Nothing will get you thinking about the concept of abundance like squatting down to reach for a bunch of grapes from a vine in a vineyard. Seeing bunch after bunch placed into a basket evokes so many possibilities. If only we could always view life and work this way.
I recently found myself out on a vineyard, picking the first day of grapes for a vintner. My experience was so far removed from my previous wine tasting encounters – in elegant confines of posh tasting rooms. In many ways, this is the part that winemakers enjoy the most, because this is where their art begins. Choosing the right time to pick the grapes, how they are sorted and crushed, which kind of barrels to use, what other grapes will be added or blended–these and a million other decisions make such a difference. But the key for them is that this is the moment when they are in control, they determine what comes next, and what is possible.
In these moments, the winemaker isn’t thinking about all the limitations, what they can’t do with these grapes. No, they’re thinking about what they can do.
And that is what is at the core of what we call the abundant mindset, this notion of starting from an outlook that you already have everything you need to accomplish your goal and that the only decision you need to make is how to move forward.
This is quite different from the scarcity mindset that most of us are used to, where our thinking begins with what we don’t have, what we need.
Put simply, the abundant mindset starts from a position of strength while the scarcity mindset starts from a position of weakness.
Right now, I know what you’re thinking. It’s easy to buy into all this abundance business when you have all the resources you need, when you’re not struggling to keep the lights on. When you can’t make payroll, it’s just delusional to go on about abundance.
Sure, there’s a lot of truth to that. But I’m not talking about your balance sheet right now. I’m talking about what happens in your mind when you stop thinking about what you need and start thinking about what you have.
Leadership, leading people, requires a sense of optimism and possibility. Leading in this moment has high stakes in almost every sector and in every region of the world. Big social issues are at stake, such as homelessness, climate change or public health. These are systemic problems that call for grand solutions. Approaching these from a scarcity standpoint, where every individual action awaits funding or political support, encourages incremental thinking. Scarcity encourages you to nibble, and it’s hard to have success nibbling at something like climate change.
When you’re approaching things with an abundance mindset, you’re thinking about what you can do, right now. You can stop hoping, and instead realize you have everything within you to meet the moment.
One of the best things that comes when you switch to an abundance mindset is that you have the opportunity to reframe your work. You can let go or put down the tension that comes from the scarcity mindset. Instead, you can decide what’s important according to what is possible, and discard the rest. You can devote resources accordingly, and reconfigure your culture and your organization to that end.
In a fundamental way, an abundance mindset can allow you to tell a new story about your work. Instead of what you hope to do when more money comes in or after next quarter’s earnings call, you can talk about how you’re doing it, right now.
And when you reach that goal, go ahead and pour yourself a glass of wine.
