Melissa: You're listening to the Do Something More podcast. And this is episode 34, choosing an Abundance mindset and expressing gratitude.
Melissa: Welcome to the Do Something More Podcast, a service oriented where we highlight the helpers who inspire us all to do something more. I'm your host, Melissa Draper. Thank you so much for being here.
Melissa: Hello and welcome to another episode of the podcast. And today's a solo episode. It's just going to be me sharing just a few thoughts on gratitude and having an abundance mindset. But first of all, I would love to invite any of you that have been listening to the podcast and if you don't already, to follow the podcast on social media. It's on Instagram at Dosomethingmore Podcast and on Facebook at the Do Something More Podcast. So it's a great way to follow and keep up with the podcast because I alert when there's a new episode and you can get information on that. Many times I will do posts kind of diving into one little part of that episode or sharing my own personal experiences with it. Sometimes I share another story that wasn't mentioned on the podcast and I also share inspirational quotes about service, kindness, giving back, all those types of things. So come and follow us on social media and you can get some good inspirational content from me and the podcast in your feed. So just wanted to throw that out there to begin with. But today I wanted to start off sharing a post that I shared on my personal social media pages. So the ones that I have just with people I know and it kind of chuck a nerve. I got lots of comments and feedback on it and so I wanted to share it here as well. And on that post, I had a picture of my kitchen one morning after I'd cleaned it up, after my family had all been out the door for the day. And here's what I said. I said, this is my kitchen. I clean it up and wipe it down each morning after my family has headed out the door. It's not super fancy, but I think it's a nice size. It might be what some people would call a little dated, but it looks cute and put together to me. I'm so thankful for the beautiful home I live in and the wonderful family I get to raise here. I just wanted to throw that out onto these social media squares today. Sometimes this platform can bring a feeling of scarcity, of not having or doing or being enough. I am grateful I get to choose a feeling of abundance in my life instead. I've got plenty and even more to share and that's a beautiful thing. So I shared that. I got quite a few comments back about that idea and those thoughts and it's actually something that idea of an abundance mindset and choosing that mindset is something that I've been working on for quite a little while and something I realized I needed to work on in my life. And first of all, I hope anybody that read that post or that's listening to this if you are remodeling a beautiful kitchen in your home or building a beautiful home, or you are posting pictures of some wonderful travels and vacations you've gotten to do, or things that you've accomplished I'm not saying that nobody should use social media for that. I think it's okay to share good things. This is not about what we're doing or experiencing. This is all about a mindset. And I do think that many times in our world today, it is so easy to get into that scarcity mindset and not just about material things. I have found that I've had a scarcity mindset about time, about always feeling like I never had enough time or I couldn't do this or I couldn't do that, and being able to flip it and say, no, I get to choose what I feel my time with or I'm choosing one thing over another and that's okay. Or maybe I can change this or tweak that, so that I can add the things that I want to add into my life and just changing my mindset about time or another. Example is with relationships. Sometimes we can have scarcity mindset about relationships. I see that in my children. Sometimes even saying I don't have any friends or I never get to do this and flipping that around because that's silly. Of course they have lots of good friends. Of course it's silly for me to think that I have many good friends. And even if my relationships don't always look like somebody else's or something else I've seen, they are good relationships and they bring joy and fulfillment to my life. So that's kind of the idea that I've been working on and that I've realized that you can work on abundance mindset pretty much on anything in your life. And it is, it's all about a mindset. It's not about critiquing what others are or aren't doing or how they're choosing to live their lives. It's about a mindset with ourselves and choosing that no matter where we're at or what's happening, we can choose the abundance mindset. So why am I mentioning all that on a podcast episode? Well, number one is this is the month that we celebrate Thanksgiving here in the United States. And so gratitude is a huge thing that a lot of people talk about or focus on. And I have found that the number one way to help me have an abundance mindset and to get rid of that scarcity mindset is to practice gratitude. And even, I would say, to have some kind of daily ritual of gratitude in your life. I have incorporated this in my life. It's super simple. It does not have to be this huge thing. Even just stopping and pausing for a moment and acknowledging something each day that you are grateful for can make a huge difference. And November is a great month to focus on that and want to talk about that because many people do that. I see people do it publicly, people share privately about their gratitude practices. So that's the first reason I'm mentioning this is if you're wanting to work on having that abundance mindset, I would highly encourage you to come up with some way that you can practice gratitude regularly, maybe even daily in your life. And I don't have to say that alone. There have been studies and things that back that up, that show that having that expression of gratitude can help us with our mental and emotional health, it can help us with forming relationships and how we present ourselves to the world can help with so many things and it can definitely help with that abundance mindset. So that's the first reason I'm mentioning that since this is our first episode in November this year, I wanted to mention that. And the second reason I wanted to say a little something about this abundance mindset and practicing gratitude is it is all connected to service and to giving back and to reaching out and to wanting to help others. If you are in a scarcity mindset, it can be really hard to donate to a cause, even if it's something that's important to you. If you're in a scarcity mindset all the time, about your time, it can be hard to find even just 30 minutes to go and to help someone and to do some good and to look outside of yourself. Having an abundance mindset is a great way to help us think of others and to want to give back. So if that's something you've wanted to do more of, even in the most simplest ways that might be a place that you can start is by having and working on having an abundance mindset. And I have found that true for myself, that when I am practicing and really working at being in that kind of abundance mindset space, it's a lot easier for me to say yes and to help. Now, that doesn't mean that I'm saying we got to say yes to everything or we don't set those boundaries or we run ourselves ragged and crazy. If you've listened to any enough episodes of this podcast, you know that's not what I'm saying. But it does open us up to beautiful opportunities that might be just what we need. It does open us up to have the potential to do something in our life that we've been needing, or to do something that can uniquely use the talents and gifts that we've been giving to serve and to help someone else. And sometimes we won't ever get there if we're stuck in that scarcity mindset that we don't have enough, or we don't have enough time, or we don't have whatever it is. So that's what I found for me. And the second reason I wanted to mention that again, was service and having an abundance mindset go hand in hand. So those are just a few thoughts I wanted to share on the podcast today. That to encourage you to practice choosing an abundance mindset in your life in any area that you may think you need to focus on. Like I said, it doesn't just have to be material things. It's a mindset that we can use almost in any area of our life. And also use the opportunity this month to express gratitude or to establish a regular ritual of expressing gratitude in your life and see if that helps you with establishing that mindset. And then once all those things are running in our life, I found for myself that's when service becomes a fun, awesome, enriching thing in our lives, and when we're doing it from those places of abundance, it's wonderful, it's awesome. We're no longer doing it out of guilt or a thing of having to, or any of those things we truly want to give of ourselves and to help those around us. And to me, that has been an exhilarating experience, too. And one of the things I love most about service is just being able to truly, freely do it from a place of wanting to and wanting to sincerely help and to lift and to assist someone else. So those are my thoughts today on the podcast. Thanks so much for listening to these few ramblings that I wanted to share today. And I just have one more call to action. If you have been enjoying this podcast, if a few of these episodes have brought goodness and inspiration to your life, please get on Apple podcasts and leave us a review. Those reviews help me, as a newer podcaster, bring this content to more of those people that would enjoy listening to these types of things. So thank you for doing that and thank you so much for being here. I'll see you next time.