The Challenges of the Abundance Mindset

I’ve had a couple brainsplosions during my fall break.  My life partner and I found an acceptable camping facility for both of us (it’s not his favorite thing to do, so it’s a team effort to find one).  Except it wasn’t just “agreeable,” as a Victorian elite might say.  It was transcendent, as a bisexual 18th century poet might say.

Lost River Hostel is a retreat that combines art, nature, and community to help people ground themselves and rediscover their purpose.  And it doesn’t shirk any of those pillars.  We slept in tree-nests and showered in the middle of the woods.  We danced around a fire.  We played music and painted.  There was as much staff as there were campers.  Each night I had soul-bearing conversations about art, spirituality, mental health, relationships, and purpose.  I shared my poetry and blog.  I got a few numbers.

I came back with my head in the clouds, ready to write twice as much, give hugs to strangers in the grocery store, the whole 8-fold path.  All I know is, I’ve needed this, and I’m going there again.  But it probably won’t feel as brick-face heroin as it did this first time.  It will have different staff, and I’ll have different connections, and I won’t be surprised at how wonderful it will be.  I’ll be expecting it, which will probably diminish it.

And then I realized something.  When I feel a new magic that hits a long-desired need, the excitement and adventure and mystery and lust fill my whole mind and body.  It’s what I did with two specific exes who had the longest lifespan in my head after the relationship ended.  I feel the rush, I pursue it with passion, romanticism, and anxious-attachment, and I usually get diminishing returns.

My therapist has talked to me about the difference between abundance mindset and scarcity mindset.  As most new ideas, it gathers lots of moisture in the air before it rains.  But I’m starting to understand how much my anxious-attachment is connected to a scarcity mindset.

One of the hardest things to believe about the abundance mindset is that it’s an accurate way of looking at the world.  It feels a bit like believing in God, if that is true for you (I remember the feeling when it was true for me), in that it requires faith outside of how you feel.  The world feels dark, lonely, and scarce most of the time.  How am I supposed to believe that it isn’t?  That it’s just the way I’m looking at it, regardless of how many angles I bend into for a different perspective?

For one thing, the isolation of our society challenges everyone to make meaningful connections.  Work may be social, but it certainly isn’t socially-meaningful, since it is bound by the necessities of goods, services, and general commerce.  Home and family give us purpose, safety, and intimacy, but it’s the same people everyday.  We need those relationships for our health, but it certainly doesn’t foster a feeling of social or emotional abundance.  I love my home, but sometimes I feel like a prisoner in it.  And I don’t even have kids.

Secondly, it takes work to build a network of friends in your thirties.  We have responsibilities and fatigue.  Our energy is so precious now.  Our weekends and weeknights are precious.  Everything is precious.  How do we foster a feeling of abundance when we’re running on empty?  How do we foster a feeling of abundance when, in order to spend an entire set of living hours with an adult outside our homes, both parties need to…

-fit each other’s schedule

-live close enough to be worth the drive

-make the other feel both safe and stimulated

-share at least some values

-be fun without really trying

-ideally enjoy at least one other type of activity besides passively watching TV

The amount of frontloading it takes to get a friendship off the ground in your thirties can only be fruitful if both people want it.  If just one of the above characteristics has a wrench thrown at it by any of life’s multitudes of variables, a friendship can be halted.  Many people ask me how I’m able to handle multiple romantic relationships, but honestly the harder thing for me to achieve is semi-consistent social time.

With the difficulty of building a social network, it’s so much easier for our minds to settle into simpler, one-dimensional explanations for our lack of dopamine.  I’m unlovable.  I’m boring.  People are boring.  I’m better than others.  Anarchy/Nihilism.  Drugs it is.

It’s easier to believe those things, than to do the hard thing, which is the following:

-Self-soothe until next time, when I text these people farther in advance to get on their calendars.

-Self-soothe until next time, when I use a different app for social connections that is more geared toward what I’m looking for.

-Self-soothe until next time, when I try a different person on the app.

-Self-soothe until next time, when I make a two-hour round trip to see an out-of-town friend.

-Self-soothe by texting an old friend I love, but not by mindlessly scrolling through something that will make me feel depleted.

Enduring the lows can feel like spiritual push-ups.  And that’s where I find Buddhist writings to be inspirational–that serenity in the dark is possible through flexibility, adjusted expectations, and protecting the core.

But I’ll be damned if it isn’t hard to believe that the world is abundant, whether it’s true or not.

Dear World,

I love you. Thank you for birthing me. Thank you for spending time with me. Thank you for giving me gifts that I can explore and play with and connect to the past, present, and future with. Thank you for being the hands that will take me when me time is done.