up a simple idea: a box of gratitude. At home we wrapped an old shoebox in pretty paper, cut a slot in the lid, and almost every night we wrote down at least three things we were grateful for. At first my son thanked for everything he could see around him: his Lego, the paintings on the wall, the window. Over time his thank-yous grew deeper. He thanked for breathing, for having each other, for not being cold, and once for having the gratitude box to thank with, which is still one of my favourites.

That, to me, is the journey from scarcity to abundance: the same room, the same life, a wider view. In my book Courage on the Journey of Happiness the gratitude box belongs to the challenge on parenting, and money to the challenge Do What You Love; here I bring them together.

What is a scarcity mindset?

A scarcity mindset is the persistent sense that there is not enough, of money, time, love, recognition or opportunity, so you hold on tight. Its opposite, the abundance mindset, is the sense that there is enough to go round, and someone else's gain isn't your loss.

The abundance mentality comes from Stephen Covey's 1989 bestseller The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, where it means believing there is plenty for everyone, while scarcity thinking sees life as a pie with only so many slices¹. The science of scarcity comes from economist Sendhil Mullainathan and psychologist Eldar Shafir, who asked what having too little, of money or of time, does to the mind².

Signs of a scarcity mindset

You might recognise yourself in a few of these:

• a friend's success stings a little, as if her win were your loss
• you can't rest, because there is never enough time and always one more thing to do
• you keep things, money and favours “just in case”, even when you have enough
• you say yes to every offer, afraid it will be the last one
• you live from week to week, and the big decisions keep waiting for a calmer month

Why do I have a scarcity mindset?

Usually for good reasons. If you grew up with little or have lived through hard years, your mind learned to watch what is missing. For many women I meet, the scarcity is time. When I described who my book was for, the very first reader I named was one who doesn't have enough time for herself, or believes she doesn't. Sometimes the lack is real; sometimes it is a belief we have stopped questioning.

So a scarcity mindset says something about your situation, not your character. But if you face real financial hardship, the answer is practical help, such as a free debt or money advice service, not a better mindset. And if worry about money or the future keeps you awake for weeks, please talk to a qualified professional.

Abundance starts with seeing what is already here

In the money part of my book I ask a playful question: why do you want money? To shower with it, eat it for lunch, take it for a walk? Of course not. We want what it stands for: security, comfort, experiences, sometimes the admiring looks of others. Keep asking why, at deeper and deeper levels, and you usually reach something simple: you want to be safe, and to be happy.

Scarcity keeps us chasing the next thing; abundance starts with what is here. Some parents have told me they don't know what to be grateful for. Yet they were breathing, probably ate every day and had clean water and electricity, which many people don't. As I wrote:

Gratitude brings us back to present moment and puts focus on what we have, rather than nurturing a consumerist approach that constantly focuses on what we don’t have.

Research on gratitude is encouraging but modest: in a meta-analysis led by Don Davis, gratitude exercises raised well-being a little, about as much as other positive activities³. Gratitude is not a cure for real lack, but a way of looking that lets the rest of your life back into view.

What happiness research says about scarcity

As an economist who has spent many years studying happiness, I find this research fascinating. In lab games run with Anuj Shah, people randomly given fewer turns or less time focused harder on the round in front of them, but borrowed from later rounds in ways that hurt their overall result⁴. The busy and the broke, the authors argue, share the same narrowing of attention.

Anandi Mani and colleagues asked shoppers in a New Jersey mall to think about paying for a car repair before reasoning tests. When the bill was large, lower-income participants did worse; when it was small, they did as well as anyone. Sugarcane farmers in India scored better after the harvest, when they had money, than before it⁵. The authors' reading: money worries use up mental resources, so the difficulty lies in the situation, not the person.

Now the honest part. Jelte Wicherts and Annemarie Zand Scholten reanalysed the mall experiments and found the results didn't hold once income wasn't split into two groups; money worries may affect everyone⁶. Leandro Carvalho, Stephan Meier and Stephanie Wang tested low-income Americans just before or after payday and found no difference in cognitive tests⁷. And when Michael O'Donnell and colleagues repeated 20 published scarcity studies, only four gave significant results again; reminders of scarcity in the lab barely affected thinking or well-being, though feeling poor may still shape financial decisions⁸.

So scarcity is real and can pull attention towards what is missing, but the dramatic version, that money worries make us measurably less clever, is contested. And the economist in me adds: Erzo Luttmer found that, at the same income, people whose neighbours earned more reported lower happiness⁹. Some of our never-enough is about whom we stand next to.

And the way out may be the widening itself. In two small experiments by Barbara Fredrickson and Christine Branigan, students shown amusing or calming film clips took in the bigger picture on an attention task and listed more things they would like to do; anger and anxiety shortened the list¹⁰.

How to get out of a scarcity mindset: seven gentle steps

You don't argue your way out of scarcity or paper over it with affirmations. You widen the view, one small habit at a time.

1. Notice the tunnel. Listen for the sentences “I can't afford it”, “there's no time”, “she took my chance”. Don't fight them yet; just notice when your attention narrows to what is missing.
2. Separate real lack from felt lack. Is this a bill you truly can't pay, or a sense of having less than the people around you? Real lack needs a practical plan and sometimes help; felt lack needs a wider view.
3. Don't decide from inside the tunnel. When money or time is tight, sleep on big choices, write the options down and let reminders carry what they can.
4. Ask what you really want. In my book I suggest asking “why?” at deeper and deeper levels. You rarely want money itself, but the security, experience or feeling it would buy, and there is often more than one road to it.
5. Celebrate someone else's success on purpose. Congratulate one person this week and mean it. Each time you do, you practise the belief that there is enough to go round.
6. Decide what is enough. Choose one area, money, work or your calendar, and write down what “enough” would look like. Without a finish line, scarcity keeps moving it.
7. Give a little of what you fear you lack. An hour of your time, some advice, a good word for a colleague. In my book I wrote about time banks, where anyone's hour of work is worth anyone else's. Small gifts remind you that you have something to give.

Scarcity vs abundance mindset: what is the real difference?

A scarcity mindset asks: what am I missing, and who might take it? An abundance mindset asks: what is here, what is possible, and what can I share? The first protects; the second builds. Most of us move between them many times a day.

Abundance isn't pretending money is no object or that every thought attracts its match (more in does manifesting work), nor forcing gratitude while life is hard (see is happiness a choice). Real abundance is quieter: the sense of enough. Scarcity has many faces, from worrying about money when the bills are paid, to perfectionism, to the need to control every outcome, and each softens when the view widens.

Moving from scarcity to abundance doesn't happen in one weekend, especially if never-enough has been your companion for years. In my programme Permission for Life we work on it slowly and together: what you really want, whose measure you have been living by, and how to build a life that feels like enough. It starts with one wider look at what is already yours.