Scarcity Thinking Will Impact Your Career (Here's How to Stop It)

Is scarcity thinking holding you back?

In this episode, we’re tackling the sneaky, joy-stealing mindset of scarcity—the belief that there’s never enough to go around. Whether it’s money, career opportunities, time, or even self-worth, scarcity thinking can derail your goals and keep you stuck. But it doesn’t have to.

Here’s what you’ll learn:

• How scarcity thinking impacts your finances, career, and daily life
• 3 powerful mindset tools to shift from scarcity to abundance
• My simple yet transformative morning practice to stop scarcity thinking before it starts

Chapters

• 0:00 Conquering Scarcity Mindset in Careers
• 13:18 Shifting Mindsets for Abundance

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hey, I'm your host, Jill Griffin strategist, former C-suite executive board member and now an executive coach, and I have a huge passion for helping leaders navigate transitions and building impactful careers. The Career Refresh is the place where we talk about actionable insights to lead, thrive and succeed in today's workplace. And listen I have had the pleasure of helping thousands at this point of professionals achieve their goals, elevate their team performance and navigate the art of reinvention. Watching and getting to guide someone, as they are, in the transformation of reinvention, first for themselves and then for their teams, is one of the most impactful experiences I've ever had the pleasure to be a part of in my career. And today I want to talk about something that does touch on reinvention, and it's about reinventing parts of your mind, and lately there's been a topic that I have seen front and center and it is making its way finally into my queue. I'm seeing it in the workplace, in conversations at networking groups. It's all over the dang media, even if it is not obvious, and that is scarcity. It's that relentless, insidious mindset that whispers or shouts there's not enough time, money, opportunities. It hijacks your focus, drains your energy and keeps you stuck in a perpetual loop of not enough, not enough, not enough. If any of this feels familiar, we're going to break it down today and talk about the first step in shifting mindset. Ready, let's dig in.

Speaker 1: 1:46

Scarcity thinking. It is exhausting, it sucks the joy out of your accomplishments, it feeds that imposter syndrome or that fraud complex and it fuels burnout. It's the enemy of creativity and resourcefulness. And you know the drill, you know how. You've probably heard it either in a colleague's brain or maybe even in your own brain at times. And it's this like how did they get ahead of me? What just happened here? Wait, am I okay? Am I good enough for this position? Do I have enough of the requirements for the job? That's all the scarcity talking. We see it in corporate life from promotions that feel scarce, raises that feel scarce, jobs that come to an end and people at times in the workplace are hoarding information. It starts to feel like this Black Friday in a pre-COVID mindset. Right when there's this fierce competition and the mindset is, there can only be one winner and it's going to be me.

Speaker 1: 2:51

Stephen Covey, in his Seven Habits for Highly Effective People, talked about this decades ago. This is not new friends, it's just coming back around. He drew a line between a scarcity mentality and an abundance mindset. Simply put, scarcity again is that it's never enough. It says there's never enough, whereas abundance says you know what? There's plenty to go around, it'll be my turn, I'll get my share, it'll work out, it'll all be okay. And I want us to really pause and really think about what we're doing with our minds, who we're associating ourselves with when they're saying these things. The type of media we're consuming and where it's constantly telling us that we are not enough, are that we don't have enough or that we don't do enough.

Speaker 1: 3:43

Scarcity isn't just about what you have, it's about what you believe, and that belief drives everything. Think about it. Have you ever stopped yourself from applying for a job because you weren't sure if you had enough of the qualifications? Or you held off from sort of a independent endeavor or passion project because you feel like someone else is already doing it and we can't have more of it. Right, there's the scarcity. Set that thinking front and center. A client of mine told me a while ago that he couldn't pursue an independent endeavor project because he said he would be the oldest guy in the room and he couldn't keep up with the younger crowd. He didn't think he still had it, and also that his knees hurt. I told him, very lovingly, of course, to hush up and bias the hair of knee pads. You know what he did? It took some mindset work, but he has been leaning in and is really enjoying the time in that project, something that he would have stopped himself from because he told himself stories about where he was too old or not enough.

Speaker 1: 4:51

This scarcity convinces us to focus on everything we don't have—the skills, the time, the money, the resources and I want you to know that whatever you focus on increases, it grows. So if you're going to focus on lack, then you're going to feel stuck on that hamster wheel of not enough. Let me just call it out right If you're jumping from one job that you hate or one job that you've been recently laid off, the answer isn't okay, I'm just going to fix it, I'm going to go someplace else and you're sort of in that frenetic. I got to fix this. It's a scarcity, I got a new job right. That's where Jon Kabat-Zinn says wherever you go, there you are.

Speaker 1: 5:35

You cannot outrun scarcity by changing your job title or your LinkedIn profile. The mindset is going to follow you. You can't hustle your way out of scarcity. That's sort of like starving yourself and expecting yourself to feel great when you hit goal weight. You're not going to get there, you're going to be. You're going to be pale and pasty and really hungry and, yeah, you'll get there if you starve yourself. But it's just not sustainable. Scarcity will even sneak into your wins. Have you ever hit the promotion, got the job, the career milestone, nailed the project, sold the deal, did it? And your immediate thought is okay, what's next? There's no time to celebrate, you're just going on to the next goal. That's scarcity too, because on the brain science side of things, you're not completing the reward cycle. Your brain doesn't realize it's got it, so it keeps chasing to get that hit and I'm going to drop. I did an episode a while back on understanding why pausing and celebration matters and I'm going to drop that into the show notes. You should definitely check that out.

Speaker 1: 6:45

So breaking it down, scarcity at its core is the belief that there's not enough to go around. You're definitely not getting your piece of the pie, and it's the mindset that creates this unnecessary competition, both with yourself and with others, and ultimately it keeps you in a fear-based position. It's this, you know what. There's a cap on what I can earn. I can't go higher than that. You know what? I would love to switch careers, but I'm just not going to make enough money. I'm not going to be able to make ends meet. You know what. People like me don't get these kinds of opportunities. You know what? I only have about seven of the 10 requirements for this. I shouldn't apply. I'm not going to make it worth my while and it kind of feels gross.

Speaker 1: 7:32

And friend, I don't care if you are around people who are talking this way. Don't participate. I want you to try to pause and, if possible, walk away, get some air, claim a drama-free zone. It if possible, walk away, get some air, claim a drama-free zone. Because if someone in your circle or your colleague circle or your group has this dialogue going and you're around it, you start to believe that it's true. You have to protect your brain is a multi-million dollar machine. You have to protect it from this kind of thinking. So when it shows up and your brain keeps telling you this, what do you need to do? Well, you need to rewrite the narrative that you're saying.

Speaker 1: 8:12

I am not saying there are not times that there are failures and things don't work out our way. I'm talking about the insidious, ever-flowing thread that flows through conversations of reminding us that it's not going to work out and it's not enough. So I want you to picture your brain like a rocking chair on a rug, and the more you rock in the same spot this is, in this case, thinking the same thoughts over and over the deeper the grooves are going to get on the rug. In order to change that pattern, you have to nudge the chair out of those wrongs, those ruts, and move it elsewhere. That is neuroplasticity. That is how you're changing your brain. So how do you do it? Okay, well, one.

Speaker 1: 8:57

I want you to confront the shitty little committee in your head, that voice that's telling you it's not enough, I don't have enough, it's not going to work, this is never going to happen, all of those things. There's no way that this opportunity is going to play out. I want you to pause and I want you, in the kindest way possible, to talk to yourself and say okay, jill, prove it, prove that it's not going to work. Where is the evidence? And nine times out of 10, you're not going to be able to back it up. And if you tell me that it didn't happen previously. Okay, well, that was different circumstances and a different time sign. We're talking about now and there's no way to prove that from right now. Or right now, or right now Okay, you're hating me, right? There's no way to prove from right now to the future that there's evidence, because we don't have evidence.

Speaker 1: 9:46

The next is I want you to do an IRL in real life. Build your celebratory committee. Who you hang out with matters, surround yourself with people who lift you up and who think bigger than you. If you are the person who's thinking the biggest in the career circle that you're in, I want you to find other people. You may need to network. You may need to read books, listen to podcasts, find a way, perhaps in your community. There may be meetups. You want to find ways to have your thinking be stretched. You need support. You need stretch.

Speaker 1: 10:18

When I find that I'm shrinking or not doing the things that I set out for myself to do this quarter, I'm like wait a second, what am I doing? My head's been down. I'm not networking. I'm not in my groups that I want to be around groups where I look at other people and I'm like, oh my God, that's amazing that they're doing, that. You know what. I bet you I can do something like that, right? Not copying them, but something like that, and that's what we're talking about. These people do not have to be your best friends. They you can find them at work, industry events, online communities. Join a group, join a group coaching, right. You can find them there too. I also want you to start a morning mindset practice. This is a morning growth practice and it is about journaling. I do like pen to paper always, but if you want to do it in your notes app, fine it's. You know it's not going to make that much of a difference, but go for the pen and paper if you can Spend five minutes in the morning and just answer questions.

Speaker 1: 11:15

How am I feeling today? What's the word I want to think about for the day? What's my focus for the day? I often have words like focus, determination, warrior energy. Sometimes it's kindness, sometimes it's ease. It really depends on like what do I need to give myself today? I always look at what I appreciate and I'm grateful for, is really important to me, to look at all the abundance that's already around me. And if you're having a day where you're feeling like I can't find the abundance where possible, I want you to look out the window and I want you to count all the shades of green you see, or all the shades of brown you see, and this gets your brain into seeing abundance in the simplest form. Count the birds in the sky, right, I know this sounds really, really simple, but it's getting your mind into looking at the abundance of what's there versus looking at or trying to find the lack of what's there. I want you to ask yourself why was today worth waking up? What's on the agenda? What did I learn yesterday? How did I grow yesterday and what are my goals for today? Those are just simple questions.

Speaker 1: 12:18

Takes a couple of minutes. Jot them down in the morning, get them out and once you've looked back on that paper, I want you to look for any sneaky scarcity thoughts. Is there anything that you are dragging yourself with? Are you coming from that lack or are you in that abundance? Then it's shifting to that appreciation.

Speaker 1: 12:38

Abundance isn't about having enough. It's also that recognizing of it. The more you focus on what you do have and what is going right, the more you are going to feel better. Insert positive emotion and then take an action from that positive emotion. This requires work, but if you could do it for a few minutes every day and I almost call it like revving the engine, like generating those good, positive feelings you then start to take action from that and you'll see, little by little, how your day, or the length of time in your day, is more in abundance and positive feelings versus feeling in negativity and lack.

Speaker 1: 13:18

So final thoughts right, it's not magic, friends. It really is practice. It is strengthening and building muscles, choosing new thoughts, taking actions from that, really looking at what you're thinking and how you're spending your time. This is how things shift. And when you start to think like you know what there's a possibility this could happen your brain starts to find solutions. If you're in a place that this can never happen, well, you don't need to find a solution then. So start where you are. Take a moment today, whether it's journaling on a walk, even if you're having a quick thought in the shower in the morning ask yourself am I coming from lack right now or scarcity? That's where the change happens. All right, friends, I want you to be intentional. I want you to redirect, redirect, redirect your brain when it goes into places of scarcity and find the abundance all around you. I appreciate you so much and I will see you next time. Thanks,