personal development on Scarcity

Too many people hear the word capacity and assume it’s a limitation. They assume their capacity is set—especially if they’re beyond a certain age. People give up on the idea that their capacity or the...

Nick believed his purpose was to speak to audiences, to become a motivational speaker, yet he had no experience, no resources, and no invitations. He decided to begin calling schools and offering to s...

God of our hearts, Lord of nations and Creator of worlds; Father, Son and Holy Spirit: When You redeemed us and called us each by name, You made us a family—united by your love and grace. Across towns...

If you’re grateful, you’re not fearful, and if you’re not fearful, you’re not violent. If you’re grateful, you act out of a sense of enough and not of a sense of scarcity, and you are willing to share...

Anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination.

For all our time and attention, no matter how carefully we curate our stuff or how much we might enjoy ourselves along the way, we’re all merely stocking and staging someone else’s opportunity for bar...

There is an invisible pattern in the design of deprivation: deprivation draws out desire. Absence heightens it. And the more heightened the desire, the greater our satisfaction will ultimately be. It ...

When we find worth by our affluence, it promises rest but brings stress, increasing demands, and a greater devotion to a god that will never love us and always forsake us.

Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.

Lack of time is actually lack of priorities.

Hence, whatever certain people have in superabundance is due, by natural law, to the purpose of succoring the poor.

While American society is rich in goods, it is extremely time-poor. Many societies in the two-thirds world, by contrast, are poor in material possessions, by our standards, but they are rich in time. ...

Excellent things are as difficult as they are rare.

There is always a heavy demand for fresh mediocrity. In every generation the least cultivated taste has the largest appetite.

There are two ways to get enough: One is to accumulate more and more, the other is to desire less.

The desperate need today is not for a greater number of intelligent people, or gifted people, but for deep people.

Unfortunately, there seems to be far more opportunity out there than ability.... We should remember that good fortune often happens when opportunity meets with preparation.

Unfortunately, there seems to be far more opportunity out there than ability.... We should remember that good fortune often happens when opportunity meets with preparation.

Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants.

Unable to value, unable to enjoy.

It is not good to be too free. It is not good to have all one needs.

Smartphones make it possible for the attention economy to target our little attention gaps as we transition between tasks and duties. Our attention may be slightly elastic enough to fill up every empt...

All fear stems from either ‘I am not enough’ or ‘I don’t have enough.’

Moments of more may leave us with lives of less.

In his highly book, Inside Job , Stephen W. Smith shares the importance of finding balance, even as life seems to pull us in different directions: Overextending yourself is stretching your physic...

Gratitude is riches. Complaint is poverty.

The impulse to keep to yourself what you have learned is not only shameful, it is destructive. Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you. You open your safe and find ashes.

“Here’s the thing about wishes, the more you have, the more you want.”

How little we see! What we do see depends mainly on what we look for.

Our time is calibrated to a notion of efficiency that, in a single gesture, both demonizes waiting and preys on it as the opportune moment to occupy our attention.