Scarcity Mindset

Rig life and the sky sharing its beauty

I’m coming to terms with my scarcity mindset when it comes to money.

Let me tell you more about this.

The other day, I woke up to a little voice saying “you need to get a job right now” and it stressed me out.

The whole day there was this weight with me, reminding me that I have no money coming in (not correct little voice, there’s EI!). I’ve had a job since I was 16 so this whole ‘not having a paycheque’ is weird to me. It causes uneasiness and anxiety because WHAT IF MONEY NEVER COMES IN??

Yes, it yells at me.

Rather than following the voice down that dark hole, I took time to reflect on where these thoughts were coming from. It all came back to scarcity.

When money isn’t coming in and when I need to withdraw from my savings, that money is now getting scarce. Is it gone? No, but it’s not where it was 6 months ago. I realized that scarcity has been a theme in a lot of my work experiences.

At 16, I got my first job and worked steadily throughout high school. In university, I worked during the summer, living in cities in Alberta where I knew no one just to make extra money to pay down my student loan.

After finishing my chemical engineering degree, I took a field job that warned us during our first week that we would miss out on everything – holidays, birthdays, weddings, etc. There was travel all around western Canada and the “work hard, play hard” mentality – it wasn’t uncommon for people to glorify working 300 days in the calendar year. Don’t get me wrong, you get paid well to give up parts of your life but it gets to be overwhelming.

During my MBA, I would take any job opportunity that sounded interesting just to have money coming in and after completing the program, I was in a rotation position based in Oklahoma – for 20 days I was in Oklahoma and 10 days I was back in Calgary.

I share all of this because it’s exhausting.

The hustle mentality is exhausting.

Through these experiences, I’ve become a big advocate of money shouldn’t be worth your life. I do fully acknowledge the privilege of being able to say that however I think it’s worth analyzing – are you working as much as you are because you must or because that little voice is telling you there isn’t enough?