213: Choosing Abundance Over Scarcity

This is The Intentional Advantage podcast with your host, Tanya Dalton,
entrepreneur, bestselling author, nationally recognized productivity expert and mom
of two. In this season, Tanya is continuing to open up more conscious conversations
to help you awaken to who you are and become the best version of yourself.
Welcome to season 17: Awakening. Are you ready? Here’s your host, Tanya Dalton.
Hello, hello, everyone. Welcome to The Intentional Advantage podcast. I’m your host,
Tanya Dalton. This is Episode 213. We are in the middle of our amazing season on
awakening, and you’ve probably noticed over the course of this season, over the last
several episodes, we’ve been talking about how we can awaken and step into
ourselves as leaders and as change-makers.
And I think it’s pretty obvious by now that in life and in business, our mindset
determines which road we travel on and how we get to that ultimate destination of
success, the success that we’re looking for. So today I want us to go on a little bit of a
road trip because when it comes to up-leveling and it comes to growing and
envisioning where it is we want to be and where we want our companies to grow…
As we lead into the future, there is one extremely crucial thing we need to keep in
mind. And of course, it has absolutely everything to do with our mindset. So having
said that let’s go on our road trip. So you have a choice on this road trip. There are
two different roads in your mind that you can travel through. The first road you can
choose is scarcity.
So it’s probably a little bit dreary, a little gray, very sparse, very scarce. Maybe there
are some dead trees. It’s kind of like going along a desert where there are long
stretches of road for miles and miles, and maybe it’s super hot. And the AC is out in
your car; no relief in sight; feels a little bit hopeless; maybe even a little scary
depending on the time of day.
But that’s what scarcity looks like. It doesn’t look like there’s very much happiness,
very much hope ahead of us, but here’s the good news. There’s a second road.
There’s a different road you can choose. And this one is filled with abundance. The
weather is beautiful. The sun is shining. It’s like the perfect temperature. Your AC in
your car works; works great, but doesn’t matter because you don’t need it.

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All the windows are down. Your arm is hanging out the window. Your hair is blowing.
The road is paved with anything you could possibly want or need. There are beautiful
trees blooming and lining the sides of the roads. There are lots of colors. Everything
is in excess and what’s even better is you’re heading in the direction of your ultimate
destination, wherever that is for this road trip of yours. All right?
Which do you think you want to take? I want you to envision both of those roads,
what they might look like if they were real and stretched all the way across the
world. And then let me ask you this. When it comes to your business and it comes to
the lucrative life that you’re looking to have, which road do you want to take? Which
one is more appealing?
I don’t need to give you a long pause here, I don’t think, because I’m pretty sure I
know which one sounds better. But the truth is, we’ve all had some experience
driving on both of those roads. And regardless of what we’re doing or what business
we’re in or the industry we work in, those imaginary roads aren’t really imaginary at
all.
The road to scarcity is essentially how it looks and feels when we’re being guided by
that scarcity mindset. Now, the scarcity mindset is a concept that was really first
introduced by Stephen Covey in his book, the Seven Habits of Highly Effective
People, way back in the 1980s. And so that’s one side of the coin; one road I want us
to explore today.
Now much unlike that desolate road of scarcity, when we’re rooted with a scarcity
mindset, we tend to look at the world around us as largely negative in how it works.
There’s not a lot of resources. There’s not a lot of money. There’s not a lot of hope and
joy.
In other words, the way we tend to look at things in life is limited. Like, there’s only so
much pie to go around and if we’ve been given a slice, we keep it to ourselves. We
don’t want to share it because we don’t know when we’re going to get our next slice.
Remember the pandemic when the toilet paper was suddenly out everywhere; it
was like the must-have item. People that normally didn’t think twice about toilet
paper were freaked out, scared;
They were flocking straight to their local store, snatched up every available toilet
paper. That is a perfect example of how the scarcity mindset works. Even people who
went to Costco and got the jumbo packs were loading like three, four of those
jumbo packs into their cart because they were so scared we were going to run out of
toilet paper. That’s scarcity.

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When we start believing there’s only so much of something to go around, we get
really anxious. We get really stressed and our body starts to tighten up. We zero in on
that thing and we do whatever it takes to squirrel as much of it away as possible for
fear that it’ll never ever be available again. I mean, even those people with those
Costco jumbo packs were still going and getting more because they were so worried
about it.
So let’s go to the other side of the coin. Let’s look at that other road, the abundance
mindset. It describes what the world looks and feels like to those that choose to view
things from a largely positive perspective; where there’s not only enough pieces of
pie for everyone, there’s extra because the pies just keep on coming regardless of
who’s standing in line, regardless of who’s sitting at the kitchen table. There is more
than enough to go around.
So looking at that example of what happened with toilet paper at the start of the
pandemic, we can see how an abundance mindset works. While we have those
people who ran to the store and grabbed as much as they possibly could blindly with
every intention of hoarding as much of it as possible–
There were the other people who went to the store as if it was any other day and
they took what they needed at that moment. In fact, when we went to our store,
there were five things of toilet paper left at the beginning of the pandemic, five
things left. We went, we got one, you know why?
Cause four other people need toilet paper as well. We don’t need to take it because
we know eventually, it’s going to refill. We know there’s going to be enough people
with an abundance mindset that don’t overload their carts with a bunch of stuff.
They’re not assuming it’s going to run out and will never be available. Again, they
take a couple of rolls of toilet paper for themselves and figure [it] out.
Well, if we run out, we’ll figure out another way to make it work. There’s going to be
more than enough toilet paper for everyone to go around and, thank goodness,
there was enough toilet paper to go around, but this is how abundance works. No
matter how much or how little of something we have right now in this moment, it’s
about making a conscious choice to look at it as being more than enough to get you
through.
All the toilet paper and pandemic panic shopping aside though, here’s why we need
to consider whether we’re viewing the world with a scarcity mindset or an
abundance mindset right now in this season of life that we find ourselves in. When it
comes to growing a business and scaling, and I mean truly scaling your business,
your potential for all the growth and success you want, it lies at the end of whatever
road you intentionally choose to travel along.

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Any limitations on your business, your finances, and your life are ultimately set by
you. You choose what that looks like. You choose which road you go on. You choose
it by your mindset. And if you want to be a successful leader, you want to make an
impact in the world and grow a lucrative business and a lucrative life, then here’s the
deal.
You have got to double-check your thinking. You have to release the limiting beliefs
you’ve been hiding behind to try to convince you that there’s only so much of what
you want out of life, that there is a finite amount available, and you have to choose to
make a choice to walk the road of an abundance mindset. You have to have the
abundance mindset to get to that next level because when it comes to success, the
pieces of the pie just keep on coming.
There is no shortage of pie, no matter what stories you may have told yourself in the
past, no matter what limiting beliefs you’ve given into. We touched on this idea
when we talked about the money mindset; because far too often, we think about
money as this finite resource that only a few people ever achieve an abundance of.
But when you really think about it and I mean, really think about it, Is that actually
the case? Okay, maybe you don’t have giant barrels of money just sitting around
your house; I get it. So it doesn’t feel like abundance, but the question is, Have you
ever been in a case where you really, honestly, haven’t been able to get what it was
you needed?
Yes; maybe you look in your bank account and you don’t have the amount that you
need for your mortgage, but somehow it works out that the mortgage gets paid, or
somehow it works out that you end up moving or you get taken care of. There’s an
abundance in other forms. And I think so often, especially when it comes to things
like measuring our success, we get so caught up in the dollar amounts.
We get caught up in the numbers in the account when the abundance is around us
in a thousand different forms; it’s there in the joy that you’re experiencing. It’s there
in your happiness. It’s there in your deep relationships. Abundance is more than the
dollar amount that you make. And honestly, money is not truly limited.
There’s not a finite amount of paper. Money keeps being printed, coins keep being
minted. As the leader of your business, it is entirely within your abilities to reach out
and grab it; to see the opportunities, but you simply need to choose to take action.
Remember the manifesting that we talked about a few episodes back? We talked
about the idea that thinking is good, but action is key.
You have to choose to move forward on those necessary risks that we talked about
in last week’s episode. You have to choose to move forward. So how do we do this?
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How can we as business owners and leaders choose to view and walk through life
confidently with an abundance mindset, rather than walking down that path of
scarcity?
I want to dig into that, but before we do, I want to take a quick look at some of the
key differences between what we mean when we say scarcity versus abundance.
Because I think it’s really important to understand that even though money does
play a big part in this conversation today, as the saying goes, money isn’t everything.
Whether we choose scarcity or we choose abundance, we have consequences that
are the results of those choices.
So let’s talk about it. Let’s talk about the differences, cause it really comes down to
thinking big versus thinking small. And you’ve heard me talk frequently. You’ve
heard a lot about the importance of being a visionary when it comes to leading your
team and when it comes to growing your business and trust me, this has everything
to do with whether you choose to focus on scarcity or abundance in your life.
When we shroud ourselves in a mindset that is steeped in scarcity, you know what
happens? We don’t do our businesses, we don’t do our lives, we don’t do ourselves
any favors. Choosing scarcity instead of abundance is choosing to continually think
about ourselves as small, as finite, as only being able to grow a certain amount, our
businesses, our impact, our ability to influence and help other people.
And yes, choosing scarcity is a choice. I know you might be thinking to yourself, Well,
who would choose that road? Well, if you’re thinking of yourself as small, if you’re
calling yourself a small business, if you’re thinking ‘I only do these things, or I’m
limited in the amount I can do,’ that is a choice that you are making.
And if you’re choosing that scarcity mindset and you’re seeing yourself as small, then
your mindset is likely butting heads against that tiny little voice inside your head
that’s saying, ‘Hey, let’s move forward. Let’s make this happen.’
Because what happens is that scarcity mindset says, stay in your own lane. Don’t get
out of your comfort zone. And that comfort zone is extremely limited. And then
those dreams and those goals you have, don’t come to fruition because we’re too
damn scared to move forward. Thinking that anything that we’ve gained possibly
along the way, that it’s going to disappear. There’s a finite amount. We got a piece of
pie; we gotta hold onto it. I can’t let it go because what if it runs out?
So not thinking big is a way of having that scarcity mindset choose to see yourself
bigger, choose to see how big you can be. That’s all abundance. And going back and
nodding to that whole pandemic toilet paper example we talked about, another key

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difference between scarcity and abundance mindset is that idea of plenty versus
lack.
People with a scarcity mindset want to assume that all things that are important to
their business growth are lacking. Well, this person did this. I see somebody on social
media and they’ve achieved this great success. That means it’s too late for me. I can’t
do it, right? Oh, these people got lucky. I’m unlucky.
When we view the world as lacking, as only having this very limited amount, we’re
stifling our own potential for growth, because then we’re not challenging ourselves
to dig deeper, to push harder, to keep moving forward because we think, Why
bother? there’s only so many pieces of pie to go around.
So it really comes down to this idea of stepping out of our comfort zone, embracing
change, versus having a fear of it. When we have a scarcity mindset, we’ll run into
inherent fear; we will be afraid to change and evolve and grow, which is so important
to our businesses.
It’s so important to our personal lives as well. And you’ll hear this when people say
things like, Oh, I could never do X, Y, Z, because I’ve never done it before. And Oh my
God, what happens if I fail? What if I fall flat on my face? And they don’t truly want to
go deep and try to do anything because they’re too consumed with the negative,
What ifs?
What if this happens? What if that happens? And they’re fixating on it because there
is this scarcity mindset, the fear of change, this thing, this elephant in the room that
so many people struggle and run into when they consider stepping out of the box
and out of their comfort zone.
It disappears as soon as you choose to see abundance. I know this from my own
personal experience. But as soon as you see there are more options; there is an
abundance of choices and options out there; there is an abundance of directions you
can go in, that fear goes away because you know, If this road doesn’t work out, guess
what? There’s another road. There’s another way to go. There’s something else I can
do.
And it’s not until we actively choose abundance that we begin to shift and start
looking at change as something to be embraced, something we can use as a
springboard for our growth. And that is where success and that’s where up-leveling
in business–that’s where it happens.
So I want to ask you one more time when it comes to stepping into yourself
authentically, truly as yourself and the leader of your business, which road is it that
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you want to choose abundance or scarcity? I don’t think it’s a difficult decision. It’s
just thinking about which road have you chosen in the past and which road do you
want to choose moving forward.
It doesn’t matter if you have chosen scarcity in the past. It doesn’t matter if you’ve
looked at life as being scarce and not having enough; what matters is which road
you choose to go down now. So I want you to think about that because I want you to
consciously make a decision about which mindset you want to have. So let’s talk
about that and let’s take a quick mid-episode break, and then I want to dive into this
idea and I want to give you some momentum builders because I want you to actively
see how you are choosing your own mindset.
So let’s take a quick mid-episode break. I’ve got something happening that I know
you guys are going to be excited to hear about. So let’s talk about that. Then we’ll
come back into the show and just a minute.
Today’s episode is brought to you by The Intentional CEO Mentorship program, my
revolutionary 12-month coaching program, where I help female entrepreneurs scale
their businesses so they can unplug from their businesses and truly enjoy their lives.
If this episode is really resonating with you and you believe that an abundance
mindset is going to make a difference for your business, then I want you to take
action. Mindset is a huge part of how you run your business. There needs to be
action behind it, right? So head to Tanyadalton.com/coaching to get on my list for
info about the next opening of the intentional CEO mentorship program; it’s coming
up really soon.
And in fact, I also am going to doing a free challenge. So you’ll get information on
that as well; that’s coming very soon. But I would love to see you be a part of this
mentorship program. I coach female entrepreneurs about mindset. And that’s the
difference between getting from five figures to six figures, six figures to seven. And
I’m figuring out myself going from seven to eight because that’s what I’m working
on.
It’s all about having that mindset about community over competition, knowing that
there are enough pieces of pie to go around, and designing your business so it truly
works for you and the abundance you want in your own life. So head to
Tanyadalton.com/coaching, you’re going to get all the details there first on how we
can work together, you and I. And I’ll give you some information about that free
challenge that’s coming up pretty soon.

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So let’s dive back into this idea of scarcity and abundance in our businesses, because
I want us as leaders, as business owners to consciously choose to focus on
abundance.
Many of you right now are thinking, I didn’t realize I had chosen scarcity. That’s okay.
This is the thing. This is why we stop. And we pause and we become intentional
because sometimes we don’t realize what we’ve been choosing and much like the
mindset work that we’ve been exploring over the last several months here on the
show. I promise it doesn’t have to be complicated.
It doesn’t have to be difficult. It’s making some tweaks, some small, huge
movements, easy to implement, simple to manage, but revolutionary in how they’ll
change your lives. That’s what happens. We work on our mindset. We dig into our
thoughts. We figure out how our brain is thinking, and then we can switch it to the
direction we want it to be in with relative ease.
But the key here is awareness; awareness, and action, right? Those two things go
hand in hand. So the question is, is how have you been viewing things in your
business in the past and how are you viewing them right now? Money, which we
explored last week on the episode; money’s a great place to start. So for example, are
you constantly worried about making changes to your business?
Because you are afraid that if you try this new thing, you’re going to dry up any
streams of revenue that you have. Let me tell you something, in order to make
money, you gotta be willing to spend it. That’s an old, old saying, but it’s an old
saying because it’s true. You have to be willing to invest in not only your business but
yourself as the leader of your business as well.
And the thing is, you’re going to make mistakes. Mistakes are going to happen.
They’re not something to shy away from; they’re opportunities to learn from, to
expand, and to perform better in the future. Quite frankly, if you’ve been in business
and all you’ve had is success, then you’re not reaching far enough.
You are not reaching far enough because you should be experiencing failure from
time to time because it means you’re putting your neck out there. I know this from
personal experience and know this kind of personal experience is never fun, but
once you go through it, it’s so much easier to see these stumbling blocks heading in
our direction because we’ve experienced them before and then it becomes easier.
And we have that abundance mindset of I’ve been through this before. I know there
are different routes. I can go around it. I like to say that when someone tells me, no, I
look at that as a wall and I have a couple of choices. I have an abundance of choices.
If you will, I can choose to go around it.

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I can go left or I can go, right. I can go over it. I can dig and go underneath it or I can
burn it to the ground. It doesn’t matter what I choose, but I know that no is not the
final answer. There’s an abundance of choices around me. I like all business leaders
have an abundance of failures. In my past.
I have a $45,000 mistake that I talked about with Inc. magazine. I’m very upfront in
talking about the mistakes I’ve made because I want you to learn from my mistakes.
But I also want you to see that on the path to whatever it is we define or determine
to be our success, there’s going to be some potholes. There are going to be some
things that don’t go right.
And quite frankly, that forty-five thousand dollar mistake that I made, was the one
thing that I will credit for my initial success with my business. That was the thing
that pushed me to seven figures in less than 18 months, was first falling on my face
with a $45,000 mistake, a mistake I couldn’t pay for in cash because I didn’t have it;
that I had to put on my credit card because I didn’t have two pennies to rub.
But that mistake put a fire in me. It allowed me to see, Okay, I’ve got to find another
way to make this work. And that’s what I did. So it comes down once again to this
idea of awareness and then taking action. Yes, I failed. Yes, I made a mistake. But yes,
there are options out of this too.
It really is about having that attitude of I can do it. And You can, you just have to peel
back the layers of your thoughts. You have to think about the behaviors you’ve taken
as a business owner and shift it. Your past performance doesn’t indicate whether you
are going to be a success or a failure. What determines it is how you operate in
moving forward.
Because there is an abundance of choices. Remember when it comes to adopting a
mindset that’s either steeped in scarcity or overflowing in abundance, it’s choosing
to focus on this false idea that there’s only so much of whatever it is you’re wanting
in life or choosing to see that there is an amazing array of possibilities. And there are
so many opportunities just waiting for you to reach out and grab and trust me when
I say it because I’m going to say it again and again and again.
The choice is always entirely yours. So choose wisely, choose intentionally. So let’s do
that through some momentum builders. Let’s, let’s start really rethinking how we are
using our mindset. If we’re using it for scarcity or abundance, momentum builder,
number one, I want you to do some brainstorming.
You know what? Let’s soften this a little bit. It’s not even brainstorming, it’s
daydreaming. I want you to daydream and consider just one, one way, you can

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expand your business this year. What’s a big goal or an amazing milestone that you
have in mind deep down, that you would be incredibly thrilled to achieve this year?
So if we’re choosing abundance over scarcity, it’s time to allow ourselves to really
dream big, to expand and take off. And that starts with how we see ourselves
operating from a visionary level. Put on your visionary hat this week. And I want you
to dream big; really think, What is something I would love to see in my business this
year? And I want you to hit reply to the email you get from me. And tell me about
what this vision looks like for you.
I want you to do that. All it takes is five, ten minutes of daydreaming; five, ten
minutes of really just closing your eyes and thinking, What if this is possible? That’s
an amazing question to ask yourself. All right, momentum builder number two: I
want you to consider what has held you back from that daydream that you just set
for yourself.
What has held you back from that? And I want you to think, Is that my scarcity
mindset at play? Remember, when we adopt a scarcity mindset, a lot of times we
don’t even realize it, but we are opening ourselves up to limiting beliefs about who
we are as leaders, what we’re capable of as business owners and it suffocates us. It
stunts our potential for growth. So I want you to consider this thing that you think
has held you back.
I don’t have enough money. I don’t have enough experience. I don’t have the
education. I don’t have an audience. I don’t have a big enough platform, whatever it
is. I want you to crumple that up and throw it away because there is an abundance
out there. You just have to choose to go grab it.
And we start by flipping that idea on its head brainstorm, or let’s go back to that
dreaming again. Let’s daydream of ways that we can rise above and move beyond
that old tired story that you’re telling yourself. And you can share that in your reply
with me as well, or you can share it in my group because I’m in there all the time as
well.
But I would love to hear from you. This is a thing that we need to do as business
owners and as leaders, we have to stop fixating on the things that we perceive are
going wrong in our business. We have to actively work to find and seek solutions to
our problems. Instead, when we show up for ourselves, when we show up for our
businesses,
with the unlimited forward-thinking attitude, that adopting an abundance mindset
instills in us. That’s when we know we’re on the path towards growth. That’s when

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we feel the success we want is within reach. And that’s my friend, honestly, that is
when we know we got the Intentional Advantage.