Sufficiency vs. Scarcity

From the Soul of Money by Lynne Twist

http://www.soulofmoney.org/blog/

The concept of sufficiency
The idea of sufficiency or “enough” is more important than ever at this time of global economic uncertainty.? The kind of sufficiency that I am talking about is not actually an amount. It is a way of being, seeing and living.

The principle of sufficiency is this: If you let go of trying to get more of what you don’t really need, it frees up oceans of energy to make a difference with what you have. When you make a difference with what you have, what you have expands.

Another shorter, perhaps easier to grasp way of saying this: What you appreciate… appreciates.

Gratitude is central to recognizing and acknowledging the sufficiency of what’s already there. When we turn our love and attention away from what we think we need to what we already have — financially, emotionally, physically and spiritually — and nourish it, express it, and most importantly, share it, experiences of profound prosperity, wholeness and sufficiency flood our lives.

Embracing sufficiency thus becomes a radical step that will transform our understanding of economics and of wealth.

Countering the mindset of scarcity
We live in a world that promotes a mindset of scarcity. That mindset eclipses our experience of our own wholeness and sufficiency and turns our attention to wanting what we don’t have. Consumer culture depends on people living in fear of scarcity, feeling inadequate, empty, and deficient so that we think we need to acquire and accumulate more to be okay. We are swimming in messages that tell us we are not enough, that there isn’t enough and that more of anything and everything is better. We’re told that there is no alternative, and that’s just the way it is. This condition of scarcity is made up of toxic unexamined and unconscious beliefs that have us constantly craving what we don’t have, and keep us frantically chasing after money so that we can acquire and accumulate. This mindset is invalid, destructive and disempowering. It is also untrue.

Comments

  1. Hi!

    I'm the Community Manager for Ruba (www.ruba.com), a relatively new travel guides and tour reviews site that launched in 2009. While our main focus is on travel, all of us at Ruba are big environmentalists and like to encourage others to be conscientious in their travels - which brings us to why I am reaching out to you.

    I'd like to ask you for your thoughts on a blogger challenge we've recently launched to help offset the negative environmental impacts of travel by planting trees for badges placed on blogs. We're calling it the "Ponzi Tree Scheme" because we actually plant a tree not only for each badge placed on a bloggers' blog, but ALSO for each reader who sees that badge, clicks on it, and installs one on their own blog or site! Bloggers can watch their "returns" grow right there on their badge - it automatically updates based on the number of other bloggers who have come along after and planted their own trees. We'd love for you to check it out at: http://www.ruba.com/contest/ponzi and let us know what you think! If there's any way that you could put a badge up on your blog or in a blog post, we would of course be incredibly thankful.

    If you have any questions about Ruba, the Ponzi Tree Scheme, or any other ways we could potentially work together, I would love to connect with you on it! Looking forward to hearing from you.

    Best,
    Erin

    --
    Erin Kiskis
    Community Manager, Ruba
    erin@ruba.com

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