Natural abundance and a different mindset

natural-abundance-and-a-different-mindset

Standing by the lakeside with the sun on my face and breeze on my cheeks, I watched dragonfly darting across the water.

It’s days like these when the curtain is pulled back, and we get a glimpse of the sheer abundance of the world around us.

Yes, I am aware that I have the privilege of seeing it ‘big screen.’ Yet I know that even gazing at an indoor plant or watching someone, especially when they don’t know we are looking, gives us a sense of the awesomeness that is our natural world.

Truly it is abundant, and we are part of it. And it’s not just for us.

However, we tend to narrow down options and think that we live in a world of scarcity. That even if we are glass-half-full people, that when it’s gone, it’s gone. When actually we can refill the glass.

Life is so much more than the binary options we talk about.

Yet the pressure to find the answer is great, and it has the effect of narrowing our arteries through unhealthy stress. We don’t pump blood as efficiently, and our breath gets shallower. Our brain – in all its wonder and creativity – has less oxygen to work with, and we become less than ourselves.

We forget to play and stop seeing the abundance before and within us.

And we can’t dream big if we think small. Or we get ourselves tied up in trying to do it all in one go.

So pause, and look at the lake. Imagine you are there. And breathe.

The grace of grey

This might seem an odd next step, but this was a wonderful phrase from Jenna Arnold in conversation with Simon Sinek in episode 7 of his A Bit of Optimism podcast.

Instead of just decrying our tendency to be binary – with its attendant winners and losers – Jenna offered a way of seeing the in-between as the grace of grey.

Isn’t that a wonderful phrase?

It is far more inviting than the hard edges we so often create. It is a place of kindness and growth, both for ourselves and each other.

The binary either/or is not abundance. It’s a narrow definition that traps us into making judgements and premature choices, missing the possibilities of creating something new. Something better that needs space to grow, to be nurtured.

I wonder, where do we need to inhabit the grace of grey? And how can we reframe our gaze, so we see the abundance that is there?

What difference would it make?

Thanks for reading

Sue

This week

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