62: How to Make Decisions From a Place of Abundance Instead of Scarcity

Welcome to the She Thinks Big! Podcast. Get ready to level up your thinking and expand your horizons. I’m your host, Andrea Liebross, your guide on this journey of big ideas and bold moves. I am the best-selling author of She Thinks Big: The Entrepreneurial Woman's Guide to Moving Past the Messy Middle and Into the Extraordinary.

I support women like you with the insights and mindset you need to think bigger and the strategies and systems you need to turn that thinking into action and make it all a reality. Are you ready to stop thinking small and start thinking big? Let’s dive in.

Hey friends, welcome back to She Thinks Big! The She Thinks Big! Podcast. I love saying that. I love saying it. It makes me feel energized. So as we step into a new year right after a season of abundance and reflection, it really is the perfect time to revisit a very powerful episode. This episode, I think I should make as required listening to anyone coming into coaching, anyone who is trying to grow a business and feeling resistance.

Maybe it should be like required reading, like we should have a syllabus and it's part of the required reading. But today, what I want to do is I want to explore how the mindset we bring to our decisions, whether from scarcity or abundance, can change everything.

Here's an example. I have a client who has hesitated for months to invest further in her business because she has some debt. Her thought is, "I can't grow, I can't spend any more money until I pay this debt off." This really is a classic scarcity mindset. She's seeing the debt as a barrier rather than recognizing it as a tool that has allowed her to invest in her own growth. She's got a storefront now. She's got an employee. She's invested in some software and that she has gone into debt to do that.

Now, I am not here to tell you that debt is an amazing thing. I'm not here to say everybody should be in debt. But what I am here to say is that sometimes as your business grows or scales, it is necessary to invest in things. If you're hesitating to do that, then you're making your decisions from a scarcity mindset and not believing that this investment is going to pay off.

So today we're going to dive into how shifting to an abundance mindset can really transform these kinds of decisions. In order to do that, I'm re-releasing an episode I recorded, one of my most listened to episodes in the past, about this abundance versus scarcity in decision-making. I want you to sit back, buckle up, and listen into this discussion. It's a keeper. It's a keeper. That's why I'm bringing it back to you.

Today, we're going to talk about making decisions from a place of abundance versus scarcity. This will be the last episode in the month of January where we have spent the majority of our time talking about decisions. If you haven't listened to episodes 60 and 61, I recommend that you go back and listen to those at some point. You don't need to listen to those today before listening to this one, but I recommend you go back and listen to them because they will help you think about why we don't make a decision and why we should make a decision and then how to make a decision.

But today I want to talk about making a decision from a place of abundance. I have mentioned that I think I am pretty good at making decisions and making quick decisions. I will tell you a little story. You might have heard me mention how we are going to build a house. My husband and I are going to build a house. This is something that I thought I never ever wanted to do in my life, but we are doing it.

I will tell you when we went to look at lots—right now we're just the proud owners of some trees—when we went to look at lots way back when, that day, there were lots of people looking at lots in this new neighborhood. There was a sense of urgency that day because I could see right before our very eyes these lots were kind of going like hotcakes.

I could see, as we went on our tour on the ATV, that there were other people looking at these two particular lots that we really liked. So, after a couple of hours of riding around in this ATV and this undeveloped neighborhood, we got back to the main house and the guy who was driving us around said, "Okay, well, let me know if you're interested."

We hopped out of the ATV and we went and sat in our car. I remember it was a beautiful fall day. It was pretty warm. It was sunny. One of those days it's like picture perfect. We sat in the front seat of the car and I was driving for some reason and my husband was in the passenger seat and I looked at him and I said, "I think we should do this. I think we should do it. Like now, right now. I think we should go home and get a check because we had to give a check for a deposit on the lot. I think we should go home and get the check and just do it."

To him, this was like, "I cannot believe you are deciding this this fast. We just went to look at lots today like it was something fun to do, not as if we were going to go buy one." He's the kind of person that needs to research everything, I think to ridiculous degrees, but he's a researcher and he weighs all the options and the good and the bad and the positive and the negative. It takes him 100 years in my book to make a decision.

Ultimately, he usually decides what he thought the decision was going to be in the first moment anyway. But he said, "Well, what if this? What if we can't afford it? What if we decide we want to move to Florida? What if there's a better lot that comes up? What if, what if?" I said, "No, this lot is great. It will all work out. If it doesn't, we can always sell it. We can always sell this lot back. They're going like hotcakes. They're a hot commodity. It's not going to be hard to sell it back. Let's go for it."

I'm telling you the story because in that moment, I was making that decision definitely, definitely, definitely from a place of abundance, not from a place of fear. When you are making a fear-based decision, when you feel yourself operating from panic, so he in that moment would have made a fear-based decision. The decision for him in that moment would have been no because he would be operating from a place of panic or doubt, or he was probably trying to get away from the feeling of uneasiness.

I want you to slow that down and play it on slow-mo and look at what's happening. I want you to slow down the fear-based action and decision-making, not so you can add more reasons on to protect yourself but so you can have a look at what's going on in your brain. I picture this as like slow-mo, to slow-mo mode, so you can question why you're making the decision.

So I, in that moment, started to question him, “Well, why do you think we shouldn't do it? Why do you think it's a bad idea? Why should we wait? Why should we research?” All those things. All of his reasons were fear-based. Truly, none of them were coming from a place of abundance. I want you to slow-mo down when you feel yourself making your decision from a place of fear.

If you don't have a coach, a coach can always help you take a look at it because fear is always a lie. I know that you think that's crazy too, but fear is always lies about the future. Fear doesn't even exist in the present. Fear is always about the future, and that's what he was doing. What if, what if, what if? That's all future, future fear.

Anything going on in the present is just a problem, and the brain's like, “Okay, we've got a problem here. Let's go, let's solve it.” So my answer to all of his what ifs, “Well, we could just have a lot back.” That was the solving of the problem, not hard. But fear is really about the future and you can't solve for problems in the future. You can only solve for problems that are happening right now. Right now, there are no future problems. We weren't in a place of “What if this didn't work out or there wasn't money?” We weren't in that place.

I don't really know because we haven't even started to dig yet, to be honest. I don't even know what the problems will be in the future. I don't know what the parameters will be. I don't even know what problems we're going to face that we're going to have to solve. I don't know what we'll have to work with. I don't even know what the timeline is, to be honest.

There's so much unknown that my brain will panic if I go there. But if you find yourself trying to make a quick decision, a quick no because you're frustrated or doubt or irritated or upset or trying to get away from that feeling, just slow-mo it down and don't do anything yet. Just really examine what is going on in your brain in creating that feeling of fear.

Is that feeling of fear really the truth? Is that feeling of fear based on the facts? Are you trying to convince yourself that your thoughts are facts or will become facts? Because they're not. They're not. Not even not yet. Stop. Press pause. I did a whole episode on pressing pause somewhere in the 50s. We'll have to go back and reference that. Press pause, take a deep breath, get your bearings. Where am I? What's going on? Get control of yourself in your brain and then make the decision.

That could take a while or it could take a little bit of time but you’re then making the decision from a place of consciousness, awareness. There are so many decisions that we make every day that there is such a thing as decision fatigue or decision debt. But you're suffering from it even more if you give too much weight to decisions. If you think the decision is so important, it's going to make or break you. It's not really that important.

I promise you, any decision that you're contemplating right now is not really that important. So many times, my clients spend too much time thinking things over, “I'm going to think about it.” Okay, ding ding, this is not a very important decision. It's not a very important decision. Chances are what you decide is going to be the right decision if you do it from a place of abundance, not fear.

Alright, think about this. You go into the grocery store and you have 50 million types of milk that you can choose from. It always amazes me when people stand in front of any section in the grocery store, whether it's the milk, the ice cream, or the yogurt section, and they contemplate. Okay, Just pick one. There are lots of options. Okay, but just pick it. There's a little secret. There's a little secret I will tell you. I don't even go into the grocery store most of the time now. I just go online and order groceries because I'm limiting my decisions. There are not as many choices when you're online grocery shopping. It makes it easier to make the decision.

I want you when you go into the grocery store next time, to tell yourself, "It doesn't matter what milk I get." Low fat, skim, whole, oat milk, cashew milk, almond milk, cow's milk, lots of options. Pick one and let's keep going.

As many things that you can automate in life and make it boring and repeat, then the parts of your life where you are trying to grow and contribute or create will become more exciting because instead of wasting your energy and your brain juice on choosing milk, you can use it to do something much more exciting that you're trying to figure out, whether that's learning a new instrument, reading a book that's going to help you grow, deciding how best to help your child. You have plenty of other things that you can use your brain brain juice for, you don't need to use it on little trivial things.

The moral of the story, make decisions quickly and make them from a place of abundance. Here's the thing. Here's what I mean, abundance. If we use the model of thinking, we know that the action of deciding is triggered by a feeling. I don't think that making a swift decision from a place of fear is anywhere near as impactful as making a swift decision from a place of abundance.

So I would like to propose to you that making a decision needs to come from a place of abundance, trust, and love. Remember one of our questions in the last podcast was what would love do in helping you decide? This thinking about trust, abundance, and love might be hard for you to adopt because often when we make a decision, we don't know, I'm going to not even say often, I'm going to say all the time, we don't know what the future holds. We don't even know what tomorrow holds.

Thus, it can be hard to make a decision from a place of abundance, because maybe the future isn't going to be abundant. We're just not sure. The brain, remember, doesn't like things that aren't sure. It wants to be comfortable and safe. The brain wants to be afraid of all of the unknown. It wants to worry about the unknown. It wants to think about all the things that could go wrong. I mean, just think about COVID. I mean, crazy when you think about it now.

No one in a million years could have imagined what the year 2021, the end of 2020, 2021 would look like. So the brain thinks that making a certain decision now, right now in the present, the brain thinks that if we make this decision right now, this could lead to or prevent a problem in the future. Therefore, we should be freaked out about this decision right now because if we get it wrong, it might be the wrong decision, we could create a problem.

Can you relate to this? But remember, I think in episode 60, I talked about how there is no such thing as wrong decisions, it's only just a thought. All right, so if you can create some thoughts that lead you to the feeling of abundance, then you will take action and make a decision from abundance, from love, from faith, from trust, not making a decision from fear.

When you make a decision from a place of abundance, it doesn't feel like a fear-based rush. It feels okay. It feels confident. It feels like, “Let's just do this, because whatever happens, it will be fine.” Now, it is believing that the future will be what it's supposed to be. It is trusting that everything will work as it should.

I would argue that 99.9% of the time, it does work out as it should. How do I know that? Because the future does happen and it works out. Abundance is really that extension of trust that everything will work out the way it should and that we will have enough of everything we will need. Things will work out in our favor. Even if I don't see that initially, I believe it will work out in my favor.

It gives me the freedom to know that I don't have to waste time stressing about each and every decision. Sitting in the front seat of that car, making the decision to, “Let's just go by that lot, go by the trees.” I was doing that from a place of trust in the future.

Maybe you're trying to decide right now what your next move is in terms of your business or job. Should you outsource? Should you hire someone? Should you ask for a promotion? Should you work with a coach? Or maybe you're trying to decide if you should go away this spring or if you should sign your kids up for soccer or if you should work on getting pregnant.

Whatever it is, there are lots of people with differing opinions on all of those topics I just listed. We probably will never ever get a unanimous opinion on anything. Should we go around worrying that we're not making the right decision? No, because we will always be making the right decision because it is the decision.

Should we be worrying about getting everybody on board with our decision? No, because we're never going to get everybody on board. Should we make the decision from a place of what is the least likely to cause a problem? No, because there will be problems.

Okay, go to the other extreme, your other option, making decisions from abundance, knowing that whatever the decision is, it is the right one, knowing that whatever your decision is, your experience is going to be half positive and half negative, knowing that whatever your decision is, you either will be winning or learning and it will be bringing something amazing to the table.

This is way, way, way more fun. This is a much more fun way of doing things. Ask yourself what feels right. What feels right? Should you go or should you not go? Listen to your feelings of trust, faith, and belief. Notice, There is a very different decision coming from a place of fear and disaster prevention versus coming from a place of trust.

This is going to be amazing. If it really doesn't matter, then make it not matter and just flip a coin, keep it simple because either way, there are going to be challenges, 50% positive and 50% negative. Now, when I think about my business, kind of like how I think about everything else, I am making decisions in my business from a place of abundance. There is potentially always something that could go wrong.

For example, I just switched to a new platform for delivering content in my Committed to Growth program. There are potentially a lot of problems with that. Things could go wrong. But I made the decision from a place of, “What if everything goes right? What if it is perfect? What if it turns out beautifully? What if this is a way better way to serve my clients?” Then I said, "Let's just do it. Let's make it happen." Now, I'm not being naive and burying my head in the sand to reality. This isn't what I'm saying.

I'm just saying that right now there are no actual problems and making this choice. I'm just foreseeing that there potentially could be a problem. Worst case scenario, I'm going to have to deal with the problem. I might lose some money. I might lose a follower, but that's okay. I'll gain 10 more followers and I'll make back that money.

Let's just make the decision from a place of abundance. Move forward and assume it's all going to work, and if there's a challenge, I'm going to find a solution. Let's go. Let's do it. So see what I mean, that's so much more fun than thinking about all the what-ifs.

Now, when I work with some of my clients inside Growth Masters Accelerator or Runway to Freedom, my other coaching programs, they have what I call Access to Andrea. That means that they just have a bat line to me to help them with any questions or challenges that arise. Often on a call with a prospective client, they'll say, “Well, I don't know, that seems like a lot like I have a bat line to you. What if I start to call you all the time or what if I abuse the privilege?” Here's what I say, “I made that decision to give you access to Andrea from a place of abundance.”

Guess what? No one has ever abused the privilege. If anyone does start to abuse it, then I'll deal with it. I'll have a conversation. But I'm not not going to offer you that from a place of fear of what if. That's that. So I offer it. Now, if I'm out some time or some money with decisions, then so what? I would just make more money helping, which would then mean I was helping more people—notice that's a win—and that is so fun helping more people. Think about how you can approach everything from a place of abundance.

It really, really simplifies things. It makes it easy. It helps me do more good in the world. The good always comes back. It really does in ways that I could not have planned or even predicted. When you make a fast decision and when you slow it down again is when you—kind of what I told my friend—when you make fast decisions, when you are making them from a place of abundance, that fast decision, you don't second guess it.

You don't listen to the part of your brain that is the what-if part. What if someone's mad? What if this doesn't work? What if it doesn't work out? What if the pandemic happens again? What if we run out of whatever? What if, what if, what if. You just say, “You know what? It will be fine. If that happens, then we'll deal with it when it happens.”

When you make fast decisions, because you remember you make decisions in an instant, and you're making them from a place of abundance, you really don't second guess it. When you make them from a place of fear, you keep thinking about it. Let's just assume that everything, and this year moving forward, is going to work out beautifully for you.

What if we made all the decisions from that place? You don't have to spend hours then researching and asking everybody else what they think you should do if you just make an abundant decision. You do a little bit of research, maybe you spend a few minutes Googling, and you do your due diligence, but you don't spend more time doing unnecessary research and getting 22 million opinions because those 22 million opinions really don't create your experience in the end.

When someone says, "I need to talk to my husband about making a decision about this," okay, it's respectful. I understand that. But what I always say is, "Why do you need to talk to him? Is he the one that's going to experience the coaching?" No, he is not, you're going to experience it. Why do you need to talk to him? Does he even know what he's saying yes or no to? No, he doesn't because he wasn't on this call. Does he even know what you're feeling? Even if you try to explain it, he's not living inside your body.

In thinking about it and getting 22 opinions, you're not making a decision from abundance, you're making your decision from fear because you're afraid of what someone else might think, or it could be the “wrong” decision. It is so freeing to make these decisions from abundance. Now when I have some challenge or struggle, or trials and tribulations, I know that is just a way for me to get better at being the highest version of me.

The other 99% of the time, when I'm not having trials or tribulations and everything's going well, that is so much fun to be me. It's freeing and empowering. I need to practice making decisions from abundance when things do go wrong because I know that if I go back to that trust, I will make a great decision.

So, abundant decisions, I want you to make them as often as you can, and I want you to make them quickly. That, my friends, is the secret sauce to reaching all of your goals, to creating a life and all aspects of your life, when I say that, I want you to really picture all the different parts of your life, all aspects of your life, helping you make choices that get you where you want to be.

When you slow down your brain, you're going to want to bring in all kinds of data and reasons, and you'll want to overthink it, and you want to justify whatever you're thinking, but I encourage you to not use your mind in that way. Just make fast, abundant decisions.

If you're not operating in abundance, slow it down, do some work to get to that place of abundance, and then make your decisions. As you practice this, you'll get better at it and it will set you free from overwhelm, from indecision, free from being dragged down by all the weight of all the choices and options that there are in the world.

Does this sound like something you would like? Would you like to be free from overwhelm, from indecision, from being dragged down? If it is, let's do it. Let's do it together. You've got so many ways in which to work on this. You can listen to podcasts. You can read books. You can seek support. Who is your coach? If you don't have one, I would be honored to be your coach.

So my friends, if you listen to this episode and you think it could help someone else, please take a screenshot. Please share it, either in a text, an email, or on social. If you haven't yet written a review, I also encourage you to do that because I'm going to keep haunting you until we get to 100 reviews. You can do that pretty much on any social media or any podcast platform. Again, making decisions is part of your runway to freedom to creating the life and the business that you want.

All right, so thank you for joining me on this special re-release of a past episode of She Thinks Big as we prepare for this exciting new year. I hope this conversation that I shared with you has shown you how powerful it can be to shift from scarcity to abundance in your decision-making.

Imagine viewing something like debt, not as a setback, but as just a neutral part of the journey; a resource that has enabled your growth. If you're really ready to start making choices from a place of trust instead of fear, let's continue this conversation. I want you to go visit andreaslinks.com.

I want you to grab a copy of my book from that master link. I want you to schedule a call with me because I want to give you some strategies that will lead you into this new year with abundance. These calls are always complimentary. They're like strategy calls. A consult call is really me and you strategizing on how you should move forward.

Maybe coaching isn't for you. That's not the purpose of the call necessarily. It's for me to help you. I hope there's value in these calls. If you want to continue, if you want to move into this year, operating from a place of abundance, and making decisions with an abundant mindset, let's chat. But until then, and until next week, keep thinking big. See you soon.

Thanks for tuning into the She Thinks Big! Podcast. If you're ready to learn the secret to unleashing your full potential, don't forget to grab a copy of my book, She Thinks Big: The Entrepreneurial Woman's Guide to Moving Past the Messy Middle and Into the Extraordinary. It's available on Amazon and at your favorite bookstore.

And while you're there, grab a copy for a friend. Inside, you'll both find actionable strategies and empowering insights to help you navigate the complexities of entrepreneurship and life, and step confidently into your extraordinary future.

If you found value in today's episode, please consider leaving us a review on your favorite podcast platform. And if you're ready to take this learning a step further and apply it to your own business and life, head to andreaslinks.com and click the button to schedule a discovery call. Until next time, keep thinking big.