163: Scarcity and Sufficiency

Welcome to the Wealthy Mom MD Podcast, a podcast for women physicians who want to learn how to live a wealthy life. In this podcast you will learn how to make money work for you, how you can have more of it, and learn the tools to empower you to live a life on purpose. Get ready to up-level your money and your life. I’m your host, Dr. Bonnie Koo.

Hey everyone, welcome to episode 163. I hope you’re having an amazing day. And at the time of this recording, we just opened registration for the first Money and Wellness Conference For Women Physicians. Right now only current members of Live Wealthy or current or past private clients of mine have first access to it and spots are going.

And so by the time this episode comes out, I think registration will be open for waitlist only. And so I hope you’re on the waitlist if you are hoping to get a spot. It’s possible that the conference may sell out before it gets to the general public, we shall see.

All right, so today I have an episode on scarcity and sufficiency. And this is such an important topic because I think all of us struggle with feeling that not enoughness. I actually was thinking about this, what is that feeling exactly of not enoughness? To me, it’s like a combination of anxiety and fear sort of all mixed together. Basically some negative feelings just swirling around in your brain and your body.

So we talk a lot about the term money scarcity. And what that simply means is when you keep thinking that you don’t have enough money. And this goes for everything else, like time scarcity, not enough time, which many of you have that belief in your brain. And I’m not going to go over time today, we actually have a great episode where I have my friend who’s also a time coach on with Vikki Louise, and so we’ll be sure to link that in the show notes in case you missed that episode.

So one thing I found with my clients is, first of all, it’s pretty universally human to feel like you don’t have enough of anything. And one thing I really like to teach my clients is that our brains are actually designed for scarcity by default. But it’s our job, it’s up to us to do something about that, to interrupt it, okay? And so when you think about our brains, it’s wired for survival.

And so one of the things that has to do is basically sort of always scanning the environment, all the things, looking for what is wrong, what might be detrimental to our survival. And so it’s basically designed to look for what’s missing, okay?

And because money is pretty critical to our survival, that’s definitely one of the things that it’s examining all the time. And so it’s natural for the brain to just always feel and think that there might not be enough money. And logically all of my clients, including myself, will say, “Okay, I know logically, there is enough money right now, today, next week,” right?

You’re not in danger of not paying your bills. You’re not in danger of not paying your rent or mortgage. You have a home, you have a roof over your head, you’re eating et cetera. Now, I know this might sound silly for me to even just go through these line items, but just notice if your brain often still goes to the not enough money song.

Now, one thing that’s often contrasted with scarcity is the term abundance, which is kind of like the opposite. Meaning believing that there’s way, way, way more things, money available. Like oh my God, there’s so much money, there’s so much money available, et cetera, like feeling abundant. And I really had a hard time with this concept and I still kind of do. And I will say that I actually don’t think that’s the goal in terms of where you want to land. At least not the first stop, okay?

Because when you’re feeling money, scarcity, talking about money abundance just sounds impossible and unbelievable. So the first stop, and honestly in my opinion this is even a great goal versus trying to get to abundance is the feeling of sufficiency. So instead of feeling like I don’t have enough money, to go from that to I have enough money. Feeling sufficient, okay?

And so, the best way to access sufficiency, like I said, our brains are designed for scarcity and it’s our job to redirect it to interrupt that sort of normal pathway our brains are naturally going to go to. So you have to practice sufficiency. And so if your brain has been so, so used to only looking at what you don’t have, then you definitely need to practice this sufficiency exercise like every day, even multiple times a day depending on sort of where you’re at, okay?

And here’s another thing I want to say, you are allowed to feel sufficient now. No matter what your net worth is, no matter how much money is in the account, it doesn’t matter. You are allowed to think and feel sufficient. And that’s truly our agency as human beings, is that no matter what the circumstance, we always have agency over how we think and feel.

Now, of course, certain circumstances, certain money circumstances make certain thoughts and feelings easier. And that doesn’t mean it’s not available to you if you have circumstances that might be “harder” to think and feel sufficient.

Now, I want to talk a bit about what sufficiency means to kind of paint a picture. When I think of feeling sufficient, it’s feeling complete versus incomplete. It’s also being present to what you do have. It’s feeling a deep appreciation for what you do have. You may even want to call this gratitude, like feeling really grateful. Personally, the word appreciate and appreciation just resonates with me a bit more.

And here’s another thing I want to say about the emotion of feeling sufficient. Now, when you’re feeling scarcity I think of it as what I call a loud emotion. And what I mean by that is, I’m guessing all of you listening right now knows what it feels like when you’re feeling the not enough emotion, right, scarcity. Like I said, for me, it’s a mixture of feeling anxious and fear sort of all wrapped up together and it’s a very loud emotion.

Now, here’s an aside about emotions. I like to think of emotions as your internal notification system, okay. And so whatever emotions you’re feeling, it’s like a notification to be curious about why you’re feeling that way. Okay? And so the notifications can be loud or they can be quiet, and they can be in between. And so scarcity, to me, is sort of on the louder side. Things like feeling angry, loud notification, right? You know when you’re feeling angry, you’re not like, “Am I angry? I’m not sure.” No, you know when you’re angry right?

Now, feeling sufficient is sort of a softer notification, a softer emotion. What I mean by that is you may have to really, I would say, sink in and sort of have this quietness. You might have to just really spend some time with your eyes closed to really access, huh, what does feeling sufficient actually feel like in my body? Because it’s not going to be loud and slamming on the door as if you’re angry, okay?

Now, here’s the thing with emotions, we all feel them in our body a little differently, but there’s some generalities that are similar, right? Like people can pretty much agree that when you’re feeling anxious or nervous your heart might be beating faster, right? That’s pretty universal.

Now, when I access feeling sufficient, it is definitely pretty subtle sensations in my body. And I would say for the most part it’s more of the absence of certain sensations. The absence of the sensations that I associate with anxiety, right? I don’t have that flutter in my chest. I don’t have that churning of my stomach, which I tend to feel when I’m really anxious and maybe with a little sprinkle of fear thrown in, right?

To me, feeling sufficient is like my body just feels light, my shoulders are relaxed and it’s just kind of a very light, warm sensation, almost like a hug. Again, for me, it’s a pretty low volume emotion. And I have to really take time to sink into that feeling of sufficiency.

And so I want to offer some thoughts to access the feeling of sufficiency. And so I would do this with your eyes closed. Now, if you’re driving, don’t do this. But here’s a thought that really helps me. I already have everything that I really need. And this sentence alone, when I say it, it just reminds me to look for what I do have. And it sort of reminds me, oh, I do have everything I need. And it actually helps me or encourages me to notice what I do have.

Because I want you to notice that a lot of things you have right now were things that you wanted in the past, right? Like me being a physician, I wanted to be a physician before I went to medical school, and now I have it. Just noticing and appreciating that and how amazing it is that I was able to achieve that.

Now, I really recommend that you do this practice daily. It generally just takes a minute or two in the morning. And if you are having trouble accessing it, even if it’s just for a few seconds, hold that feeling of sufficiency in your body as long as you can. Maybe it’s 15 seconds initially, maybe it’s 30 seconds initially. And you want to do this multiple times a day.

And here’s why this is important, now remember what I said, feeling scarcity is kind of our human default. It’s up to us to interrupt it, okay? But every time you’re practicing sufficiency, you are literally retraining your brain and your nervous system when you do this. When you are in deep scarcity, your nervous system is basically hijacked.

And when this happens, it’s almost like the nervous system is a much quicker response than your brain, your thoughts and then your feelings in your body. And so first, we need to sort of calm down the nervous system, and then you’ll have way more access to the thoughts and feelings to create sufficiency.

Another way to say that is we have to really train your nervous system for safety. And so like I said, this is a practice. You’re probably going to have to do this for the rest of your life. And I don’t mean to say that this is going to be a chore. But at some point, it’s going to become way more natural to feel sufficient than to default to scarcity.

And the reason why I’m doing a whole episode on this is that feeling sufficient is so, so important. Not because it feels way better in your body than feeling scarcity, but it truly is the key to creating and enjoying the money that you want. You cannot create a lot of money coming from scarcity.

Think about it, when you are scared of losing money, when you’re feeling so nervous about losing money or when you just keep thinking you don’t have enough, you tend to hold onto money. Conversely, you end up also maybe spending it all as well. And so you’re just unlikely to actually invest your money and have it grow. And so that’s what I wanted to cover today.

And, as a reminder, you have access to feeling sufficient today, right now, no matter what is happening with the numbers in your bank account, your income, your investments, okay? All right, bye. I’ll speak to you next week.

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