How to Abolish a Success Scarcity Mindset and Know There’s Enough to Go Around
Success is an ocean, not a swimming pool.
Do you ever see someone get a job or opportunity you want and it just pisses you off?
You see someone else living your dream and you become enraged?
Your rage turns into hopelessness, despair even.
Why am I even trying? Why do I work so hard? When will my turn come? Where are my opportunities? If they got this opportunity I so badly wanted, is there another opportunity out there for me?
Maybe you even feel that you work harder than this person who got this thing you so badly wanted. You may practice more. You may put your whole heart and soul into it. Whether it’s your written words, or your songs, or your sales job. Yet, someone else way less competent or talented is living your damn dream.
Do you watch the GRAMMYs or Oscars and become filled with motivation or filled with envy? Do you scour the New York Times bestsellers list and feel inspired or disheartened? As someone else’s picture is getting hung for employee of the month, do you scoff or smile? Do you scroll through Instagram at other’s successes and feel hope, or do you discard your phone to the side in dismay?
Do you feel like if someone else gets what you wanted, you won’t be able to get it also?
Whether it be:
- Getting into a certain school
- Getting an article into a specific publication
- Another actress getting the role
- Another life coach getting a speaking engagement
- A book getting published
- Getting a performance bonus at work
Why do you feel like if someone else gets an opportunity you desire, you can’t also get that opportunity? Or if someone achieves the level of success you want, you can’t also achieve that success?
It’s as if there’s not enough to go around.
Like your brain goes, “Oh sh*t. I guess she got that publishing deal with Simon and Schuster. I might as well hang up my laptop. It’s not like they’ll publish thousands of other books. But since they published hers, there’s clearly no room for my own.”
Success is not the size of a swimming pool, it’s the size of the ocean. There’s plenty of room for everyone who wants to dive into the waves if they’re brave enough.
Some people will stand on the beach, trying to claim the ocean is the size of a swimming pool. Critiquing people's bathing suits. Comparing how some people are treading water, while others are swimming gracefully. All the while they wish they were brave enough to brace the waves.
There’s no max capacity of 30 people. There’s no lifeguard on duty. Sometimes the waves can whip you around, but you’re always invited into the water.
Someone else’s success does not equate to your lack of success.
There is enough success to go around. There is enough success to share. There is enough success for us all to swim in and even beckon others to jump in cause the water’s just fine.
We All Have Our Own Life Maps
Every single one of us has a completely original journey. We all have a different map that we’re following in our hands.
Sometimes we walk in the same direction as others for periods of time, but we never, ever take all the same steps as them.
And sometimes we’re not even really walking in the same direction as them, but we’re too wrapped up in their success to even notice. We’re more focused on what they’re getting that we’re not getting, rather than the direction we’re trekking in.
Follow your map. Trust your map. Take it step by step and know that all of your steps are your own. Admire where someone else is going and the steps that they’re taking and wave at them from your path.
Trust in your own map. It’s the only map that will lead you in the right direction.
We’re All So Wildly Different
I have a bunch of red-headed friends. Only one of us is a natural redhead. The rest of us are blonde, but hey if you paid for it, it’s yours! We all work in the entertainment industry and at one point have all been actresses.
If we all auditioned for the same role, there would be 10 different scenes and characters' interpretations. We’d all be reading the same words, but no two of us would give an identical performance. Even if two of us were similar in style, pacing, tone, inflection, or emotion, there would still be differences.
If you gave me and a fellow writer friend a beginning, middle, and end to weave into a story and locked us in a cave all day to create, you’d get two completely different stories. We’d use entirely different language. One of our stories may be set on Mars and the other in 1845 during the Irish potato famine. With characters ranging from a talking squirrel to a wise, old grandfather figure aptly named Pop-Pop, even though he has no blood relation to anybody else in the story.
Isn’t that fascinating?
In each of these examples, all participants have a skill set that exists in the same corner of the universe. Yet everyone would show up to do it completely differently because we’re showing up as ourselves.
Your talents, your words, your dreams, and your desires are so unique to you.
Own how truly different you are and how badass that is. Anytime you’re jealous of someone else’s success, cherish how fiercely unique they are and remind yourself that you are too.
We Romanticize What Success Will Look and Feel Like
My talented friend Flannery Maney shared this notion with me.
We forget about the stress that comes with some of our dreams. The reality of actually living through some of our dreams. We usually are searching for a feeling, rather than actually arriving somewhere. We think arriving somewhere will give us a certain feeling, but that’s not always the case.
The Disney movie Soul has a great example — sorry if you haven’t seen it, I’m about to spoil the sh*t out of it for you.
The main character, Joe Gardner, finally gets what he wants. He finally achieves his dream.
He gets to sing on stage with one of his idols and perform in a famous jazz band. When the show ends and they’re packing up, he gets invited to come back the next night and do it all again. And the night after that, and the night after that. And he’s disappointed. What? That’s it? He knows he just got everything he’s ever wanted and dreamed of, but it doesn’t feel how he thought it would. He finally arrived where he always wanted to, but it lacked how he thought it would feel.
All his life as he was pushing away relationships and not taking the time to be present and smell the damn flowers blooming. He was searching for this level of success that he now has achieved… and it doesn’t feel how he thought it would.
It’s never just about arriving, it’s always about the journey it takes to get there. In that journey somewhere lies the feeling you’re craving. Don’t miss the feeling because you’re head is stuck in the clouds, picturing all that you’ll do once you arrive at your destination.
The High Tide Lifts All Ships
My boyfriend always says this.
John F. Kennedy coined the original idiom and describes that when the economy is performing well, everyone will benefit from it.
My boyfriend typically uses it around the idea of success. If you’re around someone and their success is creating a high tide, that can only mean you’ll get lifted up with them. It doesn’t necessarily have to equate to your own success. Selfishly that would be cool, and very well could happen. But if you’re around someone and they’re experiencing success, you all get to celebrate it together. Positive energy begets positive energy. You can sulk in the corner and focus on yourself, or you can join the party.
You Can’t See All the Steps Someone Has Taken
And there’s a good chance you wouldn’t want to, or be willing, to take the same steps they did.
The path to success is rarely linear. We can get caught up in someone else’s arrival, rather than the path it took them to get there. Upon looking at the steps they had to take, some of it was painful, unglamorous, and straight-up no fun. Don’t just look at where someone arrived at, remind yourself of all their steps it took to get there, and know you can’t see all of them.
I know a few people who bought houses recently. Mostly congrats were in order, but some jealously was wildly spewed. Some people criticized the new homeowner's ability to save enough money for a down payment. Let me repeat, some people criticized their ability to be good savers.
Envy is a weird beast to tame.
My first thought was all these people had to sacrifice to save that amount of money. All the nights they had to say no to a social event to avoid Uber fees and costly drinks. All the vacations they didn’t get to plan. The new shoes, or car, or fancy cheese they couldn’t buy. They only got to eat out twice a month rather than twice a week. These were their steps to getting there. Not super fun, no glamour to find.
Remind yourself of all the steps it takes someone to arrive. Then, remind yourself there are steps you can’t see or would’ve never been willing to take.
What Can You Learn From That Person
What can you learn from their journey?
There’s always something you can learn or discover when you stop talking and start listening. Most successful people are happy to share some tricks and tips they used to get where they are. They like to tell you about all of their failures on the way up the ladder. Or all the helpful books they read that changed their perspective and led them to a win.
Ask tons of questions. Keep your ears open. Stay available to any lesson you can take away.
There’s Always Enough Success to Go Around
My mom is a dentist, and she’s friends with other dentists. They all work in the same area and they all get along. They share horror stories, help each other with marketing, or share newfound technology. They are technically all in direct competition for patients. They don’t care — there are enough people who want to get their teeth cleaned to go around. They learn more from each other as friends than as competitors. Even if some of their pocketbooks are bigger, they’re having too much fun laughing over boxed wine to notice.
There are enough people who like to read books to want to buy your book and your friend’s book. Also, if both of you wrote a damn book, holy crap, that’s fricken awesome! You should both be drinking a beer right now celebrating that you both wrote a damn book! Like, finished it and shipped your work and got that sh*t published! You should ask each other how you both feel that you wrote a book and ride that high tide together.
There are enough people scrolling the internet to find your article and someone else’s.
There are enough people who need help and will take your online course and someone else’s.
There is always enough success to be shared.
Takeaways
Someone else’s success does not equate to your lack of success.
- We all have our own life maps.
- We’re all so wildly different.
- Stop romanticizing how success will look or feel.
- The high tide raises all ships.
- Remember that you can’t see all the steps someone took to arrive at success, nor would you necessarily want to take them yourself.
- What can you learn from that person? There’s always a question to ask.
- There’s always enough success to go around.
Success is an ocean with no capacity limit.
There’s enough success to swim in together.
Let’s remind each other to jump in and that the water feels mighty fine.
Maddie is a writer and certified life coach. Self-declared boxed wine aficionado.
