What is most personal is most general. – Carl Rogers, American Psychologist
A chedil ke uoi chebuul. Ak meral chebuul. Aki meral di mechesang meng diak a temed el____. A classic scarcity mentality resonating throughout the land.
Scarcity is a mentality of the never-enough problem. I am never good enough. I never have enough money, not perfect enough, and never thin enough. Never successful enough. Never smart enough or certain enough. Never extraordinary enough. It sounds narcissistic to me. You never see yourself as enough human being. They all come from ego that compares, compete, outperform and always trying to prove, please, perfect, and compete. Ego has very little tolerance for discomfort or self-reflection. Ego denies her story. 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… Lynne Twist writes, “This internal condition of scarcity, this mind-set of scarcity, lives at the very heart of our jealousies, our greed, our prejudice and our arguments with life”. (In her book “The Soul of Money” she refers to scarcity as the “great lie.”)
The scarcity mentality is also from jealous-haters and jealous-lovers. I define jealous-haters as what Former Senator Diaz termed as “Kesuar Mentality.” When one is doing well may reflect what you wished for yourself but didn’t attain so you begin to pull them down. It’s resentment. Resentment is the most toxic emotion in human beings. Resentment starts to criticize with intent to pull one down as they try their best to climb out of mediocrity, the proverbial bucket.
Jealous-lovers are just so insecure and self-absorbed. They live in fear of not good enough. They’re always suspicious that another person is getting more attention than they. It is chaos at its best – like the kesuar (s) in the bucket. There’s no peace within so there’s no peace in the bucket. It begins with you and me individually, not collectively.
When I faced my jealousies of hate and love, it was extremely hard because I had to enter my story. It was cold and dangerous. It feels like death. My body trembled and my innerworld was shaking with fear and shame. OMG!!! What will people say? The question “What made you this way?” is in our story of hurt. Brene Brown, a social scientist, writes, “Walking into our stories of hurt is like walking into the dark cave in Yoda’s swamp (in the “Empire Strikes Back”). Yoda is training Luke to find inner peace saying “In you must go.” When Luke asks what’s in the cave, Yoda explains, “Only what you take with you.” We step into our dark caves with our resentments, anger, aggression, shame shaking with fear.
The most difficult part of our stories is always what we bring to them – what we make up about who we are and how we are perceived by others. Yes, maybe we lost our job, screwed up our marriage, but what makes the story so painful is what we tell ourselves about our own self-worth and value.
Owning our stories means reckoning with our feelings and grumbling with our dark emotions- fear, anger, hate, shame, and blame. It’s not easy but the alternative – denying our stories and disengaging from our emotion – means choosing to live our entire lives in the dark.
When we decide to own our stories and live our truth, we bring our light to the darkness. We find our true self. It is what John Bradshaw calls The Integration Work.