From Scarcity To Abundance

This short talk is an excerpt from Lou's live event on Insight Timer. In it, he shares insights into transforming feelings of jealousy, scarcity, and competition into one of collaboration and abundance. If you would like to practice the meditation, please look for the full version titled, "From Scarcity To Abundance".

Transcript

I'm excited to share this practice with you today,

But I'm nervous to tell you why I'm excited.

So this is actually a practice that I've been doing in my own meditation for the past couple weeks.

And the reason why I've been doing it is I'm just gonna go ahead and share it.

Many of you know that Insight Timer has allowed these opportunities for teachers to connect and there's all these different events happening and it's really been such a blessing for for me to be able to connect with you.

I'm sure it's a blessing for each and every one of the teachers and I'm hopefully it's also you've gotten a lot of value out of it.

That being said,

I was scrolling through my Insight Timer app the other week and I caught myself in these old patterns.

These old patterns of having jealousy come up.

These old patterns of feeling like I wasn't doing enough.

These old patterns of feeling like I needed to compete in some way.

And then this goes back to me being a little boy,

Very very competitive growing up,

Playing sports and always getting ahead and always rating myself compared to others.

I'm also an Enneagram type 3.

So if you have any idea what that means,

I have a proclivity to measure myself in relationship to others as a lot of us do.

And I have to say that this this jealousy used to completely paralyze me.

I used to get sucked in like a vortex scrolling through social media and it would just make me feel so so bad and I've grown so much from where I was and the reason is I've actually created a course on Insight Timer called Learn to Stop Caring What Others Think where I talk about these topics because I've worked so strongly in my own journey and I believe we teach what we need to learn most.

And so that being said,

I'm not an enlightened master and I am still working with this myself that I still have these things come up.

What has shifted over the years is my awareness of them,

My awareness of being,

Of noticing,

Right?

Just like we're noticing an emotion,

Right?

Noticing that that's coming up and then realizing that I don't have to go there,

That I could skillfully respond.

I could separate myself from that feeling and choose a different way to respond to it.

Because what happens when we're feeling jealousy,

When we're feeling in competition,

Is we are believing in scarcity.

We are believing that there is not enough to go around and so we have to do something,

We have to compete,

We have to do something in order to get ours.

And this is the opposite of an abundant mindset.

This is the opposite of there's more than enough to go around,

Right?

This is that when everyone you win,

I win.

And this is what I really want to base the work that I do and the life that I want to lead because those other emotions are going to put us down into moving away from an abundant nature.

We get caught up in this separate small ego self that doesn't see the union,

That doesn't see that when we give we actually are receiving.

And so there's two practices that are really,

Really important when we're thinking about how do I bring more abundance into my life?

How do I stop thinking in scarcity?

How do I feel like there's more than enough to go around?

The first practice is gratitude,

Really foundational practice.

My favorite Eckhart Tolle quote,

Gratitude is the foundation of all abundance and that's abundance in every area of life.

Abundance in your money as it's often kind of related to,

Abundance in your love,

Abundance in your peace,

Abundance in your joy,

Because what we appreciate appreciates.

And so using the example of money,

Let's say you're making a hundred dollars a week,

Instead of feeling like that's not,

That's not enough,

Right?

And you're feeling into the space of lack,

Finding a way to feel gratitude for that hundred dollars a week and allowing that to expand.

It reminds me,

For a long time I wasn't supporting myself from really making any money doing the work that I was doing and I got an opportunity to speak at a library and they paid me,

They were gonna pay me $125 to give a talk and do like a little meditation and I was so excited that I got this opportunity.

It was,

I was blown away.

I was super pumped for it and I did it and I got the check and afterwards I,

After I cashed the check,

I put it on my wall and then every day I would look at it and I would just be so grateful for it.

I would just be like,

Thank you.

Thank you for this opportunity and guess what happened?

Slowly more opportunity started to come,

The check starting to get a little bit bigger and it started to expand and so you,

It's kind of funny.

My wall doesn't look as nice as it does now.

It used to have a bunch of voided checks on the wall.

If you walked into my house,

You would think I was like a psychopath or something because I was just,

I would,

I would feel the abundant nature even though it wasn't a much,

It wasn't much to most people's standards.

To me,

It felt so abundant and so that's why it's important.

Whatever small accomplishment that you have,

Whatever small win that you have,

Appreciating the small win because when we appreciate the small things,

The small things become big things.

And so that's the first practice we're going to focus on.

Second is known in the Buddhist lineage of mudita,

Which is sympathetic joy,

Meaning that we share in the happiness of others.

We share in the abundance of others.

We share in the joy of others.

So this can be a little easier if it's our partner,

Like our spouse,

And they come home and they have an accomplishment or they have something positive in their life and we're like,

Yeah,

Awesome.

We can hopefully be happy for them pretty easy.

It's a lot different when we're scrolling through Instagram or we're scrolling through Facebook and someone shares something positive that happened in their life and we have like a weird relationship with that person for whatever reason and we go into like these feelings of,

Oh,

Like good for that person.

Like why is that person boasting?

Like we have all these negative feelings start to come up of jealousy and whatever it might,

Whatever those negative feelings might be judgment and we're sending those negative energies out there.

So of course,

If we're trying to bring in abundance,

Bring in peace and happiness into our life,

But yet we are judging another person for being happy,

Then we are going to sabotage ourself on that journey.

And so this can be really challenging,

Especially if there's people that really trigger you into feeling this.

And so we're going to work with that in our practice,

Similar to how you would do it in a meta practice,

But it's just got a different connotation to it.

It's really trying to celebrate them and say,

Yes,

Even though I know that they're part of me that wants to feel jealous,

That there is more than enough to go around,

That I can be happy for you because guess what?

When you win,

I win.

You don't take away from my abundance.

You don't take away from my joy.

We can actually share in this together.

Reviews

So good 👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍

Such an interesting perspective. And far more complex than I had allowed it to be. Thank you!

This was a really insightful talk on being in appreciation to grow our abundance- I appreciate this wisdom 💗💕💗💕

A really awesome talk. Great practices to fully embrace the abundance in our daily life now.

Thank you for the honest and thought provoking conversation, we all need to have with ourselves at times! 🙏🏾😊

I'm very thankful for this and feel inspired to put more energy into recognising and appreciating the abundance I'm already blessed with. Thank you so much ⭐

A great, quick reminder that what we focus on expands. Well said and much appreciated!

I can’t wait to do this practice! Thank you for the talk 😊

Perfect, this was so needed, thank you very much!

I can’t wait to listen AGAIN and AGAIN and AGAIN! Thank you for your honesty. As a teacher of yoga, meditation, creative writing, theater and a survivor of a very overachieving family where I felt I had to “earn” love and worthiness.... you blessed me today with your truth, enthusiasm, faith in abundance and joy. Thank you🙏

Wonderful 🙏

Lovely!

Wow how honest and truthful will look for full practice thankyou ❤️

So much truth. I love the voided check wall of gratitude

Gratitude for the small wins makes for a joyful life! 🙏🏻

Thank you so much for this one. Exactly what I need.

Thank you for this beautiful meditation Namaste

So relatable!!! My new favorite and will listen to it many more times!

Beautiful, humble honesty. Very helpful reminder. Thank you!