‘Abundance is having enough resources to be able to fulfil your destiny,’ leader and speaker Andy Hall once said. I agree.
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A healthy mindset of abundance, rather than being mainly about wealth generation, is in my view an attitude of plenty we choose to possess in the heart.
Wealth creation is a positive thing. It can do much good when allied to the right motives and channelled in the right way. But when it becomes an end in itself, it may ironically be linked to an underlying poverty of spirit.
Abundance mindset – or a lack it – has a strong bearing on how we direct our time and resources. It also affects our outcomes and how we influence others.
I recall a former marketing supremo telling me how his chief executive once declared: “I’ve put my life on hold – that’s the sacrifice you have to make in this job.”
Hard work and sacrifice also are positive provided they are wedded to purpose. But if work and life become or seem mutually exclusive, perhaps it’s time to assess how your endeavours fit with your purpose or to consider how an abundance mindset could re-energise your work.
Here are eight marks of the spirit of abundance, contrasted with poverty thinking (I’m obviously not criticising people in literal poverty here, but contrasting two opposing mindset tendencies which could apply in the same circumstances):
Abundance –
1. keeps it eyes on the vision and outcome; poverty mindset may find it hard to see beyond the limits of present circumstances
2. recognises the value of connection to and contribution to/by others; poverty thinking may tend to want to go it alone without advice or support
3. has high expectations of seeing progress and transformation; poverty harbours the view that, if we don’t expect much, we’ll be surprised in the unlikely event that something good happens
4. makes the most of what we have now, even if it appears to be little; poverty focuses on what we lack
5. stresses what we can do; poverty emphasises the things we can’t do
6. is connected to longer term purposes and eternal values; decisions to play it safe or take the short-term view – though wise in some situations – may be driven by poverty thinking
7. values innovation and informed risk-taking; poverty may over-emphasise ‘the way things have always been done around here’ and resist change
8. recognises above all that we have access to the resources of a limitless God; poverty places faith only in what it can already see.
Jesus says: “ The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly.”¹ By ‘they,’ he means you and I. Don’t let poverty spirit cheat you out of your God-given dreams for a moment longer. Partner instead with the promise of living life more abundantly.
Question: As the season of goal setting and self-examination for the year ahead begins, how can we factor in a healthy sense of abundance, and what adjustments might that mean?
¹ John 10:10 NKJV
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