I grew up in a home of well-intentioned people who were anxious because there was never enough: never enough money for what we wanted to do, never enough time to be spontaneous, never enough forgiveness for when we did something wrong, and never enough love so that it overshadowed everything else. My family’s default setting was on scarcity.

What’s dangerous about this default setting is that not having enough isolates you, causing your fears to surface, where everything around you is overwhelmingly huge. You feel that everything is “too big” and that you do not have enough to do what is called for. Internalizing this set of understandings makes it nearly impossible to initiate change or get beyond yourself to take a risk.  This is because risk represents uncertainty. And uncertainty is frightening for someone who never has enough, causing you to choose to retreat further into a place of loneliness, where you forget who you are, what you are capable of doing, what you really want, and what you have always had.  Scarcity denies you and others around you of your ability to give the way the Lord made us capable of giving.

It has taken me a long time to understand that the key to leaving this self-isolated retreat of never having enough is to give.  Giving is the best weapon against fear. Because once I start to give, fear dissipates. Actively giving puts me in a position where I do not have to take anymore. The more I actively give, the more I have to give.

Marti says it is a matter of what I focus on—focus on others or focus on myself—and she proved it. She handed me a cup of coffee and said she could pretty much guarantee I would spill it. She added, “Don’t spill the coffee!”

“Ha,” I said, “I have carried coffee in a cup without spilling since college. Intent on proving her wrong, I carried the cup more carefully, saying to myself, “Don’t spill the coffee.” The coffee splashed from one side of the cup to the other until it sloshed out and spilled on the floor.

Very pleased with herself, she pointed out that if I had focused on where I was going instead of not spilling the coffee, chances are the floor would have remained dry.

Which reminds me of the story we all have heard about how someone’s car skids out of control and hits the only tree for miles around. Why? because the poor driver focused on where he did not want to go, as in “I do not want to hit the tree!” instead of where he wanted to go, which was to steer past the tree.

I invite you to observe yourself honestly and without judgment, as I am trying to do.  If we are unaware of our mindset, then we cannot do anything to change it. We will hit the tree or spill the coffee every time.

The good news is that we all maintain the capacity to shift our mindset and change the way we think about ourselves and the world around us.

For me, it is taking a long time to change my default setting to where I want to go — and where I want to go is away from my default scarcity mindset setting to a life of giving.

Actively giving is causing me to stand taller today. No more the gently spoken Clark Kent school of mild manners; I point my finger first at myself, adjust my default setting to giving, and then start laughing because there is always “more where that came from.”  Seconds later, I catch others in the act of graciously giving, seconds before they become aware of it. This is, for me, my greatest joy in giving.