Excuse Me, Your Abundance Of Scarcity Is Showing

Scarcity mentality can limit the growth of your practice, your career and life. But it can sometimes be hard to recognise in your own life. So in this episode, Jo shares 10 surprising ways that she has experienced in her own life or in the lives of the health professionals she works with.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

If you know you need more support, please visit my website at https://jomuirhead.com

TRANSCRIPT:

Welcome back to the Entrepreneurial Clinician Podcast. I am your host, Jo Muirhead, and I am here with my second cup of coffee of the day. I have spent the last hour preparing to record this podcast. So I’m a bundle of nerves. I’ve got fast speech happening, but the coffee’s hot. My room is well lit, my beautiful plant is behind me. All is good in the world.

This podcast episode today is titled, your Abundance of Scarcity is showing because we need to talk about this thing. How many of us wanna exist? Wanna live from a place of abundance, but we actually struggle with scarcity? Have you ever worked out how hard it is to stay in a mindset, in an attitude, in a lifestyle of abundance? Well, I’ve had an epiphany around this over the last couple of weeks and I wanna share it with you because if we are genuinely interested in wanting to make a change in the way we are perceived as leaders in the community, the way we are remunerated, the way we are thought of the way we think about ourselves, then it starts here.

It starts with us learning how scarcity is turning up for us every single day. And in the next episode, I’m gonna share with you how we’re gonna break those shackles off so that we can actually lead from the front from a place of knowing that there’s more than enough.

So when you think about scarcity, you actually shrink. When you go into a scarce frame of mind or you think there’s not enough money, you start to shrink, you fall back, you grab control, you panic, and you ruminate. Am I right? You see they’re going, yes, Jo, that’s me. Yes Jo, that’s me. Scarcity makes us small. So if you get a bill that you weren’t expecting, say you know a tax bill that you weren’t expecting, and you go to your bank account and you go, I don’t have the money to pay that bill, you automatically shrink. You automatically start thinking about all the things you can no longer do or have or desire. If you go through a period in your year where your referrals fall away, say summer in Australia or in the USA or in Europe or anywhere where it’s summer, you automatically start to think, I can’t afford to do the things I want to do. You shrink back, you go small.

But abundance on the other hand, makes us think of spaciousness. It makes us think of grace and graciousness. We get to be graciously spacious When we come from a mindset and attitude and a lifestyle of abundance. It is quite literally overflowing. As in there is not enough space to hold all the stuff, not enough space, too much overflowing. It means there’s no more room left and, and it turns up with a posture of grace and ease. It’s beautiful. A lot of people describe it as being in flow, but it’s very, very difficult for us to be in a space, in a place, in a posture of abundance. When you are used to reacting to scarcity. We often don’t like feeling scarce. We wanna make it go away. It’s limiting. It stifles our creativity and it really does cause us to become stressed and disempowered.

But hang on, I wanna put some insight here and explain to you how we got here. Cause it’s not your fault. It really isn’t your fault. You didn’t cause this for yourself. I’m gonna share with you how you can break out of it, but you didn’t do this to yourself. So we know that clinicians, health professionals, we are excellent risk managers. We are realistic while being optimistic for our clients, but we also know the worst about humanity.

So think about what turns up in your clinic every day or your health business every day. I’m gonna give you an example of a young man that I was working with in my private practice Purple Co. So as a young man in his early twenties, he’s now living in a wheelchair, being a pedestrian that was knocked down on a pedestrian crossing. So nothing was his fault. He was doing the right thing and he’s now got a high level quadriplegic spinal cord injury. So since that accident, life got really hard. He was at university, he was studying away. He wanted to go and create amazing medical devices for humans to have a better quality of life. So he had purpose, he had joy, he had a real reason to get out of bed every day. Now when he works with us or when he came to see me and we talked about what other things he wanted to do with his life, he, the things that would turn up in the room for him were climate change. He was terrified about climate change because as somebody who now uses a power wheelchair to get around the world, he felt like he couldn’t keep himself safe. Politics and racism here in Australia that really upset him. He did not know where he, as a person of colour now as a person with a significant disability, was able to fit into the landscape of the community of Australia. It was something that was never, ever thought about before. He was now thinking about before he left the house, how am I getting somewhere and can I get outta the car when I get there? Can I get into the building when I get there? It was easier for him at some stages to not go out because he didn’t wanna have to think about all of that stuff. Then we have the whole concept of ableism and all the wonderful people who turned up telling him how inspired they were by him and could he speak to their community group or their school or what have you. And he was just like, I don’t like this. I don’t wanna do this. Do I have to say yes to this? The frustration about access and equity to services access is still a huge issue. The issue for anybody using a power chair it’s one of the benefits of us working from home, especially as a rehabilitation counsellor cause I don’t have to help employers overcome the hurdle of somebody being in a wheelchair.

So this client’s experience fear and scarcity and you’re all listening to that and you’re going, of course that makes sense. That makes sense, that makes sense. Of course that’s gonna turn up in your rooms, Jo. Yeah, I get that. I know that this is gonna turn up in my room, but if I’m seeing four, five, maybe eight clients a day, then this scarcity message is constantly being reinforced for me. It’s no longer conscious, it’s habitual. It’s my frame of reference, it’s my culture, it’s our socialisation and as a collective, it’s our collective experience as health professionals.

So is it any wonder that we struggle to cultivate a mindset of abundance? No. So stop blaming yourself. Stop trying to make it work. Stop trying to work harder at it. Let me help you shift some more of your unhelpful thinking so that we can create the way for the new way of thinking. So do not be mistaken, however, that this is not permission for you to do nothing and fatalistically just accept the status quo, right? I mean, you could press stop and don’t engage anymore. But if you’re gonna keep listening, which I’m assuming you are, then you wanna know that there’s a way out of this. You know, that you would fight very hard to help your client navigate their own thoughts and actions. Sometimes we fight harder than our clients, right? Well it’s time that you started to put that same fierceness towards yourself. But before you tune out thinking I’ve heard all this before, it’s gonna be more fufu, wawa, which means you don’t know me.

I wanna shed some new light on how this scarcity stuff is actually turning up for health professionals. Because you might be sitting there going, I’ve got this nailed Jo, I’ve got this sorted cause I used to be you. I used to think like that until somebody in my world was very important to me. Help me see, heck Jo, look at how scarcity turned up for you again today.

So I’ve got 10 ways, so this could be long. I’ve got 10 ways that I am seeing scarcity turn up either for myself or for the health professionals that I engage with. Or for those of you, I am stalking, I mean watching on social media.

But before we get onto that, I just wanna ask another question. Does it feel like every private practice coach or consultant is talking about abundance? Are you like, oh my god, there’s another private practice coach talking about abundance on their podcast. This must be the thing that they do. It’s a bait and switch. No, that’s not what we are doing. It’s because we know how big of a deal this is. We all have to talk about it because most of us don’t listen the first time we hear it. And if we all don’t talk about it, then nothing’s going to change. It is that big of a deal. If you genuinely wanna change how you’re turning up, how you’re experiencing life, the growth of your private practice, the growth of your health business, the growth of your family, the growth of yourself, if you genuinely want to become the human being that you’ve always desired to become, then this is something that you need to pay attention to. This mindset around abundance is absolutely necessary for you to have the business and career, the life that serves all that you want it to be.

So number two, here I go with my list of 10 things. So this will confuse the heck out of you linear thinkers out there cause I’ve gone one and two and now I’m about to start at one again. So here are the 10 things, 10 ways that I see scarcity showing up. Now this is not an exhaustive list. I did not wanna create a four hour podcast episode for you today, but I do know that some of this is gonna sting. What I do need you to know is that none of you who are thinking that this is a personal attack have been personally attacked. This is a collective of stories that I’ve told myself, that I’ve experienced, that I’ve witnessed. No one person can be identified from anything that is going to be said over the next little while.

So the first place that I can see scarcity turning up every single day at the moment is recruitment. We hear things like there is no decent talent, no one wants to work hard. This current generation are all entitled. Therefore I will see all the clients and about the fact that I can’t find the talent when the truth is you won’t actually invest in learning how to lead or build a culture or build an alternative way to serve the clients that are knocking on your door so that you actually don’t need to lead a team of clinicians if you can’t find the right talent. And you keep telling yourself that there’s a shortage of talent and that’s why your business can’t grow. Dear health professional. The problem is you.

The second way I see scarcity turning up for health professionals, fierce independence, fierce independence, go something like this: Hey Jo, my amazing coach, you’ve been awesome and you helped me get out of that really big hole before I met you. I wasn’t sleeping at night, my income was terrible, I was getting myself further, further into debt and I felt like a failure. You got me outta that hole. Thank you so much. I love having you in my world, but I don’t wanna become dependent on you. So I now need to stop coaching with you and I’m going to go and do this by myself. Coaches are great at helping you in a crisis, but a coach comes into their own and becomes an exceptionally valuable resource when they take you from great to places you didn’t even know was possible.

The third way scarcity is showing up for us wonderful health professionals is in our incredibly unrealistic expectations of each other, resources, services, and the world around us. For example, I want a virtual assistant who can read my mind, manage my schedule, create all of my content, organise speaking gigs for me, handle all my personal administration, and I only want to pay $7 an hour and I want them on an ad hoc hourly basis cause I don’t know if I can trust them. Number one, you don’t want a virtual assistant, you actually need an executive assistant or a business manager. Very different skill set. Let’s be clear about that. Oh, that’s cool Jo. If I need a business manager or an executive assistant, how do I go get one? Well, the first thing I need to let you know, dear client asking the question, is that they will wanna be on a monthly retainer and you are looking at a minimum of $1,500 a month package for about, you know, 20 hours a week prospective client or client goes, I can’t afford that, but I can find a BA for $7 an hour. This is where Jo goes, where is this magical unicorn person? Because I need to tell them that they’re worth a heck of a lot more than $7 an hour. 10 years ago, 12 years ago when I started using our offshore virtual assistance, I was paying around $7 US an hour. And it was terrible. It was a horrible experience because I had not learned how to work with people. So we have incredibly unrealistic expectations of offshore support of billing companies. But when we have the virtual assistance of business managers, of coaches of marketing companies, of SEO companies, of anything that we don’t have the skill set in, we have incredibly unrealistic expectations – oh yeah, I just said that out loud. Your scarcity is turning up in your incredibly unrealistic expectations of the other professionals you need to have in your world.

Number four, the next place that way scarcity is turning up is in resentment. Your scarcity is being amplified when you become resentful. For example, you may pay for one session with a coach just one, one session. I just want one session with your coach. You might pay $500 a thousand dollars and somehow you expect that that one session, that’s 45 minutes to 60 minutes, that little bit of money and time investment, they’re gonna give you everything you need to do something you’ve never done before. Cause apparently that’s what we can do. They might have something to do with the unrealistic expectations I just spoke about, but anyhow, but then what tends to happen is your project fails or your event doesn’t get the traction that you want or your product doesn’t launch or you can’t find the people to buy. You spent all this time creating an amazing product, but nobody told you that you need to market said product. Then you get angry and bitter and resentful and you start telling everybody how much you have been let down and hurt and misled and you can’t trust that person. And really what you needed to do was invest in a coach or a consultant who can implement with you to get you to your goal seriously.

Number five, you actually have a belief in lack. You don’t like it, you pretend it’s not there. And I have a belief in lack, it is deep-rooted, thank you, family of origin, and my grandparents and my great-grandparents. That’s how far back I have traced my belief in lack. This is where you have an automatic reaction that says there’s not enough. I’m not enough. For example, you won’t share the good stuff that others are doing because you’re scared that they will get the clients and you won’t. You won’t release your amazing course or content into the world because you’re scared someone’s going to steal your IP. Please. Now, I’m not saying don’t be wise. I’m not saying don’t protect yourself. I’m not saying don’t protect your intellectual property, but if you are sitting on something that you know could help hundreds and thousands of people because you haven’t got the money to be able to go and protect your IP, then seriously, I have to question your motives here.

We have far more belief in lack than we do in abundance. I can assure you of this. And now by now I’m expecting some of you are going, Ooh, this hurts. I’m possibly even triggering some of you. I don’t mean to be painful, I don’t mean to point the finger at you. In fact, I don’t even know who you are right now. But what I do know is if we as a collective, as you, as an individual who creates us as a collective, do not get this right, we are not going to see the changes in advancements in healthcare and community care that we say that we want.

So number six, one of my personal favourites of how scarcity likes to turn up for me is comparisonitis, comparing ourselves to others. Every time you compare your circumstances to another person, you are reinforcing your feelings of inadequacy. Dear Jo, every single time I compare my circumstances to another person, I am reinforcing my own feelings of inadequacy. This is a shore fire way to go from abundance to scarcity flatlining. So I’m gonna have a very vulnerable moment with you here and give you something very personal about me, after I had that mouthful of cold coffee. So I launched a podcast this year, yay! You’re listening to it, but it’s not the only podcast on the market. Have you noticed that? So I see someone like Patrick Cale put out a podcast episode. I see all the comments that he gets. I see all the interaction that he gets and I go, I must suck. I am an avid fan of Cindy Doyle’s code for couples podcast. Got nothing to do with practice building and everything to do with law enforcement relationships, which I happen to know very little about. But I love her podcast. I have learned so much about relationships just from listening to her podcast. I see all the interaction she gets. I see all of the shares that she gets, the people she gets. I know Cindy is being invited to speak at some amazing events and is being able to influence her people in incredible ways. And I go, well, I’m not there. I must suck. And then after I launched my podcast, my dear friend Ernesto launched his own and he got way more downloads than I did with his first podcast release. And I saw all the interaction and all the support and I looked at his numbers cause he was sharing his numbers cause that’s what we do. And I went, I must suck. So then I got into the headspace of they’re better than me. I suck. Nobody wants another podcast. Nobody wants a podcast for me. Who wants to sit around and listen to me? Well, you’re here. I have something to say. I’m not any of those people. And if I can help another person stay working as a health professional so that they can serve the people that they need to serve so they can get the healthcare that they need and that health professional can live a life of abundance, be vibrant, be full of life in vigour, then I am happy to keep releasing podcast episodes.

Number seven, the seventh way I have noticed that health professionals love to keep themselves in the place of scarcity is the need to be right. How to kill your abundance mindset fast. You justify yourself, you justify your actions. You find all the emails and the email chain and you go, there you go, I already sent it to you. There you go. We’ve already had this discussion. You are constantly using your precious energy to prove you are right and correct. Now, leaders of private practice, owners of health businesses, I’m gonna call you out a bit here right now because you do this a lot <laugh>. And this is an outstanding way for you to kill the culture in your business, lose your staff, and then reinforce for yourself that you can’t get quality staff, that nobody wants to work hard. Reinforcing that the only way to get anything done is for you to do it yourself. Reinforcing your own scarcity mindset. Stop trying to prove that you’re right and start looking for ways you can serve.

Number eight, scarcity turns up as fear of rejection. So you don’t ask for help, you don’t market yourself. You won’t attend an event or for God forbid, you won’t put in an application to speak at a conference because you just want to be asked. Because when you are asked, you are not going to be rejected. You might then spend a heap of money on a lawyer to write an employment contract with an airtight non-compete clause. Because of this, we don’t wanna be rejected, we want, and we don’t wanna be wrong, we wanna be right. But let’s face it, most non-compete clauses are unable to be enforced because of all the laws that it impacts. Scarcity turns up as a fear of rejection.

Number nine, scarcity turns up as a need for more mentality. I need more, I need more. I need more. When I have $10,000 months, then I’ll get a coach. Honey, you need a coach to get yourself to $10,000 months. When I have more energy, then I’ll start creating products. Honey, chances are you are exhausted because you’re seeing so many people. Let me help you create the products to replace the income so that you can actually start breathing again. When I have a better team, then I’ll stop doing everything. Honey, you actually need to start empowering your team, which means you’re gonna have to let some people make mistakes. You’re going to need to learn to delegate and you actually need to learn how to become a leader. When my ADHD meds work, then I’ll get a personal assistant. If you have a neuro divergent brain, people are your best asset. People are my best asset. I’m a neurotypical brain. I don’t have ADHD, but I have three admin support people. Ha, you, my dear friend, are not expensive. This is what it takes to be a health professional who gives people back their lives while you get to live a life that you love.

And number 10, where scarcity is turning up is in the fear of being judged. Seth Godin in his book, Tribes, writes ‘what people are afraid of isn’t failure, it’s blame, it’s criticism, aka it’s judgement’. Have you ever witnessed health professionals engaging with each other in Facebook groups? We are awesome at judgement. We are really, really good at judging each other seriously. This disappoints me so much because if our prospective clients saw how we treated, we treated each other, they would not seek us out for help. They just wouldn’t. So we have this incredible fear of being judged. So how this has been turning out for me with clients and prospective clients is I will ask them why they haven’t started marketing a service or a new product or a new thing or a new way of doing treatment and therapy. And they say, what will my peers say? Then my question is, are you marketing to your peers? Do you actually want a business full of your clients who are actually your peers? More often than not, the answer is no. Then my response is, well then who the heck cares? Because your peers are not your market. Yeah, they’re gonna judge you. They’re probably gonna throw words around like that’s unprofessional and that’s unethical. You need to know with every sense of integrity and congruence in yourself. But what you are doing is not unethical and unprofessional. So you don’t go to market or share how you can help in this world. So you reinforce the idea that there just aren’t enough clients because you’re not actually telling them that you’re available. You reinforce your belief in lack, thus reinforcing the belief that health professionals can’t make decent money. So you leave the profession probably with student debt to go get a job where you feel like you’ve sold your soul. Then you start to believe that you are not good enough. Heavy, yes, necessary discussion. Absolutely.

So the only way we can step into a lifestyle of abundance is when what we say we want dictates how we behave in health professionals speak. Stop acting in ways that are incongruent with what you say you want. How Jo, how? Well guess what? You get to tune into another podcast episode where I’m actually going to share with you how to get the breakthroughs in abundance that you are longing for. We’re gonna break off this mindset of scarcity.

Now, it’s probably not gonna happen in two podcast episodes, which is awesome because I’ve got communities for you to join. So the first place you can come is over on Facebook and you can enjoy us having the discussions in the Future Proofing Health Professionals Facebook group.

But if you want some real time with me, some intensive ways to look at this, some resources, and to be in a community where people genuinely have your best interests at heart, then you need to join You The Entrepreneurial Clinician, which is a paid membership community. It’s not a lot of money, but it’s where you are gonna go to get the support you need to break off the shackles of your scarcity mindset.

So I’m looking forward to hearing from you in the future proofing Facebook community or over in the You The Entrepreneurial Clinician community.

Until next episode, go be your awesome self.