3325: Where Abundance Comes From by David Cain of Raptitude on Generosity & Meditation

[00:00:00] [SPEAKER_00]: This is Optimal Living Daily Where Abundance Comes From by David Cain of

[00:00:05] [SPEAKER_00]: Raptitude.com. I'm your narrator Justin Malik. I read to you every day of the

[00:00:10] [SPEAKER_00]: year from the best articles and blogs I can find with permission from the

[00:00:14] [SPEAKER_00]: authors, of course. And it's all in an effort to make your and my days even a

[00:00:19] [SPEAKER_00]: tiny bit better. And with that let's get right to it as we optimize your life.

[00:00:28] [SPEAKER_00]: Where Abundance Comes From by David Cain of Raptitude.com. Everyone who was once a

[00:00:35] [SPEAKER_00]: school kid knows the two different phases of summer holidays. Waking up on

[00:00:40] [SPEAKER_00]: the first Monday of summer holidays is a feeling of unparalleled abundance. School

[00:00:46] [SPEAKER_00]: seems light years away, really feels like you have unlimited time. This feeling

[00:00:51] [SPEAKER_00]: continues until one morning in August when you look at the calendar and have

[00:00:55] [SPEAKER_00]: the opposite feeling because there are only 10 days left before school starts.

[00:01:00] [SPEAKER_00]: These two feelings, abundance and scarcity, are ever-present forces in our

[00:01:05] [SPEAKER_00]: lives. Often whole weeks or months or even years take the general tone of one

[00:01:12] [SPEAKER_00]: or the other. We also swing back and forth between them throughout each day.

[00:01:18] [SPEAKER_00]: You look at the clock expecting it to be six something and it's 748. A feeling of

[00:01:24] [SPEAKER_00]: scarcity descends immediately. You remember this coming Monday is a holiday,

[00:01:30] [SPEAKER_00]: well a whoosh of abundance. You arrive at the show and there's a huge lineup for

[00:01:34] [SPEAKER_00]: tickets. We catch a news report about a sluggish economy. Your girlfriend says

[00:01:39] [SPEAKER_00]: she doesn't want fries but will have some of yours. Scarcity. Your boss tells

[00:01:45] [SPEAKER_00]: you a deadline has been pushed back. Netflix adds a whole second season of

[00:01:51] [SPEAKER_00]: Happy Valley. You've done every bit of laundry in the house and it's all clean

[00:01:55] [SPEAKER_00]: and folded. Abundance. Abundance is the feeling of all I need right now and more.

[00:02:03] [SPEAKER_00]: It is the feeling that you can rely on your future, on your personal world to

[00:02:08] [SPEAKER_00]: provide for you. Scarcity is a sense that it's uncertain that what you need will be

[00:02:14] [SPEAKER_00]: available. It activates the parts of the brain that deal with competition, urgency

[00:02:20] [SPEAKER_00]: and despair. Put simply, abundance feels great and scarcity feels bad. If we could

[00:02:28] [SPEAKER_00]: live our whole lives feeling abundance, we would. You might even say that it's

[00:02:32] [SPEAKER_00]: the primary feeling we seek in life because it represents the things we want

[00:02:37] [SPEAKER_00]: most fundamentally. Security, gratification and freedom. What's

[00:02:43] [SPEAKER_00]: interesting is that our current feeling doesn't necessarily mirror our actual

[00:02:47] [SPEAKER_00]: situation. Rich people can feel scarcity about money while penniless monks can

[00:02:53] [SPEAKER_00]: feel like they have everything they need and more. It really seems to be the feeling

[00:02:58] [SPEAKER_00]: of abundance that's most important to us, not the material reality we normally

[00:03:03] [SPEAKER_00]: fixate on. If you think about it, we want an abundance of money and time because

[00:03:07] [SPEAKER_00]: of how we believe it would feel to have those resources. What good would they do

[00:03:12] [SPEAKER_00]: if we still felt the same? After all, having the next 10 days off school is an

[00:03:19] [SPEAKER_00]: objectively better state of affairs than having only the next 7 days off. Yet, as a

[00:03:25] [SPEAKER_00]: kid I'm sure you felt a much greater sense of abundance on the Friday before

[00:03:29] [SPEAKER_00]: a seven-day spring break than on the tenth last day of summer holidays. Our

[00:03:36] [SPEAKER_00]: feelings of abundance and scarcity seem to depend much more on our moment-to-

[00:03:40] [SPEAKER_00]: emotional reflexes than on an objective assessment of our actual situations.

[00:03:47] [SPEAKER_00]: Discovering less of something than we expected pretty reliably brings on

[00:03:51] [SPEAKER_00]: scarcity. Discovering more triggers abundance and that seems true regardless

[00:03:57] [SPEAKER_00]: of where we started. A typical middle-class American salary reportedly

[00:04:03] [SPEAKER_00]: puts a person in the top 1 or 2 percent of income worldwide. But that level of

[00:04:09] [SPEAKER_00]: wealth doesn't necessarily confer a feeling of material abundance of all I

[00:04:14] [SPEAKER_00]: need right now and more. Yet the prospect of a 25% raise from whatever salary

[00:04:19] [SPEAKER_00]: almost seems like it'd be enough to do that. The ice cream principle. A simple

[00:04:26] [SPEAKER_00]: example of how our perspectives dominate our actual reality is something I call

[00:04:30] [SPEAKER_00]: the ice cream principle. Imagine that out of the blue you tell your child you're

[00:04:37] [SPEAKER_00]: going to go for ice cream. Five minutes later tell them you've changed your mind

[00:04:41] [SPEAKER_00]: and you'll go some other time. The state of affairs is no different than it was

[00:04:46] [SPEAKER_00]: from the start yet everything has changed. The kid went from no ice cream

[00:04:51] [SPEAKER_00]: to no ice cream. Yet now somehow things are much worse. We get attached really

[00:04:58] [SPEAKER_00]: easily. As adults we're a little better than kids at adjusting our expectations

[00:05:02] [SPEAKER_00]: on the fly. Or at least we've given up on the idea that a tantrum will change the

[00:05:07] [SPEAKER_00]: situation. But our disappointment is real and it hurts. Over a lifetime we start

[00:05:14] [SPEAKER_00]: protecting ourselves from this kind of pain by lowering expectations across the

[00:05:19] [SPEAKER_00]: board. We steer away from the belief that maybe there is more love or wealth or

[00:05:25] [SPEAKER_00]: freedom ultimately available to us than we need. Out of self-defense many of us

[00:05:31] [SPEAKER_00]: easily settle into scarcity thinking, finding a paradoxical sort of comfort in

[00:05:37] [SPEAKER_00]: the idea that there's never going to be quite enough of anything. We apply this

[00:05:41] [SPEAKER_00]: basic idea to all the areas of our lives that matter. Doing what you love for a

[00:05:46] [SPEAKER_00]: living is a pipe dream. All the good men are married already. This world is going

[00:05:52] [SPEAKER_00]: straight to hell. The good jobs go to people with connections. We're always going to be

[00:05:58] [SPEAKER_00]: dealing with real limitations in life but we create a lot of suspiciously

[00:06:02] [SPEAKER_00]: absolute beliefs to prevent ourselves from actually bumping up against these

[00:06:07] [SPEAKER_00]: limitations. The fearful part of the mind knows you don't have to have the

[00:06:11] [SPEAKER_00]: experience of failure or disappointment as long as you believe trying is a waste

[00:06:17] [SPEAKER_00]: of time. Having spent much of my life totally caught up in this kind of

[00:06:21] [SPEAKER_00]: thinking I know of two things that consistently make a big difference. The

[00:06:28] [SPEAKER_00]: first is meditation which I mention here constantly. Among other things it trains

[00:06:34] [SPEAKER_00]: you to adjust to reality on the fly without overreacting. Without being so

[00:06:40] [SPEAKER_00]: prone to clinginess and neediness you can see possibilities you're normally

[00:06:44] [SPEAKER_00]: blind to. You become less paralyzed by the future and less hung up on the past.

[00:06:50] [SPEAKER_00]: You get more interested in what we can do rather than what we can't. The other

[00:06:55] [SPEAKER_00]: thing is generosity. We all know it feels good to give, it feels good to help, but

[00:07:01] [SPEAKER_00]: it does a lot more than generate short-term good feelings. Generosity

[00:07:06] [SPEAKER_00]: calls scarcity's bluff. Giving something you aren't required to give proves to

[00:07:12] [SPEAKER_00]: yourself that you do have enough and a little more even at least of this one

[00:07:17] [SPEAKER_00]: thing. It erodes any prevailing belief of there's just never enough is there? And

[00:07:23] [SPEAKER_00]: by generosity I don't mean charity. I'm talking about being generous in the

[00:07:28] [SPEAKER_00]: broader sense of offering value to others without being asked, building

[00:07:32] [SPEAKER_00]: something useful, offering your time and patience, or solving even a tiny problem

[00:07:38] [SPEAKER_00]: for someone including yourself. Generosity cuts through the powerlessness

[00:07:43] [SPEAKER_00]: and paralysis of scarcity thinking both the general and specific kinds. Just

[00:07:48] [SPEAKER_00]: listening generously to what someone else needs to say for example dispels

[00:07:53] [SPEAKER_00]: any thoughts you have that nobody has time for anyone else. Again there are

[00:07:59] [SPEAKER_00]: real limitations in life but our attitude towards what we have and don't

[00:08:03] [SPEAKER_00]: have has a much greater and more pervasive effect on how it actually

[00:08:07] [SPEAKER_00]: feels to live. How good our lives are really amounts to how it feels to be

[00:08:13] [SPEAKER_00]: living those lives. You could have all you need and more and never know it. You

[00:08:23] [SPEAKER_00]: just listen to the post titled Where Abundance Comes From by David Cain of

[00:08:28] [SPEAKER_00]: raptitude.com and I'll be right back with my commentary. Thank you to David. I

[00:08:33] [SPEAKER_00]: feel like the example of summer vacation versus the end of it was spot-on. It feels

[00:08:39] [SPEAKER_00]: like yesterday having those exact feelings. And the ice cream example is so

[00:08:44] [SPEAKER_00]: simple but perfectly shows how we can easily get so riled up and upset about

[00:08:49] [SPEAKER_00]: something that we didn't even know we wanted five minutes ago. That's why I

[00:08:53] [SPEAKER_00]: couldn't help but laugh during that little explanation. The whole thing is

[00:08:57] [SPEAKER_00]: pretty mind-blowing but I'm sure it happens much more often than we think.

[00:09:02] [SPEAKER_00]: Now I do practice meditation regularly right now about 40 minutes a day's worth

[00:09:07] [SPEAKER_00]: and can agree that it helps with situations like these. But meditation is

[00:09:12] [SPEAKER_00]: like exercise in that it really needs to be done frequently over and over. It

[00:09:16] [SPEAKER_00]: needs to be enjoyable otherwise we'll give up or might even be worse off than

[00:09:21] [SPEAKER_00]: when we started. And then as for generosity, that's probably something I

[00:09:25] [SPEAKER_00]: can try to do more. But in either case maybe today we can try to shift our

[00:09:30] [SPEAKER_00]: perspective just a little bit. Instead of focusing on what we lack maybe we can

[00:09:35] [SPEAKER_00]: notice the abundance around us and find a small way to be generous. Which as he

[00:09:41] [SPEAKER_00]: said could be as simple as just listening to a friend or helping them

[00:09:45] [SPEAKER_00]: out with something small. I'm sure even that small thing can make a big

[00:09:50] [SPEAKER_00]: difference. So thank you to David for this one. Thank you for being here. You

[00:09:55] [SPEAKER_00]: coming back to listen every day keeps all of this going and thank you if you've

[00:09:58] [SPEAKER_00]: ever shared this show with someone else it really means a lot. Have a great rest

[00:10:03] [SPEAKER_00]: of your day and I'll see you tomorrow where your optimal life awaits.