[Music] i'm dr orion taraban and this is psych hacks better living through psychology and the topic of today's short talk is overcoming scarcity mentality so i have a secret to confess when i was in my teens and early twenties i would occasionally receive a gift from a friend or a family member something small like a cupcake or a bunch of cookies and even though i was delighted by the present even though the present looked rather delicious i would often refrain from eating the present because on some level if i ate it it would be gone
and then i would have nothing but if i didn't need it i would still have the present i understand that this was irrational but it's what i did i'd sometimes keep those cookies for months even though doing so would cause them to go stale because it would keep me connected to the gift and the intention that i presume to be behind it of course in the holding on to the gift i lost the gift because the cookies got stale but for a time i managed to convince myself that i still had it and i think
this is how the scarcity mentality works i'm going to cling to this and not use it or enjoy it or experience it i'm going to cling to this because clinging is preferable to the nothingness that i expect would take its place where i too use it or enjoy it or experience it i had no real confidence that if i were to eat the cookies they would be replaced by a fresh batch on a reasonable timeline for me that's the crux of the scarcity mentality if i were to eat the cookie it wouldn't be replaced now
the fact of the matter is that we need to eat cookies in order to create space for more cookies to come into our lives if my friend were to find out that i hadn't yet eaten the cookie she had already given me why would she bake me more it would be wasteful and i think both people and the universe tend to operate according to this rational principle of parsimony the reality is that we're going to lose the cookie anyway whether we lose it through staleness or whether we lose it through consumption is irrelevant the cookie
is doomed so if we're going to lose the cookie anyway why not enjoy it and why not cultivate more trust in one of the more rational dimensions of reality namely that nature abhors a vacuum in enjoying the cookie we create the space for more cookies to come into our lives now in the beginning this attitude requires some measure of faith that the void will be filled but the more you do it the more you will come to trust in this underlying fabric of reality it's in the nature of things that you will be provided for
you will be provided love and friendship and money and growth and health and redemption these things won't always be provided to you on a silver platter and that's good because it gives us something to do with our time but the universe is abundant in its possibilities there are opportunities for all of these things but we first need to create the space for them to come into our lives by increasingly letting go of what we cling to in our fear and the best way to do that is to consume through active participation the goodness that comes
into your life thus opening up more space for even more goodness to arrive in time i hope that makes sense if you're listening on apple podcasts google podcasts or spotify please like rate and review this episode and if you're watching on youtube please drop a comment below finally if you'd like to schedule a consultation you can reach me at psychxpodcast gmail.com thanks for listening
