Abundance versus Lack: The Neuroscience of Creating from Awareness
Photo by Maia Love © 2022
Abundance versus Lack: The Neuroscience of Creation from Awareness
What is “Abundance” to you?
If you look within yourself for your inner felt sense of abundance, you will begin to notice how you define abundance - prosperity, flourishing and resplendence - in your life. Then, as you observe what abundance means to you, you may become aware of any obstacles in the way of the abundance that you wish to create. By noticing any obstacles, you can then dissolve these, so that your capacity to create your abundance grows.
In this Article:
mindset obstacles to abundance and examples
definitions of abundance
abundance defined as a state of well being
the neuroscience: why does mindset matter
next steps
Obstacles to Abundance
One major obstacle in the path of creating abundance in your life, is a mindset of lack. Are you often thinking - how will I survive? If you live in survival mode, your brain actually works differently. You block your perception from perceiving opportunities. If you see opportunities, if you are in the mindset of lack, you decide that they aren’t worth the time or the energy, or you might even fight against them and block yourself from receiving the abundance that would have opened along the offering presented to you.
Another obstacle may be self worth. Other people may be trying to support you to flourish, and you may see them as not giving you what you want, being too involved, not presenting the options you want or other such alterations to the gifts offered if you struggle with self worth.
Yet another obstacle may be difficulty receiving, that you feel that you need to be the one who gives, who supports. In a very subtle way, this can get you involved in the saviour-perpetrator-victim triangle that goes around and around and drains you.
To each obstacle, there is an antidote, so studying your wish for abundance and then observing the specific obstacle or obstacles that arise, can be key to then letting obstacles go and taking a creative and brilliant step towards welcoming in and allowing abundance.
Definition of Abundance
We’re trained to look outside ourselves for answers. So, sometimes it is useful to instead look inside. As you look inside, you can start to find your personal definitions. You become more aware of what authentically - and really truly deeply - matters to you. By learning to listen to your inner truth for what abundance means to you, you begin to align with your own values. This is one of the keys to abundance that leads to fulfillment and, abundance that matters to you.
And, it can also be interesting to look to outside of yourself for the definition of abundance. In the English language culture, the Merriam-Webster Dictionary definition of the English word “abundance” is “an ample quantity, an abundant amount, affluence, wealth, a life of abundance, marked by great plenty, amply supplied.” Does that speak to you? You might observe what images, feelings and thoughts come to mind.
One definition of abundance in our culture that you may become aware of, is that of working hard in a sacrificial way to achieve abundance. The mindset of extreme sacrifice for abundance, is a mindset where abundance is defined as wealth that comes from a lot of hard work - even extreme hard work - that physically, emotionally and mentally drains you. One of the luminaries of our time, Brene Brown, refers to this type of abundance when she notices how we live in a culture where working to the point exhaustion has become a status symbol of achievement.
“If we want to live a wholehearted life, we have to become intentional about cultivating sleep and ply, and about letting go of exhaustion as a status symbol and productivity as self-worth.” - Brene Brown
Abundance Defined as a State of Well Being
Also, if you define flourishing as a state of phenomenal well being - of optimal well being with successful work-life balance - you might then look at the leaders of what we define as health in our society. You might notice that these leaders are not in optimal health. So then, you might become aware of the fact that there exists a mindset in our culture where optimal health is not available to the leaders designated to provide and direct the structures for optimal health. Hopefully, instead of reacting to this fact, you might find it curious.
If our leaders in designing our structures that are supposed to create well being, are not able to live a balanced lifestyle of true well being, then what is getting in the way?
One possibility is that the mindset of our leaders is not supporting abundant well being.
The Neuroscience: Why does Mindset Matter?
Our life becomes what our mindset directs our life to become. The neuroscience behind this fact is that our mindset is made of several key parts. One part is something that in psychiatry, we call a “schema.” The schema is a learned perception of reality that we filter our interpretation of reality through. You have many different schemas. In psychiatry, you learn how to see and identify the schemas. Then you might do several different clinically proven and evidence-based approaches to dealing with the schema(s). A lot of the therapeutic approaches are to learn to understand and fully see and accept the schemas for what they are.
The schemas are made up of neural networks. Each neural network is composed of a group of neurons connected together in a circuit. Sometimes, with very automatic and deeply ingrained schemas, ideas or belief, there may be just one neuron assigned to the schema, as seen in neuroimaging research. You can think of the neurons gathered together to create an added lens on reality.
Furthermore, science is starting to show us that it matters what you feel. Feelings, as generated in the heart or the gut, which have their own nervous systems, then impact what we perceive through the brain. Beyond the practice of therapy, when we are clear minded and ready and the nervous system is stabilized through specific practices, we can then begin to build networks between the heart, the gut and the brain to create new ways to be aware, that support the abundance that we want to create. This is the work that I do, with a very specific, scientific approach to building neural networks that promote well being and success in the kind of abundance that you wish to create.
So, in summary thus far, you have schemas, or lenses, or neural networks that filter reality to create the reality that you are aware of and that creates the mindset that impacts your capacity for abundance.
Writing Exercise
Join me on November 14th to do a writing exercise on abundance, paired with a guided meditation. Learn more about a practical process to grow your understanding of abundance and how to dissolve obstacles in the way of abundance.
By increasing your awareness of your definition of abundance, and your obstacles, you are then able to see, in your day to day life, what choices for you open the door to abundance, versus what other choices make the obstacles to abundance grow. Your awareness is therefore practical, and allows you to be able to navigate more clearly in the future.
Coaching with Me
You can shift your schemas around abundance by becoming more aware of your neural networks. The process of becoming more aware of your neural networks and mindsets involves a process of developing more inner awareness. In my coaching, not therapeutic approach, this involves learning to care for the nervous system, heart and gut and the entire body through specific science-based practices. Then, you move into practicing meditation in a way that suits you. Each person’s route through meditation in a way that is effective is quite individual, I have found in my years of guiding meditation and yoga and yoga Nidra. Once you have cleared the mind through a process of individualized and coaching meditation, then you start to be able to work with your mindsets in coaching with me. You learn how to create new mindsets that support you to flourish, instead of increasing stress or causing exhaustion and fatigue.
Curious to learn more?
Join me online for meditation, or book a session.