Do you catch yourself resenting opportunities others get, even when they’re designed to increase fairness or diversity? In this episode, I answer a listener struggling with scarcity thinking at work and explain why it’s the thought, not the circumstance, that creates anxiety and resentment. You’ll hear how women are socialized to wait for rewards instead of creating them, and why taking responsibility for your own success lets you see opportunity and achievement as something you generate, not something handed out.
Welcome to UnF*ck Your Brain. I’m your host, Kara Loewentheil, Master Certified Coach and founder of The School of New Feminist Thought. I’m here to help you turn down your anxiety, turn up your confidence, and create a life on your own terms, one that you’re truly excited to live. Let’s go.
Welcome to this week’s Coaching Hotline episode where I answer real questions from real listeners and coach you from afar. If you want to submit your question for consideration, go to unfuckyourbrain.com/coachinghotline, all one word, or text your email to +1 347-997-1784. And when you get prompted for the code word, it’s coaching hotline, all one word. Let’s get into this week’s questions.
Here’s our listener question. “I have a scarcity mindset specifically around my job. Opportunities are coming up, but my company has a strategy to hire for diversity. And while I think that’s a great thing, my brain keeps telling me there’s less for me, and I can’t stop resenting the people who get the jobs I want. I want an abundant mindset, but I don’t know how to get there.”
This is a great question. And although I know the question asker thinks that the reason they’re having these thoughts is because their company wants to hire for diversity, the truth is when you have a scarcity mindset, you will always find a reason to think there’s not enough. So it’s really not about that specific circumstance. It could be something else. Her brain would come up with some other reason if it wasn’t that.
The key thing is the belief that there’s only so much opportunity to go around. There’s only so much success to go around. And that is the belief that we have to change. It may be true that there’s only so many of this exact job with this exact title in your current company. That’s totally could be a circumstance, right? But that doesn’t mean you can’t be successful.
That doesn’t mean you can’t have a similar role somewhere else if you don’t get it at that company. That doesn’t mean you can’t find other ways to have the kinds of career experiences you want. Fundamentally, it’s about believing that there is enough opportunity and success out there and that you are part of what creates that opportunity and success.
Women are really socialized to believe that we’re supposed to keep our head down and be good and then somebody will reward us with opportunity and success. And that contributes to scarcity, right? Because it’s like, oh, there’s only so much up top and they’re going to like dole it out, right? And I’m competing with everyone else down here to receive it. That way of thinking will keep you feeling very anxious and resentful of other people’s success.
When you take responsibility and ownership for creating your own success with how you show up, whether that’s at your job as an entrepreneur or whatever, that’s when you start to see that success isn’t this limited pool that people at the top dole out, but it’s something you actually need to create for yourself.