Ban Scarcity Thinking

Scarcity thinking assumes a zero sum game, one where someone wins and someone loses because there is not enough to go around. In other words, there's only so much pie out there - so get all you can, can all you get, and poison the rest. Not a mutually beneficent philosophy.

But more than that, it's not true. There is an abundance of resources (God's dynamis is limitless, wouldn't you say?) and creation is bursting with new and more. This applies to writers as well. Rachelle Gardner, in a recent post, encourages writers to "let go of scarcity thinking." She offers this quote by way of explanation:

The first prevailing myth of scarcity is that there’s not enough. There’s not enough to go around. Everyone can’t make it. Somebody’s going to be left out. There are way too many people. There’s not enough food. There’s not enough water. There’s not enough air. There’s not enough time. There’s not enough money.

There’s not enough becomes the reason we do work that brings us down or the reason we do things to each other that we’re not proud of. There’s not enough generates a fear that drives us to make sure that we’re not the person, or our loved ones aren’t the people, who get crushed, marginalized, or left out. [Lynne Twist, The Soul of Money, p. 49]

So scarcity thinking is not only untrue and unkind, it's unworthy of our consideration. Instead, we writers (anyone, actually) need to operate out of an abundance mentality. Or, as Rachel points out in her post, we should have an "enough" mentality - that is, we are good enough as persons - confident in ourselves - and so we don't need to compete with others for supposedly limited resources. Either way, there is more than enough to go around. So go forth and create something new, something more.

End message to self.