200 | Nature or Nurture?

A scarcity mindset is hard to shake, because nature and nurture allow it to be ingrained from the start or re-introduced in every season of life.

One by nature might look like...

• Never quite figuring out how to spend less than you make.
• Or using debt as a perpetual bridge to "when it will be easier to save".
• Or cycling through jobs without ever compounding your skills enough to reap real rewards.
• Or "saving money" with cheap tipping habits.
• Or stressing over hundreds of $10 purchases while ignoring a couple $1,000 decisions.

While one by nurture might look like...

• Believing taxes are the government "taking your money from you".
• Or deferring generosity "until you have enough income to give away".
• Or expanding your lifestyle with every raise.
• Or upgrading for more square feet every time you "outgrow" your home.
• Or accumulating so much that all your effort and attention transitions to paranoid preservation.

You don't win by avoiding the mindset - that's impossible because you can't change nature, and nurture is so darn persistent.

You win by recognizing it and then pushing back on it again and again and again.

Of course, that sounds a lot like refining a relationship.