Photo by Dimitri Karastelev on Unsplash
A scarcity mindset is the felt sense that there’s never enough, money, time, safety, love, even when by any honest count there is. It isn’t a character flaw and it isn’t bad maths. It’s a nervous system that learned the ground could disappear, and it keeps bracing long after the facts have changed.
Maybe you check your balance three times a day and still feel sick. You got the raise and the dread didn’t move an inch. You can’t enjoy a holiday because you’re costing it in your head. And when a friend gets something good, there’s a flash in your chest, as if their win came out of your share.
I know that flash. When I was in my twenties I quit my first job in finance. I felt so good the first time, liberated, like I was finally being true to myself. And then the fear came, and it came quickly. I’d quit, but now I was unemployed, and I was sure I was about to fall off the financial horse and never get back up.
I got pulled back in by a kindness. There’d been an intern at the firm I’d treated like a regular human being. Little did I know that was a scarce enough commodity to be notable. He remembered me and offered me a job.
Years later, after Esalen, I tried to do the things that fed my heart. I coached a freshman soccer team. I worked at a homeless shelter. And the fear gripped me more by the day. How in the name of God was I going to support myself, let alone a family one day? So I reached for the one thing I knew would make money fast: my ability to sell.
That’s what scarcity does. It just makes the fast move feel like the only sane one. Get the money as quick as possible, even if you hate the bloody work.
Before I explain any of it, try something. Read the next sentence slowly, let the out-breath go, and notice what happens in your body as you read it. Right now, in this moment, there is enough. Don’t argue with it and don’t agree with it. Just notice where it lands, the belly, the shoulders, the jaw, and whether something in you eases or rushes in with a list. Stay with that one more breath. That’s the place we’ll work from.
What’s really going on
If your shoulders dropped a little as you read that line, or your mind leapt in with “yes, but”, notice it. Both make sense.
The money system we live inside gets into a nervous system and produces an anxiety that feels exactly like a character flaw. No matter how hard you work, the ground keeps receding, and you conclude the problem is you. It isn’t you.
In my book I call that system the not-good-enough mother. A parent is meant to answer three questions with a yes. Are you there for me? Am I enough for you? Will the rules be the same tomorrow as today? When a nervous system asks those of the money world, the answers come back: you haven’t arrived yet, try harder, and the rules can change whenever it suits. So you stay anxious inside that relationship.
And the anxiety isn’t imaginary. You run faster and the floor moves faster underneath you. That’s the treadmill. It is not a feeling. It is a mechanism. Scarcity is often the body reading that mechanism correctly, then taking the blame for it.
The economists Sendhil Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir showed that lack narrows your attention to the gap, and everything else goes blurry. I’d add one thing. I call it the discount rate: the price your nervous system charges for trusting the future. If your ledger says “expect more of the same, or worse”, the future gets marked down to almost nothing, and every choice follows from that pricing. A high discount rate isn’t a flaw. It’s an honest quote from a nervous system reading its own history.
That’s why more money often doesn’t fix it. There are people on five million a year who feel they can never stop. Economists call it the Diderot effect, after the philosopher whose beautiful new dressing gown made everything else in his study look shabby until he’d spent himself back into debt. Your spending rises with your income, so you never actually get ahead, and the fear comes up with it.
And scarcity wears different clothes in different people. I call it one money wound, four costumes. Some people collapse and never look at their finances at all. Some withdraw and hoard, and call it discipline. Some attack themselves with the shame of never having enough, never saving enough, always being behind. And some attack others: the envy, the contempt for the ones who step off the treadmill. The striver isn’t virtuous. The collapser isn’t lazy. Every one of them is a nervous system trying not to fall off the back.
Underneath every costume is one of the two coins of shame: “not enough” or “too much”. Whatever costume you wear, you make sense.
Need to talk this through right now? Figlet is an AI coach that’s there at 2 in the morning, or right now. It runs this loop with you on the Money ground.
The loop, on your situation
Coaching is how we go from where you are now to where you want to go. We only address the past when it emerges in the present. So take one moment this week when the never-enough feeling grabbed you, and walk it through this.
Get ground in your body first
Feet on the floor. One breath out, longer than the breath in.
What happened
One plain sentence, the way a camera would have seen it. “I saw the electricity bill and closed the app.” Not “I’m hopeless with money.” Just the event.
Where it lands in the body
A clench in the belly. Shoulders up around the ears. Jaw set. A buzz behind the eyes. Stay with it for one breath, with permission to stop any time. And now what do you notice?
Who’s driving
Which costume showed up: not looking, hoarding, attacking yourself or attacking someone else? Which coin is it holding: “not enough” or “too much”? It took the job because, once, it was needed.
Trace it
Only as far as today needs. What did money mean in the house you grew up in? Who went without, and who carried the worry? Then the wider layer: what is the system you live in charging you to stand still?
Feel it and tell someone
Underneath the bracing there’s usually fear, and under the fear, grief for how long you’ve been holding your breath. Say one true sentence about it to someone safe.
One creative action
One thing my teacher Aftab Omer taught has stayed with me: trust your experience, but don’t believe it. The fear is real. The story it tells about what it means isn’t always true. This week, act once from what’s here rather than what might vanish: a meal you actually taste, a kindness you don’t cost first.
How to get out of a scarcity mindset, honestly
Most advice says swap scarcity for an abundance mindset: gratitude lists, affirmations. But you can’t talk a nervous system out of what it has lived. What changes the discount rate is never argument. It’s experience, repeated, until the future starts to feel credible.
So start smaller than you think. Notice the costume without shaming it. Name the mechanism, so you stop taking the blame for the weather. Build one place where there’s enough, time with your kids, sleep, one friend, and let your body register it. And when you slip back into the old panic, and you will, that isn’t failure. Beginning again is the practice working.
This isn’t financial advice. For debt or a budget, a qualified financial professional is the right door. I’m talking about the part money can’t reach.
One thing to do tonight
Look at one number you usually avoid, your balance or your calendar. Feet on the floor first. Look for ten seconds and do nothing with it. Just notice what your body does. If you can’t look, that’s the not-looking costume, and that’s okay too. Noticing it is the first rep.
Would therapy help with this?
If scarcity mostly shows up as worry and a pull to overwork, coaching is often the right size of help.
But if money fear comes with panic attacks, a low mood that won’t lift, compulsive gambling or spending, hoarding that’s taking over your home, or if it grew out of real deprivation as a child that still floods you, please work with a licensed therapist where you live. If you’re thinking about hurting yourself, call or text 988.
The path
What I’ve just walked you through is the Empathi Method. For an individual, it’s built on my Proof of Work of Being Human protocol: building sovereign ground inside yourself. On the Money ground, one plain sign of progress is being able to check your balance without dread.
There are two ways to keep going. You can start now with Figlet, an AI coach that’s there at 2 in the morning, on the Money ground, the moment the dread hits. Or you can get on the list for the book and the live program with me, where we do this work together.
Figs O’SullivanFiglet Life Coaching
Get help now
Figlet is an AI coach, there at 2 in the morning or right now. It runs this loop with you on your actual situation, as often as you need. It’s coaching, not therapy. The list hears first about the book and the next live program with me.
Proof of Work, Greenleaf Book Group Press, February 2027. Not sure which ground is hurting? Take the two-minute Ground Check.
The fear was never proof that you’re not enough. It was proof of how long you’ve been holding on.
I go deeper into this in my book, Proof of Work (Greenleaf Book Group Press, February 2027).
Common questions
What causes a scarcity mindset?
Usually history plus system. Growing up with real lack, or with adults always anxious about money, teaches a nervous system the ground can vanish. An economy where costs outrun effort keeps that lesson alive.
Is a scarcity mindset the same as anxiety?
They overlap. A scarcity mindset is anxiety focused on not having enough. If the worry spreads to everything, or comes with panic and sleeplessness, talk to a licensed therapist or your doctor.
What is the opposite of a scarcity mindset?
People usually say an abundance mindset. I’d call it sovereign ground: a nervous system settled enough to decide from what’s true now, not from fear or greed.
“Trust your experience, but don’t believe it” comes from the teaching of Aftab Omer at the Institute of Imaginal Studies, where I trained.
