I still remember what a scarcity mindset feels like. I think, occasionally, I still slip into it in different ways. Today it looks like not booking the flight, or hesitating on locking in the most abundant accommodation. Fortunately, I’m mostly well trained, and I notice when I’m making choices, or not making choices, based on lack.
I came from a reasonably wealthy upbringing. But wealthy doesn’t equal abundant. And a scarcity mindset was something I struggled with for a lot of my adult life: in a beautiful resort, in a nice house, in a damp flat, and everywhere in between.
Many people who knew a young Melissa probably expected me to grow up and be a millionaire. I expected it of myself too. But I felt so alone on the path.
I felt alone.
Let me take you through my stages.
What a Scarcity Mindset Actually Feels Like
Scarcity feels like stress, or depression. It’s the panicked sensations, the adrenaline. It’s darkness, anger, heartache, fighting and fear. It’s emptiness. It’s lack. Scarcity doesn’t always mean there is no money. It often means a lot of hard times. Scarcity thrives in poverty, but it also survives in wealthy homes where the only focus is financial wealth. Where love and spiritual wealth are absent, even without poverty and fighting, lack is felt. It’s the opposite of true abundance.
For me, a scarcity mindset showed up in a few clear ways:
- In my body: stress, adrenaline, panic that would wake me in the night.
- In my decisions: choices made from fear, or from the desperation not to look poor.
- In my relationships: control, anger and fighting, hanging on to an ego state.
- In my bank account: sometimes empty, but sometimes full while I still felt broke.
The emotional turmoil and distress is what follows when things are not in balance.
The opposite isn’t just having money. The opposite is the abundance frequency, and it is a shift. It isn’t only a state of mind, it’s an emotional lift. It feels light and joyful. You may still feel moments of sadness, frustration, anger, even depression, but joy speaks more loudly, and you know how to bring it back. Practised long enough, you can exist with both. You can be in this frequency with very little money, and you can completely miss it with plenty.
“When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy. When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.”
Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet
Here’s how I lived my way from one to the other.
The Rich Girl Years
A young girl, flying in her dad’s plane to the South Island. A girl building a small play house behind the family home.
At 16 I took a week off high school to fly to Sydney with my boyfriend, and I moved out of home to live with him. At home, we were abundant. Jetskis on the weekends, road trips, hotels, a nice car, beautiful places to stay. Money wasn’t an issue. There was no debt, there was always money. I was living the rich girl vibes.
But abundance and money are not the same thing, and I was about to spend years learning the difference.
Wellington: Looking Abundant
At 18 we moved to Wellington. I started university and my dad helped cover my accommodation. I wasn’t good at expressing gratitude in those days.
I worked part time for the New Zealand Department of Internal Affairs, and even on the phones I felt helpful. Our home was a small two-bedroom flat, damp inside, with an ocean view from the toilet window. But I wore nice clothes, expensive jackets and shoes. I worked in the city and I looked like a city girl. During the week I ate peanut butter on toast.
I was a bit co-dependent. I didn’t like to go anywhere alone. I could make it to work and home, but not to the supermarket or the mall.
We’d saved enough to maybe buy our first house. I remember house hunting in the hills near Petone. I don’t remember what stopped us. Probably fear, or wanting nicer than we could afford.
When Life Stopped Lighting Me Up
I took a job with Unisys on the IT help desk, and we moved to Paekakariki, into a gorgeous new townhouse surrounded by trees.
And I don’t know what happened.
My boyfriend applied to Police College. I supported every step. Then he went, and I checked out. I felt nothing. I was tired and unemotional, and somewhere in my subconscious I knew I was on a hamster wheel. Life didn’t light me up anymore. I wanted to feel something.
How a Scarcity Mindset Takes Hold
So I self-sabotaged. I got involved with people who weren’t for me but made me feel loved. I fell in love with a drug user, then a gang member, then a dealer. I was still doing well financially, but I was sliding into a scarcity mindset that money couldn’t touch.
I was hanging around dark rooms with lots of cash. Adrenaline, stories, craziness, things that made me feel. But my soul knew what I didn’t want to know. This life wasn’t for me either.
I drank heavily. I was unemployed and failing university. I didn’t care about anything. I drove around on a quarter tank, only ever putting in $20. I clawed back my Internal Affairs job and moved back to Wellington, then spent my weekends back in the drama.
Until I saw how bad it was getting. Someone was going to end up dead, or in jail, or in hospital. I planned to get as far away as I could.
The Manifesting Magic
I always had the manifesting magic. In the middle of that darkness I decided to listen to my heart. Sydney was calling me. As soon as I decided it, and probably wrote it down, an internal job opportunity appeared at work. My job, in the Sydney office. I applied, interviewed over the phone, and days later I was on a flight for an in-person interview. A job offer arrived.
I was sitting in Cheers bar with a good friend, coincidentally now my husband, when the call came through. I said yes. I was moving soon.
Sydney: Money Without the Frequency
It was good for a while. Then things turned into a hot and cold, push and shove, controlling kind of energy. I was making money and I was sort of abundant, but I was not tuned into the frequency of abundance. Abundance doesn’t thrive there. You can have money and still be nowhere near it.
I spent days crying, torn and unhappy. Then I found out I was pregnant. Happiness faded quickly into worry, sickness and resignation, and we returned to the place I had tried to escape. I was unravelling into scarcity again.
Coming Undone
I still had rich girl clothes and shoes, but we were living in a flat at the back of his parents’ place. It was warm and cosy, but the people who came by were not the kind that attract joy. I was controlled and controlling, selfish and demanding. He was trying, but it was never enough for me, and we fought constantly. Anger and fighting and pain do not sit alongside abundance.
I was in scarcity.
There were more moves, a nephew I loved and worried for, a punched-in door, an eviction. Then an arrest, a home detention, and a life harder than I had ever known. My contraceptive failed and I was expecting again. And I was broken.
By the time I left the relationship, any trace of abundance was gone. I was struggling to pay bills and buy groceries. My car blew up one day and never came back. My mum helped me buy a cheap replacement.
The Quest That Started With Joy
I had to change. If I wanted my children to have a good life, it was on me. I decided they would not grow up with a bitter, miserable mother. This quest didn’t start with seeking money and financial abundance. It started with a deep search for happiness and joy.
My journey began with gratitude. Dreams I wrote down became a secret life plan. Things I didn’t dare call goals were quietly handed to the universe. My order was being placed.
And the universe always delivers.
I started noticing the voices I’d let run my head.
“You’re so lazy, Melissa.” “Who would ever love you.” “You’re useless.” “You don’t deserve the kids.” “You’re a terrible mother.”
Those words were on repeat, inside my own head. Of course my life needed to change.
I changed the frequency. I said “I love my life, my life is awesome,” and I hunted for the small things that felt good. I wrote everything down. I moved through grief, then acceptance, then gratitude and forgiveness. I didn’t know it yet, but I was moving into the frequency of abundance.
The Universe Delivers
That shift brought a home in the Bay of Islands overlooking the ocean, and a housemate to help with costs. Trips to Sydney, an Usher concert, then a move to Sydney. Life was happy and abundant. I continued working on myself and my mindset.
My soul desired more. I let a job go, I wrote my first book, and I had a baby. We weren’t poor, we just weren’t saving the way I dreamed of. There was no forgetting the dreams I’d written down.
I discovered A Course in Miracles through Gabby Bernstein and Marianne Williamson, and I studied. I desired a new level of abundance. Life delivered again, with a beach house on the Central Coast of New South Wales, one of my favourite places I have ever lived. I had no job, I was homeschooling, we had good friends and a beautiful place to live.
I was in the abundance frequency. Alive in spirit. And still the dreams asked me to listen. My husband said yes to travelling the world, and we booked one-way flights.
One-Way Flights
Our bank balance wasn’t full, but we had business class flights booked for a family of five. We sold everything we owned. We still didn’t own a house or a fancy car. And we set off on the adventure that would teach me the most about the blurred lines between scarcity and abundance.
We arrived in Vietnam in March 2020. Probably no coincidence. We stayed in beachfront villas we couldn’t afford at $300 a night, but could at $1000 a month. We accessed some superannuation, thank you Covid, and trusted we’d be okay.
Late in 2020 our savings dropped below $8k AUD, and I started waking in the night with small panic attacks. I was living in a gorgeous pool villa and quietly, I felt terrified. Then an investment opportunity rolled in. It was a scam, though I didn’t know it yet. We put in a little, then most of the last of our money.
For a while it paid enough to live on. We moved to Phu Quoc and stayed in a four-star resort, capturing sunsets, making Facebook lives. I felt abundant again, with an edge of instability underneath.
Our savings were near zero, and I wondered what would happen if this investment project stopped paying. As we walked down the alleys towards the beach, I would look at the little abandoned concrete flats and think the unthinkable. Would we run out of money, and would we have to live in one of these prison-looking flats to survive?
The payments became inconsistent. My sixth sense said something was off, so I started applying for online work. We stopped buying snacks and ice creams. We were down to our last hundred dollars, then less. I scored an interview, then another, then the job. I water-damaged my laptop and had to borrow money to buy the one I needed to start working.
And then my body relaxed. We could rebuild, start again. Since then, for the most part, I’ve lived in abundance as a conscious choice. Living in this frequency of abundance has taken us from Vietnam to Turkey, Greece, Spain, Bulgaria, back through South East Asia, to New Zealand, all the way to New York City, back to New Zealand, Malaysia, Spain, the UK, across the oceans to the Caribbean, Colombia, Panama, to Japan, and home to Vietnam and beyond. We’ve travelled over 165,000 km in the past six years. And we travel now, where it feels good to go. We travel by following the frequency.
What I Know Now
My tips, after living every version of this:
- Notice the thoughts running in the background. Write them down, then choose what you are willing to accept in your version of abundance.
- Money doesn’t equal abundance. Plenty of rich people are spiritually broke and miserable. Nice-looking lives on the outside don’t make you happy on the inside.
- The goal is the feeling. To feel light, free, carried and supported. To feel grateful more often than not. When you feel that, abundance follows, with or without the money.
- Money won’t come unless you love it. I struggled with this for years, so I fell in love with bitcoin instead. It helped. I’m good with money now, with plenty still to learn.
- If you chase money, it runs away. Money isn’t drawn to desperate energy. It’s drawn to calm and trust. You have to believe, to KNOW, that the universe, God, whatever you believe in, will deliver. And it does. What you focus on expands, so give your worry as little time as you can, or expect more of it.
Ultimately, what you have doesn’t matter. Who you choose to be is everything.
Live what feels good. Find gratitude for everything, even the hard bits. Find every excuse to smile. Find your joy, your peace, your calm. And your dreams will always find you.
Questions People Ask About a Scarcity Mindset
Does money fix a scarcity mindset? No. You can have money and still live in scarcity, and you can have very little and feel abundant. A scarcity mindset is about fear, control and lack, not the number in your account.
What does the abundance frequency feel like? Light, calm and supported. It’s trusting that what you need will arrive, feeling grateful more often than not, and making choices from safety instead of fear.
How do you shift from a scarcity mindset to abundance? For me it started with gratitude and writing down my dreams, not with chasing money. The feeling came first, and the money followed.
If this resonated, here’s where to go next. The practice that turned my life around started on paper, and I wrote about exactly how in How I Manifested My Dream Life on Paper. And if you want the bigger picture of how all of this fits together, I explain What Manifestation Actually Means, and why most people get it wrong.
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