There are more opportunities than you think, I promise.

Abundance vs scarcity — how do you view opportunities?

Besides the freedom to sleep in until whenever, freelancing gave me another gift: an abundant mindset. 

Opportunity, wake up!

How do you look at opportunities? Do you think there’s only a few, and you need to seize every last one? Even if they’re not right for you? 

Illustration: Malvika M

Or do you imagine opportunities like an endless waterfall, as opposed to a finite tub of water — they come and go, and you are at liberty to choose the ones you want. 

More importantly, do you think there are enough opportunities to go around? 

Bear with me for a second, even though I know how this sounds like some motivational hogwash. Whether it’s your personal or professional life, the kind of mindset you create is integral to your success or failure in pretty much everything. 

Abundance vs scarcity

A scarcity mindset builds fear: you’re worried that chances to achieve your goals are limited. This means that you stay in underpaying jobs, take on annoying freelance clients, or even settle for being mistreated because you’re so afraid of losing out on something that you probably don’t even need. 

Building an abundant mindset, on the other hand, is freeing. You believe that there are more opportunities than you could possibly need — you have the advantage of choice. If you’re overworked and underpaid, you can ask for a raise, set boundaries, or look for another job. If you freelance, you can choose your clients with care and pass on extra work to other freelancers, secure in the knowledge that work is abundant.

There are millions of freelancers — what makes me think people will want to hire me? Sure, I write well. But millions write better. 

In the same vein, there are millions of newsletters. Why would I start one? Who’s going to read it? (Thank YOU!)

What a Facebook group taught me

I shifted my mindset after joining a Facebook group for freelance writers about six months before I even quit my job to begin freelancing. It wasn’t even my plan (more on that in another issue, though). 

I was a silent spectator for a long time, but I wasn’t blind to the way these writers were helping each other — even though they were technically each other’s competitors! It wasn’t even like people were selling courses or email funnels before you could get their valuable advice. 

They were doing it out of the kindness of their heart and the desire to see others prosper. When I began interacting, they welcomed me and shared so many helpful resources. 

The actions taken due to an abundance mindset compound: sharing information levels the playing field, useful rates advice ensures that everyone sets similar prices — that way, companies don’t underpay us because we’re freelancers. I’ve also noticed that most of the group is filled with women — so they push each other up in a male-dominated world. 

That freelance writing group has taught me many lessons — both actual and metaphorical. In the freelance (writing) world, people think of opportunities as a pie. You’re worried that you might not get a slice. But this writer breaks down that scarcity mindset and tells you to think of opportunities as multiple pies, I say, maybe even cakes. You can pivot and grow without feeling like you’re going to lose out. It also makes asking for help and giving it much easier. 

The abundance mindset sounds hokey — it sounds like one of those “believe in yourself” mantras, but it actually helped me view myself and my work more positively. When I first began freelancing, I took on pretty much every client and project — it cost me a lot of time, effort, and money. My friends heard me moaning about toxic clients for months before I put a stop to it by forcing myself to believe that there were better opportunities out there and I would get them (I did). 

A glass half-full 

A scarcity mindset doesn’t let you dream bigger — you’re constantly comparing yourself to your peers, feeling both panicked and horrible about your own situation.  It’s exacerbated by the fact that competitive exams and coaching classes ingrained a scarcity mindset quite early on for most of us in India. We grew up fighting for resources, and that mentality has shaped the way we live and work today. 

As much as I loathe LinkedIn, the few gems that pop through are by the people who are genuinely sharing something helpful. It’s easy to spot their sincerity — they have nothing to gain from helping you. Depending on the scarcity or abundance mindset you develop, they have nothing to lose either. 

Giving more of what you want is the first step to building an abundance mindset. An abundance mindset isn’t just about work — it affects how you think of people and vice versa. If you’re not constantly competing with your peers, you can build a stronger relationship that might lead to opportunities you wouldn’t have discovered otherwise. 

If you need to start building an abundance mindset thinking about what you’ll eventually gain, go for it. Fake it till you make it, my friend.

If you want a simpler way to look at this: the glass is always half-full. Start with that, and soon you’ll see that there are, in fact, plenty of glasses of water ready to quench your thirst once you stop fixating on the first one. 

Getting out of that zero-sum way of looking at life makes you happier and better equipped to deal with success and failure in the long run. Doesn’t that sound nice? 

See you next week,

Nia

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Some more fun things:

• The cute little illustration you saw was created by the one and only, Malvika M — check out her Insta to see some more amazing work! ✨

• An abundance mindset isn’t just for work — you can build one to navigate dating & finding your SO. 🤯

• Did you know that a lot of the maps we studied were really, really off? Here’s a cool video and an even cooler gif. 🗺️

• New Music Friday! 🎵 Here’s what I’m listening to today (and until the end of time) + an article about why we find listening to a new song more difficult than playing our favourite ones on a loop. 🧠

• Miss the feeling of working out other people? 💻 This neat little website will make you feel like you’re working in a cosy little cafe.☕ Plus, you can add rain or sunshine to customize your day! You gotta make your own tea/coffee though. 

• Here’s a little playlist that NASA made for Opportunity, the Mars rover, in the hopes that she’ll wake up and talk to us again. 

• Smol thank you, big heart: We had a 70% open rate (!!!) for the first issue of this newsletter! 💌 Thank you to everyone who read & shared feedback. If you tell me what you thought about this one, I’ll send you a cute bts/puppy/cat/ gif — your choice! 💜