How to Create an Abundance Mindset: 5 Steps for Transforming Your Life

“If it is true that our state of mind creates our experience, let us choose one of abundance.” - Chanti Soleil

If you have spent a day actually watching your thoughts, you may have realized how many of them aren’t serving you. They’ll say things like:

I’m hungry. What should I eat? I shouldn’t eat, I just ate and I’m trying to cut back. Maybe I’ll have a salad...but I’m out of salad. I could go to the store...but I don’t have any money. I need to be making more money. Why am I not making more money? Is there something wrong with me? There’s definitely something wrong with me...

The only thing wrong with you is that you are tolerating this absurd inner dialogue.

It just goes on and on and on...one problem to the next.

You’ll be glad to know that you are not alone - or crazy. This mindset of seeking problems to solve is likely an adaptation here to support our evolution. We are hardwired to seek evolution - to better ourselves so that our children can be more evolved than us and their children more evolved than them and so on. Because of this, many of us experience reality as a series of problems to solve - you solve one then another pops up and off your mind goes.

But seeking the nearest problem or local threat to our security to solve is actually no longer beneficial for our evolution. We are in what anthropologists refer to as disequilibrium - the adaptation we have no longer matches the environment because, on an evolutionary timeline, our environment is changing extremely fast. In other words, our adaptations evolved to match the environment of our way-back ancestors - a very different beast than today’s modern world in which all our basic needs are met. There are no real threats to us in the modern environment - not often at least. So then this mindset of constant searching for threats is no longer serving us.

Tulum, Mexico

The beauty of being a conscious being is that we need not rely on random mutation and coincidence to evolve any more. We can choose evolution through practices like meditation which have been proven to improve our mental health, physical health, and potentially even our genetic quality.

In recent years, meditation has not just proven to simply increase mental well-being, it has also been shown to have physiological effects including the reduction of pro-inflammatory gene expressions (Creswell and Irwin, 2012), and is even correlated with increased cortical thickness in the brain (Lazar SW, Kerr CE, Wasserman RH, Gray JR, Greve DN, Treadway MT, et al., 2005).

While such physiological changes have yet to be proven heritable, recent studies around meditative practices are overwhelmingly suggestive. One science journal summarizes the long list of benefits supported by recent science:

“Studies have shown meditation to reduce perceived stress, anxiety, and depressive symptoms, enhance quality of life, decrease sleep disturbance, improve several domains of cognition, reduce sympathetic activation and enhance cardiovagal tone..., promote beneficial changes in CNS dopaminergic and other neurochemical systems, increase blood flow, oxygen delivery, and glucose utilization in specific regions of the brain associated with mood elevation, memory, and attentional processing... Long-term meditation practice has also been associated with cortical thickening and increased gray matter volume in brain regions involved in attentional performance, sensory processing, and interoception. In addition, recent research suggests that meditation programs can enhance immune response and clinical outcomes, and reduce blood pressure, insulin resistance and glucose intolerance, oxidative stress, inflammation, and other related risk indices. (Innes K. E., Selfe T K. (2014))”

All of this is in our conscious control through simple meditative practices. We have more power than we like to give ourselves credit for. It’s time to evolve out of disequilibrium and back into harmony with our surroundings.

To be clear, Abundance Mindset is not about ignoring life’s challenges. It’s about filtering out the sheer number of pointless self-made problems and intentionally viewing the real challenges with a lens that is inspirational rather than draining.

The bottom line is: if we are looking for problems we are going to find they never end. What if instead, we were actively seeking things like beauty, synchronicity, connection...and magic?

One of my favorite quotes is by the author, Michael Singer. In his book The Untethered Soul, he writes:

"You’re sitting on a planet spinning around in the middle of absolutely nowhere. Go ahead, take a look at reality. You’re floating in empty space in a universe that goes on forever. If you have to be here, at least be happy and enjoy the experience. You’re going to die anyway. Things are going to happen anyway. Why shouldn’t you be happy? You gain nothing by being bothered by life’s events. It doesn’t change the world; you just suffer. There’s always going to be something that can bother you if you let it...Do not let anything that happens in life be important enough that you’re willing to close your heart over it."

The truth is really quite radical if you look closely enough. And this perspective is always within arms reach. Our very evolution was guided by a series of lucky coincidences - one mutation after the next just happened to be a better match than the one before.

A common misunderstanding about the Abundance Mindset is that being optimistic is unrealistic. While both could be categorized as positive outlooks on life, Abundance Mindset is not Optimism.

While optimism is based on a series of expectations for the future, Abundance Mindset applies on a moment-to-moment basis. Optimism implies the creation of a mental model in which everything goes your way. But, the future is not always in our control and these expectations aren’t always met. This can lead one to stretch and warp reality to fit their mental model and expectations.

Abundance Mindset, on the other hand, exists here and now. It is an unconditional perspective on life that doesn’t depend on expectations being met. Rather, it is the acknowledgment of the beauty and synchronicity that exists within every moment. It is the recognition that our challenges can actually facilitate our evolution. It is a fundamental understanding that our very existence in this body, on this planet is an absolute miracle.

Food is visual and visceral expression of Earth's abundance

Here are some tips and tricks for the transition into Abundance Mindset - wherever you may be coming from.

1. Witness your negative thought patterns. Start reclaiming your power by recognizing you are not these thoughts - you are the one witnessing them. Thus, you get to choose if you want to believe them.

2. Start a daily practice of gratitude. Mindsets are like muscles - they must be strengthened. Our energy goes where our thoughts go, strengthening the local neural network and making it easier to access. Try starting and ending the day with what is going right for you. Just the act of looking for something to be grateful for can improve your day enormously.

3. Trace draining emotional states back to their origin. If you are in a draining emotional state, it’s because you are choosing it. You are buying into some underlying thought pattern. Stream-of-Consciousness Journaling can help you uncover these thought patterns. Simply ask yourself what is causing this emotional state and write without stopping to read it back. Simply witnessing yourself with pure awareness without judgement is the most healing state one can emanate.

4. Choose a new and authentic thought that is more supportive. The trick is it must feel authentic. States of gratitude and abundance cannot be faked - they must be felt.

5. Follow your joy. Surround yourself with people, places, and experiences that support this new mindset.

Switching to an Abundance Mindset is a daily practice and life-long journey that will reap benefits beyond imaginable. We are more powerful than we know - and we can attract the reality of our dreams. In fact, this reality is already within the realm of possibilities just waiting for us to adopt the right mindset for it to be witnessed.

I hope this was a helpful guide to the Abundance Mindset! I would love to hear feedback and comments from you about your journey!

Until next time,

Namaste.

Chanti Soleil

Email: chantih@gmail.com

Citations

Innes Kim E., Selfe Terry Kit. (2014). Meditation as a Therapeutic Intervention for Adults at Risk for

Alzheimer’s Disease - Potential Benefits and Underlying Mechanisms. Frontiers in Psychiatry, 5,

40. 10.3389/fpsyt.2014.00040.

J. Creswell, M. Irwin. (2012). Mindfulness-based stress reduction training reduces loneliness

and pro-inflammatory gene expression in older adults: a small randomized controlled

trial. Brain Behav. Immun., 26 (7) (2012), pp. 1095-1101

Lazar SW, Kerr CE, Wasserman RH, Gray JR, Greve DN, Treadway MT, et al. Meditation

experience is associated with increased cortical thickness. Neuroreport (2005)

16(17):1893–7. doi:10.1097/01.wnr.0000186598.66243.19