Soul Over Matter. Zhi Gang Sha

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СКАЧАТЬ them for so long we don’t even hear them anymore.

      This is a crucial insight. If our thoughts of scarcity and, as a result, our words of scarcity are habitual, then scarcity itself is also habitual.

      In other words, the lack of abundance in your life isn’t bad luck, or lack of smarts, or the wrong connections, or the lack of an education; your lack of abundance is a habit.

      Second, scarcity statements are often untrue.

      If you want to go to Hawaii, there’s a good chance you actually can afford it. The truth is that you’re afraid you won’t be able to pay for something else—your car, your home, your bills.

      But what if your life depended on you getting to Hawaii? What if your children’s lives depended on you spending seven days in Waikiki? You’d surely find a way to afford it then. Why? Because when the stakes are high, you realize it’s not about resources. It’s about resourcefulness.

      “I can’t afford to go to Hawaii” is about resources. It’s scarcity thinking. “I’m going to Hawaii next winter. How will I do it?” is resourcefulness. It’s abundance thinking.

      Be wary of scarcity statements masquerading as the truth.

       Noticing your scarcity thinking

      If thinking correctly is what creates the right action for abundance— if, in essence, the right thinking is what “gets you to Hawaii,” then your goal is to become more aware of your scarcity thinking and shift it to abundance.

      You can begin by noticing your thoughts and words. For example, if you hear yourself say, “There’s never enough money to pay the bills,” then ask yourself: Did that thought come from a place of scarcity or abundance?

      You’ll know immediately.

      Now, reverse the thought. Substitute a new thought or phrase, such as “I always have enough” or “I’m choosing not to afford this right now.”

      Declare the new statement out loud from a place of abundance.

       Habit vs. ritual

      Because so much of scarcity thinking is habitual, it can be a challenge to build that initial awareness. You might read this right now and think, “Okay. I’m going to become more aware of scarcity thinking.” But in moments, your habits can reactivate and you’ll be thinking and saying the same things without being aware of it.

      To begin lasting change, it can be helpful to develop rituals that you can use to replace your habits.

      On the surface, rituals and habits may seem similar. You may think you have a morning ritual of waking up, making coffee, brushing your teeth, and reading the paper, but what you really have is a series of habits.

      The difference is in the level of consciousness. A habit is unconscious. We do it without thinking. A ritual, on the other hand, is something that we do much more intentionally. We do it consciously, with purpose. As a result, rituals can be a tool to deliberately change our habitual thoughts, words, and actions toward complete awareness of what we’re doing and why.

      Here are three examples of rituals you can use to shift your scarcity mind-set toward one of abundance.

      1. Go on a mental diet.

      The Seven Day Mental Diet by Emmet Fox talks about a conscious effort to become aware of negative thinking. For a week, your goal is to try not to sustain any negative thoughts. You may have them—we all do—but your job is to make a conscious effort to let them go, replacing them with something positive. Over time, this ritual can make you very aware of your scarcity thinking.

      2. Develop a declaration ritual.

      I have a morning practice—a ritual—of several positive declarations that I make each day when I wake up. As soon as I put my feet on the floor, I begin with the statement, “I love my life.” Then I continue with a series of positive declarations about the things I will experience that day, from gratitude and abundance, to love and joy.

      It’s a conscious ritual that I do each morning and night. It takes just a few moments to complete, but it delivers every day, without fail.

      3. Bless prosperity.

      In our culture, we have a habit of speaking negatively about the success of others. We might say, “He might be rich, but I bet he’s unhappy” or “She only became rich by being greedy.”

      Even though those statements may appear to be about others, we’re really hurting ourselves when we make them. Tell yourself “money is the root of all evil” often enough and you’ll believe it. And then what will you think of yourself when you get some? When we make negative comments about the financial success of others, we’re in effect cursing ourselves.

      To end the curse, develop a ritual of blessing others who have prosperity. “She worked so hard for her money. I hope it brings her great joy.” You can take this an extra step by making an effort to engage with those people, blessing the interaction, and being open to learning and receiving support from them.

      At the heart of these rituals is a conscious decision about whether to focus on lack or abundance. Do you see prosperity as a pie with limited size, where some people get bigger slices and some get small? Or do you see it as limitless bounty of abundance?

      The former is a scarcity mind-set and it’s extremely common for that mind-set to be an unconscious habit. Ritual is about becoming aware and changing that unconscious choice so you can shift your mind-set to one of abundance.

      The best part is that over time you’ll notice something new: Your conscious abundance rituals have become your new unconscious habits. And that’s where the magic happens.

       3

       Karmic Life and Business

      WE TEND TO look at the world as made up of competitors. At work we compete for promotions, budgets, resources, and the ever-vaunted corner office. In business we compete for profits, attention, customers, contracts, and market share. Even in our home life, we compete for everything from the opportunity to be heard to the choice of where our next vacation will be.

      It’s no surprise that this is the case—after all, it’s how we were raised. From an early age we were taught to win in sports, to “wrestle” with siblings for attention, and to strive for grades with our classmates. We’ve been programmed from day one to compete.

      At the root, however, competition is fundamentally about scarcity. In fact, scarcity is the only way that competition can exist at all. If we saw everything as limitless, there would be no need to compete at all—the idea itself would seem absurd. But we haven’t been programmed that way, and the result is that in everything from our home to our office, we inevitably build an us-versus-them competitive mind-set.

      In the book Karmic Management, authors Geshe Michael Roach, Lama Christie McNally, and Michael Gordon turn this idea on its head, arguing that we should see everyone as our “karmic business partners,” with our highest goal being not to ensure that we are successful, but that they are.

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