This is an excerpt from the book, The Soul of Money, by Lynne Twist. More about her, the book and her work can be found at www.soulofmoney.org.

For me, and for many of us, our first waking thought of the day is, “I didn’t get enough sleep.” The next one is “I don’t have enough enough time.” Whether true or not, that thought of not enough occurs to us automatically before we even think to question or examine it. We spend most of the hours and the days of our lives hearing, explaining, complaining, or worrying about what we don’t have enough of. We don’t have enough time. We don’t have enough rest. We don’t have enough exercise. We don’t have enough work. We don’t have enough profits. We don’t have enough power. We don’t have enough wilderness. We don’t have enough weekends. Of course we don’t have enough money – ever. We’re not thin enough, we’re not smart enough, we’re not pretty enough or fit enough or educated or successful enough, or rich enough – ever. . .

This mantra of not enough carries the day and becomes a kind of default setting for our thinking about everything, from the cash in our pocket to the people we love or the value of our own lives. What begins as a simple expression of the hurried life, or even the challenged life, grows into the great justification for an unfulfilled life. It becomes the reason we can’t have what we want or be who we want to be. It becomes the reason we can’t accomplish the goals we set for ourselves, the reason our dreams can’t come true, or the reason other people disappoint us, the reason we compromise our integrity, give up on ourselves or write off others. . .

It is not even that we necessarily experience a lack of something, but that scarcity as a chronic sense of inadequacy about life becomes the very place from which we think and act and live in the world. It shapes our deepest sense of ourselves, and becomes the lens through which we experience life. Through that lens our expectations, our behavior, and their consequences become a self-fulfilling prophesy of inadequacy, lack, and dissatisfaction.

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