You are listening to My Freedom Grove podcast with Gretchen Hernandez, episode 94.

Welcome to My Freedom Grove podcast. The all inclusive podcast that teaches mindset and business tools. We'll help you rise as your authentic self. Be unshakable with your emotional freedom and unstoppable in achieving any goal and living your purpose. I'm your host, Gretchen Hernandez. If you want to put your mental health first in life, relationships and business, you've come to the right place.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hey, there my strong friends. Well, we are deep in the holiday season. What are some of your favorite holiday movies? I've been watching one holiday movie each night, because I just love to get into the magic of this season. Have you ever tried to watch holiday movies at another time of the year? And it just doesn't have that same effect? But when you watch it during December, all of a sudden it's like, ooh, you're there. You're in the moment. There's snow in the movies. Wherever you live, you may not have snow. I don't have snow out here at the beach. But I get to watch. And I get to feel all of the magic of the snow.

Anyway, one of my favorite movies I got to watch recently is called Bad Moms Christmas. Now why I love this movie so much, is it stands for simplicity. It reminds me that you can do the smallest amount and have the best experience ever. In the movie you see people going above and beyond doing way too much, getting themselves stressed out. Everybody else around them starts to get stressed out. And then nobody ends up having a good time.

We do that a lot in our own businesses and in our personal life. How many times have you found yourself way overdoing it?

Because you think that you need to. In order to create a great experience or in order to have people like you or love you, or that you have to have a lot of different products and services, just so that you can have enough customers come through the door.

Have you ever had that backfire on you? Have you ever had so much that you're offering, so much that you're doing, and yet the other people are either just not coming your way or they're just not appreciating what they're being given? Even though we get that lesson, we get that feedback, why do we keep doing it? Why do we keep doing way more than we need to do?

Well, it comes back to our mindset. So today we're gonna talk about the difference between an Abundant mindset and a Scarcity mindset.

WHAT ARE ABUNDANT AND SCARCITY MINDSETS?

So remember your mindset is a collection of thoughts and beliefs that you've gathered your whole life. You keep looking for evidence to prove that those thoughts and beliefs are true. And then that's how you look at the world. That this must be true for you. So when we talk about abundant mindset or scarcity mindset, it's not just one thought, it's a collection of thoughts that characterizes your mindset as either abundant or as scarcity.

Now there's lots of ways that you can describe a mindset. But for today's episode, we're just gonna talk about these two.

Abundant Mindset

An abundant mindset includes a bunch of thoughts and beliefs that you have plenty, and that you'll always have plenty. When you have those thoughts and beliefs, that there's always going to be plenty, your mind's gonna look for that evidence and you're gonna see it.

People that tend to believe in simplicity, they know that with just a small amount of thing, there's going to be plenty. So plenty of love, plenty of customers. A lot of times you'll hear abundance when talking about money. So they always believe that they have enough money or that they have plenty of money. And that they'll always have plenty of money coming their way. They may not know how that's gonna happen, but they really believe that it's gonna happen.

Scarcity Mindset

Now, the other side is scarcity mindset. This is a collection of thoughts and beliefs that say that there's just not enough. There's not enough love. There's not enough customers. There's not enough money. There never will be no matter what is done, there's never gonna be enough.

Combo of Both

I believe it's possible to have abundant thoughts about some aspects of your life and scarcity thoughts about other aspects of your life. I think it can be a blend of the two. Start to recognize - when are you in an abundant mindset and when are you in a scarcity mindset for the different aspects of your life?

For purposes of simplicity today, I'm just gonna go into two types of examples. One on business and the other on Christmas and gifts. Or you could look at the holiday season, I'm sure multiple holidays have gifts being given this time of year.

EFFECTS OF ABUNDANT & SCARCITY MINDSET IN BUSINESS

So business first. Have you ever thought about how many products and services you're offering? I like to use the restaurant analogy a lot because it's something that we've all experienced. There can be restaurants that have just a few things on the menu, and there can be restaurants that have a ton of things on a menu. So in your business, you also have a menu of your products and services.

When a business has an abundant mindset, they believe that they can offer a small amount of things on the menu. And that's plenty. That it's enough. That there will always be enough demand for their products and services. There will always be enough cashflow coming in. for just those few things.

Businesses that have a scarcity mindset may want to have a huge amount of things, because they're always worried that they're not gonna have enough. That customers are gonna come and they're not gonna want any of that. That there's not gonna be enough customers. Therefore they have to keep adding more and more things so that hopefully they'll get some customers.

Let's take an example In-N-Out Burger. I don't know if wherever you're listening, if you have an In-N-Out Burger there. But out here on the west coast In-N-Out Burgers are very, very popular. They obviously have an abundant mindset. All that they offer are burgers, fries, maybe some onion rings occasionally. And then just basic drinks, like soda, iced tea, some milkshakes, that's it. That's all they offer. They don't have anything else on their menu. And the line is always out the door.

A few weeks back, I will went down to the LA area and I swear there were at least three In-N-Out Burger within a three mile radius where I was staying. Every single one had a huge line out the door. Their drive through, oh my gosh, like 20 plus cars long. It didn't matter what time of day. It was always like that. And then when I come back up to Northern California, same thing. It doesn't matter where the In-N-Out Burger is. they always have a huge line any time of the day. And yet their menu is very, very small.

And then there's places like Judy's in Woodland. Woodland is in Northern California, close to the Sacramento area. This one I was really curious about. I always like to try new places, see what it's like. So I go into this place and their menu, oh my gosh. They must have had at least 50 different things on the menu. And it was all over the map. They had fish and chips. They had Italian food. You could get spaghetti to go. It was a fast food place. They had Mexican food, they had sandwiches and they even had pancakes. I mean, it was really all over the place for a fast food restaurant. Where you could go in, order your food and take it out. The thing with Judy's is that the parking lot was always empty. No matter how much stuff they had, they just didn't get customers in. Now, why is that?

Why is it that you would have one business that has a very small menu and people are out the door no matter what time of day. And then another one that has a ton of different products that you can have, it suits anybody's taste, and yet nobody's going to it?

It comes back down to mindset. When someone has an abundant mindset, they're showing up with a lot of confidence. Anytime I go into an In-N-Out Burger, it's always clean. People know exactly what they're doing. They don't have any extra confusion. They don't have the stress of trying to manage all of these different things. They're just confident.

When I would go into a place that has a lot of stuff on their menu, people are walking around a little stressed out. In fact, when I went into Judy's, there was almost desperation coming off of this business owner, like, please, please, I've got all of this stuff. Please, somebody buy something from me. Well, that didn't make me feel very good. And then when I start looking around the place, it was falling apart. It wasn't very good quality. The floors were all broken up. It was dingy because they didn't have any time to take care of their business to make sure that it was a great experience for people. They were too busy trying to manage all of these different products and services. Like if you could imagine the complexity of their inventory system in order to have to keep track of all of those different things and the amount of waste. How much did they have to buy of all of this stuff in case someone might want it? And then if nobody buys it, all of that is just wasted material. They have to throw it in the trash.

Now your business may not have products or services that expire, that have a shelf life. Maybe it stays good for forever. But how you're showing up by trying to manage all of those different things? Are you showing up stressed out? Are you showing up with a lot of desperation? Cuz you're like please, someone buy this. It could be that you're having a scarcity mindset. People don't feel great when they are in that type of environment. They want to feel confident. They want the other person to be confident. They wanna believe that what they're getting is high quality. They wanna just have a really good experience.

If you find yourself doing this in your business, where you have a whole bunch of stuff, consider:

What are the one or two things that you could have on your menu that you really really believe in?

Can you let go of the rest of it?

You know there's enough people out there that are willing to buy those two things. Now again, that's gonna have you really challenge your mindset. What are the thoughts that are coming up for you? That's where your work needs to be. If you do your work, looking for the evidence on why people would like this, you're gonna find that evidence. And then you're gonna be able to spend all of your effort on just that and keep things simple and give people a really great experience. If you choose to spend your effort on just creating a whole bunch of stuff, then everything's just gonna be like, okay quality (Instead of the highest quality). And you're not gonna have that word of mouth where everybody's like, oh my gosh, here's this one thing. It's the best thing out there in the whole wide world, like In-N-Out Burger.

I don't think they (In-N-Out Burger have to spend that much on marketing because everybody knows that their burgers are very, very tasty. It's all word of mouth. Everybody knows what this one place is known for. Judy's on the other hand, nobody really knows about Judy's. There's only one of them and hardly anyone goes to it. The one thing that I did try there that I really liked was their fish and chips. If they were to get rid of everything else on their menu and just do the fish and chips, I probably would've become a regular customer. Because then I could walk in, I'd always know that I'd get the best fish and chips. And I'd have a great experience being there. And I'd probably tell a bunch of people, Hey, go to Judy's, they've got great fish and chips.

In your business, what if you already had that one thing that everybody wanted? What would it be? How would your life be easier? If you could just concentrate all of your effort on just one thing.

EFFECTS OF ABUNDANT & SCARCITY MINDSET WITH CHRISTMAS GIFTS

Now let's switch over to the other example. This is the holiday season. We're gonna be giving tons of gifts to people. Have you ever been guilty of giving too many gifts? I know this has been me. Most of my life, I would just want to have tons and tons and tons of presents under the tree. Even my best friend, she was like that too. In fact, she still is. Just have lots and lots cuz it just, it looks so fun when you look at your Christmas tree and there's just presents everywhere.

But here's what I asked myself. Why was I doing this? Other than it's just fun to see all of that. And it's fun. Christmas morning getting to open so many presents. What was devastating for me though, was finding that six months after Christmas, my kids were putting a bunch of those presents into the donation pile.

We like to purge our house quite a bit. Anything that we're not using, we donate so that we can try to keep things simple. Having a lot of stuff creates a lot of clutter in our house. So then we have to spend all of our time organizing and cleaning instead of actually enjoying life. What I'm finding was that they were starting to put their Christmas gifts into the donation pile. I was like, wait a minute. I just spent all of this money at Christmas time just to have them give it away. They would just spend maybe an hour with the new thing that they got in the whole six months. And then they would donate it.

I remember at Christmas time feeling like I didn't have enough money in order to buy gifts for everybody (family, friends, others I wanted to get gifts for). I kept feeling like I needed to give them a whole bunch of stuff, right? It all for part of the experience. Then I find out that they didn't really want this stuff. In fact, I appreciate that, my sons were so honest with me. They just flat out, told me stop. It was making them feel bad that they would get all of this stuff. And they weren't all that interested in what they were getting. And they felt really bad to go and donate it later cuz they didn't wanna hurt my feelings. All I wanted was to have a lot of fun with my kids, express a lot of love, and create a lot of Christmas memories.

But the reality was... I was coming from a place of scarcity. Scarcity that I wasn't giving enough. That we wouldn't have enough fun if we didn't have all of this. That they wouldn't feel loved.

Oh my gosh, when you have a whole bunch of kids, you might be like me. Thinking I have to give the same number of gifts to every kid or the same dollar amount to every kid. And so I would do that too. I wanted to make sure both of those things lined up: the same dollar amount and the same number of gifts. Because yes, kids will, especially when they're younger, go and start counting how many presents they have and they'll get their feelings hurt if somebody else has more.

But I was falling into that whole trap of I have to give more. Then you'd find that one thing for one of the kids. It's like, oh I have to get this because they're gonna love this. And then all of a sudden it's like, okay, now I have to go get even more gifts for the rest of the kids. And it just became too much.

I wasn't coming from an abundant mindset. If I had an abundant mindset, when it came to holiday gift giving, I would know that I could give one thing and that it would be enough. It would be enough fun. It would show enough love. It would create that great Christmas memory with us.

Have you ever thought back to what your Christmas presents were for the last couple of years? Can you even remember what people got you? Sometimes it's just like one thing was your most favorite thing. It's your most prized possession. You didn't need any of that other stuff. Well, you probably didn't even need that one thing. But that one thing was really everything. It's the one thing that lit you up inside.

It's the same thing for when you give stuff to other people. All it takes is one thing. It doesn't even have to be a big, expensive thing. It can be something very modest. Sometimes a handmade card ends up being that one thing that is so precious. It doesn't have to be really expensive. It doesn't have to be complicated. You can come from that abundant mindset.

You might just wanna try it out. Because remember when your brain looks for evidence that this is true, it's gonna find that evidence. If you fall back into that pattern of, oh no, it's not enough. I'm not enough. I'm not doing enough. Your brain's gonna go out and look for evidence that that's true and it's gonna find it. Either way the evidence exists. So if you start looking for all of the evidence that everything is enough, that there's plenty, you're gonna find it.

This is a great time of year. You can absolutely enjoy yourself. And that could be in your personal life. That could be in your business life.

There is abundance in simplicity.

How can you start to pull everything back and just do the smallest simplest thing to have the biggest impact? What's that gonna be like for you? How are you gonna show up?

If all you have to do is just the one thing...you're probably gonna show up at first, a little nervous. Like really? Because you're gonna have to practice this. That really it's okay. That one thing really is enough. Look for that evidence because it's not gonna feel real at first. But when you start to see the evidence, all of a sudden your brain's gonna believe it. It's like, yeah, that's really all it took. It was the one thing and everything worked out great.

You have abundance. You have everything that you need. And then once you start to believe that you're gonna show up with a lot of confidence.

You're gonna show up with a lot of love and gratitude for everybody around you, cuz you're not gonna be worried. You're not gonna be in any kind of panic. Your stress level is gonna be significantly less because you're just doing that one thing. You will get to enjoy your time. You'll get to enjoy your time by yourself. You'll get to enjoy your time with other people. You'll get to enjoy your time in your business. You can breathe. You can enjoy all of the sight and sounds of this holiday season. And once you try it out this month, this is probably the hardest month to try this out.

When you start 2022 with this fresh pair of eyes that sees the abundance in everything that you can have, that simple life, you can do simple things in your business and in your personal life and have that abundance. Ah, your 2022 is gonna be one of the best years of your life.

All right my friends, I hope that you go out and catch some snowflakes on your tongue. Even if you don't have any snow around you, make up some snowflakes. Maybe you can get some frost out of the freezer. Go have some fun. I will talk with you next week. Bye-bye. 

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Thank you for listening to My Freedom Grove podcast.  I can't wait to work with you directly. I'll help you to be your authentic self, to have amazing relationships and to live your purpose. I invite you to check out Unshakable Men and Unshakable Women. The Unshakable programs will give you all of the tools, the coaching and the community to help you rise in life, relationships, and business. To learn more, go to my freedom grove.com/workwithme. I can't wait to see you there.