Ep 22. Abundant Thinking

I am Kym Showers, and this is Reinvented After 40, episode number 22: Abundant Thinking.

Hey, friends. Welcome to Reinvented After 40, a podcast for all you women in the second half of life who are ready to take responsibility for your own wellbeing and create a life you love living.

I’m your host, Kym Showers, and after spending the first 40 years of my life people-pleasing and following all the rules, I was exhausted and ready for a change. I reinvented myself. I stopped outsourcing my happiness. And I’ve been brave enough to live a different kind of life.

I’ll be here each week to help you do the same thing. It’s gonna be fun. Let’s go.

Hey, everyone, happy Valentine’s Day, almost. I know it’s just a few days away when you guys are listening to this. Isn’t it just the cutest holiday? I love, love, I love the feeling of love. It’s just the best feeling, it trumps every other feeling. What does it actually feel like in your body? For me, when I just drop into it, it feels warm, and strong, and light, and protective, and sure, and generous, and infinite, and abundant.

The feeling of love I have for my husband, Jeff, and the love I feel for my kids, Riley, and Clancy, and Kyran, and the love I feel for my grandbabies, Goldie and Dolly, and the love I feel for my brother, Tommy, and the love I feel for my sister, Jazzy. All my most beloved important people, they each feel a little different. But the feeling of love I feel is the most powerful feeling I think that I can ever feel. I love it so much. And I love them naturally because they’re all so easy to love.

But I also love them intentionally because I want to experience what that feels like in my body, in my life, to be madly in love with my family all of the time and I am. There isn’t anything they could ever do or not do that would weaken or compromise this love that I intentionally have for them because this love is up to me, not them. I create abundant endless love for my people.

And the more I realize this, that it’s all up to me, the more committed I am to feeling love for them and being in love with them, and showing them true love, and this love keeps growing. It keeps multiplying. It is endless and infinite because true love is infinite and endless. Wholehearted abundant love comes from a wholehearted abundant human. The better we get at growing and healing ourselves the better we get at loving others and the more love grows in us. I have grown my ability to love myself and because of that I am so much better at loving my people.

I don’t need them to be different than who they are, or do anything to deserve my love, or to even necessarily participate in my love. My love is a sure thing, and it really doesn’t have anything to do with them. That’s kind of the miracle of it. I know I’ve told you this 100 times by now but my goal in life is to get good at love, and see if it’s even possible to love unconditionally. I truly want to know if it’s possible for humans to love each other without conditions. I think we can. I hope we can. And I’m going to keep working at it by practicing abundant thinking.

Because love is created by our thinking, and unconditional love and abundant love, endless love is created by our thinking. Abundant thinking is the number one tool that cultivates the life that we want. When we have an abundant mindset we not only get good at creating love, we get good at creating everything, everything that we want. We get good at creating more time. We get good at creating more money. We get good at decision-making. We get good at creating fun. We get good at resting. We get good at producing. We get good at vulnerability. We get good at self-confidence.

We get good at telling the truth. We get good at learning new skills. And the list goes on, and on, and on. An abundant way of thinking is staying open to the idea that everything is available to all of us. And the universe, or God, or whatever you call it is always conspiring in our favor. We keep exercising this muscle of abundant thinking and let it take the place of our scarcity thinking.

When we become aware of our brain’s tendency to automatically go negative and offer us limiting thoughts, the thoughts that create scarcity in us then we can decide to stop believing those thoughts. We can then start creating the life we have always wanted. There is and always has been enough love, enough time, enough money, enough fun, enough friends, enough rest, enough work, enough play, enough of everything that we value the most. And it’s all available to you, it’s available to me every single day.

So, I have a few ideas for you today that will help you see how you might be getting in your own way when it comes to the idea of abundance, and scarcity, and being more than enough, and having more than enough. It’s never outside of you.

The first idea to consider is what psychologist and Stanford Professor, Dr. Carol Dweck writes about in her book, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. She brought about the idea of a fixed mindset versus a growth mindset. And based on her research she introduces these two general ways of being and how what we think affects what we achieve which we already know. The way we think about ourselves, and our abilities absolutely shapes our lives.

What we believe about our intellect and our talents, not only affects the way we feel, it also affects what we achieve and our ability to stick to new habits and if we will go on to develop new skills. So, a growth mindset means that you believe your intelligence and your talents can be developed over time. And a fixed mindset means that you believe your intelligence and talents are fixed. So, if you’re not good at something now you’ll never be good at it. These comparisons will help you identify which way you might be thinking, which way you might be living, what you’re believing.

Are you a woman with a growth mindset, an abundant mindset, a limitless mindset where you know you can create anything you want to? Or are you a woman with a fixed mindset, a scarcity mindset, a limited mindset? Which one of these do you most identify with?

Fixed mindset, scarce mindset leads us to hiding our flaws, hiding our mistakes, feeling ashamed, feeling embarrassed about our ‘failures’, we give up easily and we’re unmotivated to try new things and achieve our goals. We believe intelligence and talent are static, we either have it or we don’t. We avoid challenges to avoid failure.

We ignore feedback from others. We feel threatened by other women’s success. We hide flaws and don’t try new things so other women won’t judge us. We believe putting in effort is useless, so we don’t do it. We view feedback as personal criticism, and we give up easily.

A growth mindset or an abundant mindset leads us to embracing our flaws, embracing our mistakes as opportunities for growth and accepting setbacks as part of the learning process and feeling empowered to reach our goals. We embrace lifelong learning. We believe intelligence can be improved. We can get smarter, you guys. We put in more effort to learn. We believe we can master anything we put our mind to. We believe failures are temporary setbacks full of useful information for us. We are willing to embrace challenges.

We see other women’s success as an example of what’s possible for us, so we’re inspired by it. We view feedback as an opportunity to learn. It really is the difference between an ordinary life and an extraordinary life, a fixed mindset versus a growth mindset.

If you haven’t read her book, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, it’s been out for almost 20 years I think or something like that. I read it a long time ago. But it’s so good and I highly recommend it to you so you can identify what you’re believing, what kind of mindset you actually have and open up to some new scientifically proven ways you can change and grow. I think it’ll be super useful for you.

The good news is even if you realize you have a fixed mindset, you can start changing it right now if you want to because our brains are literally changeable. We can change everything about our brain. We can switch our mindset any time we want to. We can go from fixed mindset to growth mindset with some intentional daily work, from scarcity mindset to abundant mindset. So, my first idea comes from Dr. Carol Dweck’s research.

My second idea for nurturing an abundant mindset comes from Dr. Brené Brown’s research. Surely you know our queen, Brené. I wish I knew her in real life. I feel like I do but I love her so much. She’s taught me so much. I’m really grateful for her. Her book, The Gifts of Imperfection completely set me free the first time I read it. I was in my late 40s and it came at the perfect time. I was a suffering perfectionist. And I needed Brené Brown to set me free.

She introduced to me for the first time, the power of vulnerability and letting go of shame. And allowing ourselves to be imperfect out loud and in public. I adopted her guidepost of wholehearted living and I think about them all the time. Letting go of old things that don’t serve me and cultivate new things that do. I use vulnerability and imperfection as a tool to alleviate my self-criticism, my shame, and my perfectionism.

So, I want to share these pillars, these 10 pillars or she calls them her 10 guideposts to wholehearted living. And I equate that with an abundant mindset. Wholehearted living is establishing, and creating, and adopting an abundant mindset, they go hand in hand.

So, her first guidepost or pillar is we let go of what other people think and we cultivate vulnerability and authenticity. Number two, we let go of perfectionism and we cultivate self-compassion. Number three, we let go of numbing and powerlessness and we cultivate resiliency. Number four, we let go of scarcity and fear and we cultivate abundance, gratitude, and joy. Number five, we let go of the need for certainty and we cultivate self-trust and faith. Number six, we let go of the comparison and we cultivate the creativity.

Number seven, we let go of exhaustion as a status symbol and productivity as self-worth and we cultivate play and rest. Number eight, we let go of anxiety as a lifestyle and we cultivate calm and stillness. Number nine, we let go of self-doubt and I should, or I’m supposed to, and we cultivate meaningful work. And number ten, we let go of being cool and having it all together and we cultivate laughter, silliness, song, and dance.

This is an abundant mindset my friends. Our abundance is an inside job, we are the creators of it. It means we have enough to fill in all the gaps, nothing is missing. It means we will never run out of ideas, we’ll never run out of love, we’ll never run out of money, or time, or energy. We’ll never run out of fun, and we’ll never run out of friends, we keep creating more. It’s such a fun way to live. We are wholehearted and not lacking anything.

An abundant mindset means I can live with my arms wide open, with my mind wide open and my heart wide open, all the goodness flows to me and through me. I don’t have to be graspy, I don’t have to be worried, or envious, or jealous ever. Who I am and what I have to offer the world is more than enough, even the things I struggle with, I am confident I will do the work to think about it in a different more abundant way. I keep cultivating abundance on purpose in my mind. And then miraculously everything I’m wanting keeps showing up.

I think big, I dream big, and I want you to start doing the same thing. It’s a continual practice of cultivating abundant thoughts and letting go of scarcity thoughts because nothing outside of you has to change for you to think about yourself and your life as completely abundant. You are the most beautiful woman in the world with the brightest spirit and the most amazing life. And you do not lack anything. Now you’re only job is to train your brain to see it. Switch your perspective from focusing on what you don’t have to focusing on everything you do have and all the possibilities ahead of you.

Tell yourself a better story, create an abundant mindset for you and watch everything begin to change in the best possible ways. You must think differently to show up to your life differently. It’s all possible for you I promise. And if you need real one-on-one help and support you can hire me to be your life coach and we’ll get started working on your life and in your life together. You will love it, it’s so much fun.

So, you guys, that’s what I have for you all today. I adore you for listening and sharing this podcast with your friends and family. And if you love it and you listen on Apple iTunes Podcasts, scroll down to the bottom of my page, and give me five stars and a fun review. I’ll love you forever for doing that. It helps other women be able to find me easier. So, you guys have the happiest love filled abundant week. Happy Valentine’s Day. And I’ll see you next Thursday.

Thanks for listening to Reinvented After 40. If you want more information or resources from the podcast, please visit KymShowersLifeCoach.com.