Dan Sullivan: Do You Live In The Abundance Neighborhood Or The Scarcity Neighborhood?

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A couple of weeks ago, Babs and I visited SoHo in New York. It is such a vibrant mish-mash of chain stores, entrepreneurial shops, independent bookstores, and great restaurants to hang out in. It feels like anything is possible there.

A neighborhood is made up of lots of different things, and underpinning all of them is a shared set of attitudes — which strikes me as a great metaphor for our thinking as entrepreneurs: Do you live in the good part of town or the bad part?

The good part of town is The Abundance Neighborhood. Here, you will find people who share three important qualities. They are:

1. Grateful – They appreciate what they have.
2. Creative – They put things together that don’t logically belong together, and this creates something new.
3. Cooperative – There’s an explosive effect when they get together.

The bad part of town is The Scarcity Neighborhood. Here, people are fixated on three negative preoccupations:

1. Envy of what other people have.
2. Guilt about what they have and others don’t.
3. Anger about what other people are doing in the world.

If you want to live in The Abundance Neighborhood and enjoy all the benefits of being in that place, you have two choices to make:

The first is who you are being: Keep expanding the number of things you are grateful for and the number of people you express your gratitude to. This quickly takes on a powerful momentum.

The second choice is about who you hang out with: If your life is going to support your success, you need people around you who are also committed to constantly growing, appreciating their experiences, and expanding their generosity.

You can have extraordinary skills and achievements yet still have a Scarcity Neighborhood mindset. For instance, I have heard countless entrepreneurs say, “I can’t trust people.” I just nod and say,“Well, that’s a thought.” It’s a thought that warrants a second look, and when you use the “neighborhoods” analogy as a filter, you can immediately see which side of the tracks a particular thought puts you on — and immediately upgrade that thought if you need to.

If you want to make a breakthrough in any area, move to where people have Abundance Neighborhood qualities and are looking to make their own breakthroughs. When in doubt, be grateful! Gratitude will always give you a lift to the part of town where good things are happening.