Abundance vs Scarcity | Ep #48

I’m Andrea Giles, and you’re listening to the Heal from Infidelity podcast,
episode number 48, Abundance Versus Scarcity.

Hello and welcome to the Heal from Infidelity podcast, where courageous
women learn not only to heal from their spouses’ betrayal, but to become
the boldest, truest, most decisive, and confident versions of themselves
ever. If you know there’s more for you than the life you’re currently
living but don’t quite know how to get there, you are in the right place.
Stick around to learn how to create a life that will knock your own socks
off. Is it possible? It is, and I’m here to show you how. I’m your host,
Andrea Giles. Are you ready? Let’s dive in.

Hello, everybody. Welcome back to the show, episode 48. So today we are
going to talk about abundance and scarcity. Now, these are kind of buzz
terms that are popular right now. So you’ve probably heard them, but I want
to talk about them my way and see if I can’t shed some light on these
topics, and show you why they actually do matter. That they’re more than
just the popular saying of the day, right? I want to share with you what
they have to do with you, what they have to do with infidelity, what they
have to do with moving forward, and looking at your options, and all of
that today.

Okay. So to start out, there are a few areas where we see abundance versus
scarcity talked about quite a bit. Time, money, relationships, health. So
first, I want to talk about scarcity versus those things, and I want you to
listen and see if you can relate to any of these things that we talk about.
Okay.

First, let’s talk about time. Time, there’s not enough time. There’s always
too much to do. So with each of these things that I’m talking about, time,
money, relationships, and health, I want to challenge you to do something.
Okay. I want you to look at the story that was told to you, that you
learned as a child. And how I want you to do this is this way.

I want you to think about if you had a book about the topic of time in your
life, what would the title of your book be? Would it be, “There’s never
enough,” or “There’s always too much to do and not enough time?” How was it
modeled for you? What was modeled frantic, more like pushing really hard
and then collapsing, quitting, steady diligence, overwhelm? What was
modeled? What did you watch? What has your experience been around time?
What is the name of your book?

This is an area that I’ve been working on, time. And next week, I’m out of
town, and for my husband and my anniversary. And so, I’m getting a lot done
ahead of time, like recording an extra episode and just lots of different
things that need to be done, so I can go take time off.

Now, something that my brain loves to do is running through all the things
that I have to do and telling the story that there’s not enough time, how
can I possibly get it all done? And so, something that I’ve learned about
myself is that I often overestimate how long each thing might take.

I make it seem like this mountain of a thing to do when really, it might
only take like an hour, but that’s coming from my story of always so much
to do not enough time, and that’s an area that I’m working on. And really
challenging, how long does it actually take? And I’m going to come back to
this later on.

Next, money. What’s your money story? What was the story model to you? If
you could, again, write the title of a book about your money story, what
would it be? This last week, I coached someone who told me that she doesn’t
know how to make money. Those are her words. “I don’t know how to make
money.”

Yet, here’s the funny thing. In the very same conversation and really kind
of the same paragraph that she was saying she doesn’t know how to make
money, she told me that she could go out anytime and get a good job, that
she would get hired. Isn’t that funny? So I called her out and I said,
“Well, you just got done, told me you don’t know how to make money, yet you
could also go get a job and make good money.”

And so, what it really came down to for her is that she has a new business
and she doesn’t believe that she knows how to make money in her business.
And then she went to this whole general statement, “If I don’t know how to
make money.” So interesting, right? She just couldn’t see it.

We often lock ourselves into situations we don’t want to be in because of
money, thinking we can’t do it on our own. And this often comes from how we
were raised. So back to that book title of the money story you were taught,
what was it? Here’s some ideas. Money doesn’t grow on trees, there’s never
enough. I have to take what I am offered. I should be grateful for what I
am offered. I don’t need much money. More money makes you greedy, money is
hard to come by. Easy come, easy go. Hard to get, easy to spend. What’s
yours? Do any of those ring a bell?

My story growing up was that there was never enough. So how are you using
the money story to inform the choices available to you now? Are you pulling
pages from that book, that old book, to decide what is available to you
now? This happens to be an area I have done a lot of work around. I used to
believe I wasn’t capable of earning a lot of money. I believed that I was
not smart enough, educated enough, et cetera.

And over time, I’ve practiced new thoughts. And now I believe that I can
make as much money as I want, if I’m willing to put in the effort. I really
do believe that. I believe I’m good at creating money. I believe I’m
capable of building a multiple six-figure business and I’m well on my way.

But if I stuck to that childhood story, I would’ve quit before I got
started, “Can’t do it. There’s not enough money. No one will pay. I can’t
make money. I’m not good at money.” Okay. What’s your story?

Now, with so many of my clients, they have this story of what they’re
capable of around money, and then they use it against themselves. So for
example, let’s say that somebody knows that they need to leave their
marriage. They know that it’s a dead end. They know that it’s not going to
work, yet they keep that money story as a way to hold them prisoner to not
leaving. “I have to stay because of money. I have to stay because I’m not
able to make as much as him.” Is that you? Are you staying for money? Are
you staying because you don’t believe you’re capable of making money? I
just want you to check in with yourself with that. Okay.

Next, relationships. What is your story? What was modeled? For me, I
witnessed two people with some tough histories, falling very much in love
with each other. And to this day, they’re very much in love. They’re the
best of friends. They got married when I was almost seven. This is my
parents.

My mom had already lost a husband to a plane crash. She had already been
through a divorce, and then she met my dad. My dad had already been through
divorce. They both were pretty hurt, yet they fell very much in love with
each other, and that was modeled for me, of really deeply loving each other
and being best friends. And so guess what? I believe that too, for myself.
I believe that I too, could find love again, that there are people out
there that I could have a happy relationship with because I saw it.

Now, here’s an example where my brain went to scarcity, okay. I remember
when I was pregnant with my second child thinking, “I don’t know how it’s
possible to love this child as much as I love my first child.” And yet the
moment she was born, I fell in love all over again, and my heart just grew.
That is what abundance does. Abundance grows. Scarcity shrinks. Scarcity
says there’s not enough. Abundance says there’s more than an enough. Okay.

Now, for me, where scarcity came up for me was when I got married again to
my husband now, and I talked about this before, but I married a widower. He
was happily married for 15 years to a wonderful person, a wonderful woman.
And for about the first year of our marriage, I really struggled because I
thought, “How can he possibly love me as much as he loved her? How can I be
as amazing as her? How can I possibly be as good of a mother to her
children as she was? How can I be what they need me to be?”

And I went way into scarcity and felt small a lot of the time, and it took
me some time. About a year into our marriage, I found coaching, thank
goodness, right? And I learned to retrain my brain to let her be amazing
and also let myself be amazing. To let her be loving and wonderful, and
beautiful, and kind, and let myself be wonderful and loving, and beautiful,
and kind.

And also allowing in my mind that my husband could love me very deeply
because of who I am, not because I’m the second wife or anything like that.
Removing any of the labels and saying, “I’m lovable, period.” And guess
what? I know that he deeply, deeply loves me. I know that he does.

Now, what about the ability to love kids you did not give birth to? What
about trusting that your own children can be loved by somebody who is not
their parent? I remember having this thought, that no one in their right
mind would want to take on six children. And my kids were not little. My
oldest was 14 when I got divorced, 15 when he passed away.

And then I had on down to five year olds. I had teenagers, right? And I
struggled with that. I wondered who will love them and who will love them
enough to be truly a good father to them? But I believed that someone would
be able to. I believed enough to put myself out there and date. And I found
my husband, who’s very good at loving people, who’s very good at loving
children that are not his. He’s very, very good at it, and I’m so grateful
that I didn’t let my scarcity thoughts that, “Surely, nobody can dictate if
I dated or not,” because my kids would’ve missed out on him and he loves
them.

So how is your relationship story informing the choices you are making now?
If you are married and you want to stay married, is there a cap you’re
putting on how happy you can be? Like, “Well, I do believe that we can get
to a place of peace, but that’s as far as it goes. We can get to where we
can tolerate each other, but I think that’s about all I can hope for here.”

How about if you’re divorced, what’s your story? Do you avoid dating
because you’re afraid that people are liars and they can’t be trusted, or
do you believe that there are some good ones? Do you believe you are
lovable, or that no one will want you because you’re just too broken or too
fragile? What’s your story? How is your relationship and story informing
the decisions that you’re making? Is it coming from scarcity or from
abundance?

Next, let’s talk about health. Okay. This has been a big one for me. When I
was a senior in high school, I got mono and I got it really bad. I was
really sick. I was so sick that I missed my last two weeks of high school,
and I lost like 15 pounds really quickly. I was very sick.

And even before that, I was born six weeks premature, and my mom had lost
her husband when I was two days old, and her milk dried up, so she couldn’t
nurse me. And then I was allergic to regular formula. So I had to have soy
formula. And I had lots of health issues. Growing up, I had throat problems
a lot, where I’d have tonsillitis and strep throat, and things like that.

And then I got mono, knocked me out. I relapsed again in my freshman year
in high school. I had a story that I could never really be well or really
be energetic, that I’m just a tired person, that I’m just tired. And now,
here I am, 43 years old, almost 44, and I’m really pushing up against that
narrative.

I don’t want to believe that narrative anymore. My body right now is
growing a child. How amazing is that? How amazing that I got pregnant
spontaneously, at almost 44, that my body knows what to do? That challenges
a little bit my narrative, doesn’t it? Of not being healthy, not being
strong enough, whatever. Apparently my body’s doing okay, and as I grow
this baby, there are some fears around my age.

The rates go up of issues, right? Of problems in pregnancy, problems with
the baby. And the narrative that I am choosing to believe is that my body
knows exactly what to do. My body knows how to heal decades along patterns.
I mentioned, I think a couple weeks ago about how… Yeah, it was in the
episode about pain and how I am changing a lot of things. What I put into
my body, I’m trusting that I can always learn and grow, and that my body
wants to be healthy. My body wants to heal. My body knows what to do. I can
trust my body.

Even with decade long patterns, my body wants to heal. And I love believing
that my body wants to heal quickly. Isn’t that cool to think about? That
when we give our body what it needs, it’s like, “Thank you. I know exactly
what to do with this.” I just think that’s so amazing.

What is your health story? What cap do you put on yourself and your
abilities? Where do you say no to things that you really want to say yes
to, because you’re afraid of something having to do with your body? What’s
your story? What did you see growing up with your parents? What did you
learn? What’s the name of that story?

Okay. So those are some very common areas where scarcity can be really
loud. Okay. Money, time, relationships, health, right? I want to talk to
you right now about your most important asset, and how growing this asset
will help you with all of those other things. Your most important asset my
friends is your brain, your brain. Your brain is what will determine
actually, the kind of life that you live, not how much money you have, not
your health, not your relationships, not your time. Your brain will
determine that. Your brain is an asset. It is a resource with value.

Now, how do we grow our asset, our brain, and how does growing that asset
trickle down to all those other things? Well, you grow that asset through
knowledge, learning how to manage your mind, thought work creation of new
ideas, generating the emotions that will become the fuel to do the things
that will create the results that you want. Those are all done with your
brain.

So for example, with this asset of your brain, you can think about it this
way. Okay. I can’t change how much time there is in the day. Time is a
limited resource. There’s only so much of it, but I can create more value
within the time I have with my brain. I can make the most of the time I
have. I can be intentional with how I spend it, so it seems as if there’s
more of it. I can use my brain, that prefrontal cortex, that wise knowing
part of my brain, to determine the things that are wasting my brain space,
and learn how to do things faster.

Have you ever heard of how people on their death bed often wish they would
have been more wise with their time? A lot of people feel that way, but how
is it done? By using your brain. We can’t make more time, right? Have you
ever had the thought, “Oh, if I just had a few more hours.” I have, but
what if our brains can create a few more hours? By learning with our brain
to cut the nonsense, to cut the things that rob us of our time, and by
learning to be more efficient with time.

An example for me is this podcast. So when I first started this podcast, I
would block out a pretty significant amount of time to decide on the topic,
to get it outlined, to get it recorded, all the things that need to happen.
And now 48 episodes in, I have used my brain to teach myself to be more
efficient. I now can go and write an outline fairly quickly. The ideas come
readily. I have a document where I write down ideas. When you, my listener
send me things that you want me to cover, I put them in that. And then I
get to work and I decide on a topic, and I write out an outline, and then I
come record it. I’ve gotten so much faster at it. It’s not because I’ve
added more time to my days. It’s because I have trained my brain to be more
efficient. I’ve used that asset, my brain to use my time better.

Now, how about around money? Now, you can use your brain to find ways to
spend less money or to stretch the dollar. When I was a young mom, that was
fun for me. I remember scanning the ads every week for who had what on
sale, and then make my menu based off of that, and then decide how much I’m
going to spend from that.

But I personally think that it’s way more fun to believe that there’s an
endless amount of money in the world, and that I can generate money. I can
always create more money, and it’s fun. If you knew that you could use your
greatest asset, your brain to create money and really trust it, what would
you do?

Once, I heard a colleague of mine, Jody Moore, some of you may have heard
of her, she’s amazing. I heard her talk about coupon clipping, and it
really stuck with me. She said, “Yeah, I could use my time and I could use
my brain power, and go cut coupons and decide where I’m going to go to get
those deals. Or I can use that same amount of brain juice to decide how I’m
going to create more money.”

Which one would I rather spend time on? I know for me, I’d rather spend my
brain power coming up with ideas and plans, and things that I can do to
bring more value into the world. And guess what? The more value you bring
to the world, it often turns into money. How fun is that?

I’m at a spot in my business where I am investing my money into people who
can give me more time to invest back in my brain. For example, I’m working
with somebody who is going to help me clean up some of my social media
stuff. I just haven’t spent a lot of time on it, and I would rather pay
somebody to help me with that. Well, it’ll be all my own content, all of
that, but she’s basically just making it pretty and getting stuff out
there.

I would rather pay somebody to do that, than to take the time to learn it,
to put it all in there. I’d rather give that time to myself, to invest in
my brain, to read, to study, to learn, to create new concepts. To me, that
is more valuable than learning how to use Instagram better. I’d rather use
my money to create more value in my greatest asset, which in turn makes me
more money, right?

What about relationships? I create value in my brain first. So many of us
determine our value by what people tell us. And if people are telling us
how great we are, then we can be puffed up for a little bit thinking, “Oh
yeah, I am important. I’m valuable,” but what happens when they’re not? We
can use that amazing asset of our brain to create and support the narrative
of what we want to believe about ourselves most.

Now, if I believe that I am unique and lovable, I will feel love. If I’m
feeling love, I will show up around people from that space and create more
of the same. Okay. Can you see how that abundance piece? It’s like it
creates more. If I feel unique and lovable, I will create more of it in the
world. If I feel small and not quite lovable, this is how I will show up
and create less love for myself, right? Shrinking.

So use that asset of your brain to focus on building up your value. Tell
yourself the stories of what you want to believe about yourself, to grow
your own self concept. What do you want people to think about you, and how
can you believe those things first about yourself before you give that job
out to somebody else? What do you want to believe about your current
relationship? What do you want to believe about yourself? What do you want
to believe about your ability to give and receive love?

If you know that you are capable of a very loving and trusting
relationship, would you stay where you are? If you believe, “I guess this
is the best I can have.” If you believe that you could have whatever kind
of relationship you want, where would your actions follow? What would you
do? What would you create?

So I’m going to give you some quick examples of what the difference between
scarcity and abundant sound like in sentence form. Okay. And I’m choosing
these sentences from current or past clients in their experience. Okay.
Instead of, “He took everything for me, and this is the best I can hope
for.” And abundance says, “I can go create whatever I want, despite the
challenges that I have had.”

Instead of, “Because of the infidelity, our relationship will always be a
little broken,” abundant says, “The infidelity was what opened up the
relationship to much more love, truth, and intimacy, making it way better
than it was before.” Instead of believing, “No one can ever love my kids as
much as I do,” what if you believe that love is an unlimited resource that
can’t be maxed out?

Instead of believing that you don’t have time to do the things that will
help you move forward, like investing in your brain, what if you trusted
that you investing in your brain is what will actually create more time?
Instead of, “I wonder if this will work for me,” abundance says, “I will
get out of it exactly what I need at this point in my life.”

I often in consults, talk to people and hear their stories, and hear the
things that they’ve tried in therapy or in books, or things like that. And
they are really afraid that in working with me, “What if this doesn’t
work?” But what if it does? There’s so much fear around self investment
that’s like, “Oh my gosh. If I invest this time, invest this money and it
doesn’t work, then what?”

What if that’s the wrong question? What if truly diving in and investing in
your brain saying, “This is going to work. I’m going all in,” What if doing
that actually will solve for all of it? Time, money, relationships. I watch
that. I see it with my clients all the time. They learn how to manage their
minds. They go out and rock their own worlds. It’s so awesome to watch.

I truly believe that I am my own best investment. I really believe that,
that the more I invest in me, whether it be time, money, whatever it is,
that I can then grow in all those other areas of my life. The more I invest
in me, the more value I add to myself. The more value I add to myself, the
stronger I show up in relationships, the more money I make, the better I am
at managing my time, the better I am at managing my health, right?

How can you invest more in you? From a place of abundance, knowing that you
investing in you is going to trickle down to all those other areas. I want
you to watch for the sentences in your brain that are from scarcity. Watch
them, pay attention to them. A really good way to know if it’s coming from
scarcity or abundance is how you feel. Okay.

Abundance feels open, curious, resourceful. Lack or scarcity feels small,
closed, or stuck. Our feelings are major, major clues. I want you to play
around with sentences that create just a slightly different emotion, and go
from there. Okay. I think I’ve shared this before, but I want to share it
one more time. This is just a fun little story about my mom.

So my mom was single. This was after her second marriage and divorce, and
she went out into the dating world and would go to these single adults
events, and met a lot of people that she was not interested it in. And it
was the kind of the people that if it was a dance, would ask her to dance
over and over. And she’s like, “Oh my gosh, please let me get out of here.”

And she would go home really discouraged and like, “Oh my gosh, is this the
best I can hope for ever?” And then she decided to turn it into a little
game, and she would dance with these people and decided that she was not
going to quit dancing or say, “No, thank you,” until she could find at
least one thing to appreciate about that person. So instead of sitting
there in her mind and being like, “Oh, my gosh. Is this the best I can hope
for? Please get me out of here,” She was actually using her mind to look
for abundance. She was looking for good things in these people, and it
changed everything for her.

First of all, she could decline dancing from a very loving place, say in
her mind, “I appreciate you. I appreciate this thing about you, and it’s a
no.” And then it opened her up to, “This is kind of fun.” And when she was
in that place, she met my dad and they’ve been married for 37 years, I
believe.

You can use your own amazing asset of your brain to shift what you’re
looking for, to shift what you’re seeing, to create a different emotion,
even just a slightly different emotion, going from judgment to curiosity
for example. You can use this to view everything differently. I encourage
you to practice first with yourself.

What are you saying your limitations are? What are you capable of? What do
you believe? Are you willing to just shift it a little bit? Notice where
you feel like you’re shrinking and feel small. How can you shift it to feel
more open? You can use this around your spouse. You can use this with your
children, your ex spouse, possible opportunities, really anything my
friends.

It really is a mindset. Scarcity mindset, abundance mindset. It really is.
As the saying goes, “The glass is half full, or the glass is half empty,”
right? What lens do you have on? How can you be open to slightly different,
to see what is possible, to see what is available to you?

I think that life is kind of magical. I have witnessed it so many times,
where I have practiced being open, practiced seeing, practiced feeling, and
then totally blown myself away with what I create like, “Oh my gosh.” It’s
like magic. It really is. It’s like magic. Go practice this magic my
friends.

From a religious standpoint, I believe that God is complete abundance.
There’s not any scarcity at all around God. It’s all abundance, and if we
believe that we’re created in His image, we’re meant to be abundant as
well. So go create, go open up, open up to possibility. A good sentence to
ask is, “If it were possible, what would it look like? If it were possible
to stay in this marriage and be really happy, what might it look like? If
it were possible for me to go out on my own, how could I be happy there?
What could I do? What do I not know?”

And go there, around all of those issues, time, money, relationships,
health, and many more. Go grow your brain my friends, and all of those
things will all into place, and you’ll have much more than you ever
imagined. Whatever you imagine, you can have.

Hey, that’s what I have for you today. I hope that you all have learned
something from this and I’m going to be practicing it too, right along with
you. Thank you so much, and I will see you next time. Bye-bye.

Thank you for listening to The Heal from Infidelity podcast. If you would
like to be kept in the know about upcoming free classes, new podcast
episodes, and other ways of working with me, go subscribe to my weekly
email. You can subscribe @andreagiles.com/lies-about-infidelity/. Again,
it’s andreagiles.com/lies-about-infidelity/. I will see you next time.