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What if you could get more of what you want in life? But not through pushing, forcing, or pressure.
You can.
When it comes to money, time, and energy, no one’s gonna turn away more.
And Kate Northrup, Bestselling Author of Money: A Love Story and Do Less and host of Plenty, is here to help you expand your capacity to receive all of the best.
As a Money Empowerment OG who’s been at it for nearly 2 decades, Kate’s the abundance-oriented best friend you may not even know you’ve always needed.
Pull up a chair every week with top thought leaders, luminaries, and adventurers to learn how to have more abundance with ease.
Usually, at the root of your story of scarcity is actually the lie of separation, that somehow you are separate, that somehow you are lesser than, that somehow you've screwed up, that somehow there's something wrong with you. And so that's why I talk about the the lie of scarcity and the lie of separation like to pal around together. And if one is close by, the other one is also there hiding too. So when we can unearth 1 or the other, it can help unlock the other one as well. Welcome to Plenty.
Kate Northrup:I'm your host, Kate Northrup, and together, we are going on a journey to help you have an incredible relationship with money, time, and energy, and to have abundance on every possible level. Every week, we're gonna dive in with experts and insights to help you unlock a life of plenty. Let's go fill our cups.
[voiceover]:Please note that the opinions and perspectives of the guests on the Plenty podcast are not necessarily reflective of the opinions and perspectives of Kate Northrop or anyone who works within the Kate Northrop brand.
Kate Northrup:Oh, scarcity. So scarcity comes up for everyone mostly as it relates to time and money. It's not enough time. It's not enough money. It's these resources that we perceive as limited, but my intention today is to help you to break out of the pattern of scarcity as it relates to time and money.
Kate Northrup:By the way, spoiler alert, it is the same pattern in your body that creates both a feeling there's not enough time and a feeling there's not enough money and the feeling that you are not enough because that's the third level of scarcity. And my intention is to help you break out of that with some universal truths and practices. This will also help you if you find that you are allowing other people's scarcity to rub off on you. So first off, let me just say that people talk about scarcity mindset. And if you've been listening to Plenti for a while, if you've been around, you know I have a little bit of a tricky relationship with the word mindset.
Kate Northrup:Why? Because the idea of mindset assumes embedded in the word mindset and the concept, it assumes that our behavior is exclusively sourced from our thoughts and beliefs, AKA our mindset. So that basically, if we think new thoughts, we will be able to change everything. But if that were actually true, everyone who did affirmations would have a new reality. If that were actually true, you actually could just change your mindset on cue and have a new lived experience, but for the vast majority of us, that has not worked.
Kate Northrup:Why is that? Because our mindset is actually sourced from unconscious patterning in our bodies, aka our neuro tags or our neural programming, meaning series of neurons that are wired together in our body that get triggered based on particular stimulus. And so those neural patterns in our nervous system create an emotion, and the emotion is nothing but a series of sensations in our body that we then label with an emotion. And when we feel an emotion, we start thinking certain thoughts that are related to that emotion, and then we, over time, repeated thoughts become beliefs. And then as a result of our beliefs, we behave in certain ways.
Kate Northrup:So the whole idea of scarcity mindset assumes that the change can be made at the level of the mind alone. But based on my research and experience and working with thousands of students, what I have found is that we cannot change at the level of the mind alone. We must incorporate the body. And when we begin to shift at the level of physiology, at the level of embodiment, the somatic experience at the level of feeling, that's when the change becomes sustainable, powerful, and permanent. So I would like to say that we actually embody scarcity, and instead, we need to embody abundance.
Kate Northrup:So for the purposes of today's conversation, I'm not talking about scarcity mindset. I am talking about the embodiment of scarcity and how we can shift out of that to have a lived embodied experience of abundance as it relates to time, money, and your own inherent worth. First things first, Let's talk about the truth. We live in an infinite universe. Infinity is what is true.
Kate Northrup:Out beyond the boundaries of planet Earth, there is space, and in that space, there is no end. No. But there's no end. It's infinity, which pretty much blows my mind every time I think about it, but there is no end to space. So infinity is actually our reality.
Kate Northrup:Limitation is an illusion. Infinity is reality. Limitation is an illusion. From a pure scientific perspective, that is what's real. When we buy into the lie of scarcity, we are also buying into a second lie.
Kate Northrup:These two lies work together to dilute us into misunderstanding our existence. The two lies are the lie of scarcity that says there's not enough to go around, and there's not enough for me. And the second lie is I am separate from everyone and everything. What's actually true is infinity, and we are all connected to the same source. We are all one little spoke on the wheel of unity consciousness, divine source energy of all that is.
Kate Northrup:There is no separation. Now in reality terms, in terms of this conversation around separation, the truth is, economically speaking, if I decide that I don't get to that I'm not worthy of making more money personally, and I hold myself back in business, I play small, I don't go for it because I'm like, oh, it's unfair. There's not enough to go around. I shouldn't then literally, there are less resources for everyone in my sphere because on a practical level, I'm a business owner. I hire people.
Kate Northrup:I create jobs. I help people to learn how to open up to more abundance in their lives, so I help them make more money too. If I play small, automatically, everyone whose lives I touch has less resources available to them too. So that's just on a practical level. The lie of of separation says that and the lie of scarcity says that there's not enough to go around, and what happens to me only happens to me.
Kate Northrup:It doesn't impact other people. That is just simply false. What's actually true is the more I allow in terms of resources and financial abundance to flow through my life, the more is available to touch the lives of all the people who my life is connected to. There is actually no separation there. And that's, of course, if we are operating in what I call right relationship to money, which is that we are not hoarding money, we are allowing money to come through our lives and circulate through us.
Kate Northrup:Like, we are conduits where it flows through us just like creativity, just like power, just like pleasure, just like any kind of sensation. It flows through our channels. It through it flows through our bodies as a conduit and then can go on to whoever is next and circulate and bless their lives as well, and then come on back through our lives. Okay. So that's the life scarcity, the life separation.
Kate Northrup:I will also point to this, which is that the data shows us that we have enough resources on the planet for everyone to live a good life. Do we have enough resources for everyone to be a billionaire? Probably not. But, like, that's not the goal. Right?
Kate Northrup:We have enough resources for everyone to live a good life. We just have a real problem with distribution. So much at the root cause of our problem with distribution is the lie of scarcity. Because the only reason we would hoard resources is because we believe there's not enough, and so we need to keep ours and keep other people from having theirs. And that and therein lies the foundation around false hierarchies surrounding old models of power where the idea is I have to get mine and keep others out because there's not enough.
Kate Northrup:If we were tapped into the truth that there's more than enough for everyone, there's literally no point in trying to keep resources away from other people. It makes no sense because if there's always gonna be enough for me, I have no problem with you having yours. And if I don't buy into the lie of separation, in fact, I want to support and encourage you to expand your abundance because I know on the level at which we are 1, we are just waves in the same ocean, your abundance is my abundance, my abundance is your abundance. So first practical tip for, dissolving the lie of scarcity in yourself, and I'm starting here. It's kind of advanced.
Kate Northrup:Okay? But I know our listeners, and I know you are above average, and so you can handle this. So here's the strategy or the tip or the practice. When someone in your life has something that you want, I want you to practice letting your body feel the sensations of you having it through them. Okay?
Kate Northrup:So here's an example of this, and I've talked about it before. I have 2 friends who had babies right around the same time, and they had babies several years after I had become a mom. My early years of parenting were very rough and and just tricky and awful in some ways. Joyful in some ways, but pretty hard. And I didn't have this, like, joyful, yummy experience of new motherhood.
Kate Northrup:And I had these friends who were having this experience of, like, being a mom of a baby or even a baby plus a toddler was just so deeply gratifying for them, so deeply fulfilling, so yummy. They were just, like, having the greatest time ever. Not that there weren't hard days, of course, but they were for sure having the when I would talk to them about their experience, I was like, wow. It's like you're mothering on a different planet than I was when I was having my kids. Now it occurred to me, and I'm so grateful it did, and I think it's because of the nervous system healing work that I've done.
Kate Northrup:It occurred to me that there was a level on which, because we are all 1, they're having that juicy, yummy, early motherhood experience allowed me to, on some level, go back in time and repattern the young mother that I was, who didn't have that experience and allow myself to go back in time and repair her. And so as you know, my one, friend, Kate Scudder, who's been on the podcast, The Millionaire Mother, as she was telling me her the story of the birth of her second baby, and she's describing having this spontaneous ejection reflex birthing him, this ginormous baby, like 11 pound little baby under the full moon, in a tub, in her backyard, you know, or maybe it was in her living room. But regardless, like, this ecstatic, exquisite birth that I had always craved. And she's telling me this story, and then she's telling me, you know, about raising her kids. And then my other friend Mel Wells telling me about, you know, raising her first little guy.
Kate Northrup:I just said to my body, like, you can receive this. So instead of buying into the lie of scarcity that there's not enough goodness to go around or the lie of separation that says, oh, what they're having is means I don't get to have it or that somehow they're they had it and, oh, nice for them or I just was like, I get to have this too. And so I listened to their stories. I consumed their constant content on Instagram. I received it as though I was 33 year old Kate having that experience with my babies, and it felt so good.
Kate Northrup:So that's my invitation to you. When you see someone who is having what you want, maybe a friend gets a big book deal or is dating someone who's, like, really dreamy, the kind of person that the kind of relationship you would like to be in or whatever it is, there's some level that your body knows the truth. Right? Our mirror neurons in our nervous system do not believe the lie of separation. If I'm talking to a friend and she start she's telling a story and she starts to cry, I start to cry.
Kate Northrup:If my kid comes to me and she has a bloody cut, my leg hurts literally because of mirror neurons. Our bodies don't believe the lie of separation. Our mirror neurons are always feeling what other people are feeling. So let's use that to our advantage to help repattern our nervous systems to have all of the bounty that's available as opposed to to buy into lack and limitation and separation. We get to just have it all.
Kate Northrup:Actually, something happened the other day, and this is, like, very cyclical, so I love it. The other day, I was having a call with my coach, and I was talking about kind of this longing that I had had for a different modeling or a different education around feminine energy and healthy expression of erotic energy, and, like, I kind of wished that I had known some of the things that I know now earlier, like, as an adolescent or in my late teens, early twenties. And I was feeling really sad about that, and then I ended up watching this episode of the Gilmore Girls in which Rory tells Lorelei about her first kiss, and it's this super sweet moment at the end of an episode. And they're all giddy, and and I watched the episode, and I started to cry. And then I was telling my, coach about this, and there was a scenario with 1 of my daughters, which I won't get into the details because it's her own life and her own story.
Kate Northrup:But there was a scenario where I was gifted the opportunity to essentially be the mother that I wished that I had had to, educate and model and hold a really safe thermostat around expression of sensuality in, you know, in an appropriate way for a kid. And it was really cool to just realize, like, there is no separation. We all get to have what we want. Maybe not through the source that we would have originally wanted, but all energy, all experiences are available right now. Like, our brains through meditation can even create the same substances that create a psychedelic experience without taking any substances whatsoever.
Kate Northrup:So we can have it all, and we don't even have to be the one to create those experiences. We can witness other humans through our mirror neurons and through what happens with collective trauma can also happen through collective joy. Our nervous systems can pattern experiences that we do not have to have personally had. How efficient is that? Like, how cool is it that we don't even have to personally create every single experience that we desire?
Kate Northrup:We can witness people we love or people that we resonate with, identify with having those experiences, and we can fully receive them in and of ourselves. And I do think that it takes practice, but we can give our bodies the permission to just receive them. And perhaps the prompt would be, what would that feel like in my body? But I don't even think it's playing. It's not even pretending.
Kate Northrup:Like, you don't even have to imagine. Your body just knows what it would feel like because your body knows it's not separate from that person, and it can just receive the experience just like I got to receive the experience from my friends of what it felt like to have this delicious, fully supported experience of new motherhood. So there's that. And then when it comes to actual scarcity, financially speaking, I get that that's real. I get that some months, like, there's actually not enough money to cover the bills.
Kate Northrup:I've certainly had those months myself. And one of the things that helps me with that these days, I'm not having months where I can't cover the bills, but there are still moments where I come up against the edges of my scarcity patterning because this work is never done. Like, what a joy. Right? The better it gets, the better it gets.
Kate Northrup:We get to just keep becoming and keep developing and keep unfolding and keep keep, you know, discovering ourselves. So, yes, I still come up against edges of scarcity. And, one of the things that happened to me, we made an investing choice back in March or back in the end of last year, and it put us in a little bit of a tight spot in March. And what I realized is and I went into kind of, like, a dark panicked place about it, and it was really a deep feeling of panic and scarcity. And I was having this feeling in the pit of my stomach that I had been bad, that I was wrong, that I was a that I was a screw up, and it just kinda felt awful.
Kate Northrup:And I think I've talked about this on the podcast before. And for me, it was a really important unlock to share. I was in a shame spiral about it, and it was really helpful for me to say out loud what had happened and what I was making it mean to safe people, which for that particular scenario happened to be my mom and my sister. So I was able to tell them what had happened, but more importantly, what I was making it mean. And their reception of that information and their reflection of it, they were able to hold a very different degree of regulation around it because, a, it's not their life, b, they weren't getting on my emotional roller coaster, and, c, the truth is what I was making it mean was just inaccurate.
Kate Northrup:My, coach therapist, Anne Davin, has taught me about something called thinking errors, and we will have a nervous system response that will create a thinking error. And sometimes our thinking errors actually also create a nervous system response. I don't think that cycle is always only one direction. And so my thinking error was that I was a complete screw up, that I didn't deserve to be teaching about money. I mean, I was, like, really looping on this one.
Kate Northrup:And so one big tip when we're in scarcity that I have is to share what's going on and what you're making it mean with a safe person. Because, usually, at the root of your story of scarcity is actually the lie of separation, that somehow you are separate, that somehow you are lesser than, that somehow you've screwed up, that somehow there's something wrong with you. And so that's why I talk about that the lie of scarcity and the lie of separation like to pile around together. And if one is close by, the other one is also there hiding too. So when we can unearth 1 or the other, it can help unlock the other one as well.
Kate Northrup:The other thing that is really helpful when we're in scarcity is to connect with nature. Nature is the truth. Nature is the truth of who we are. Nature is an incredibly abundant system. There's no tree out there being like, oh gosh.
Kate Northrup:I shouldn't be so tall. Oh, I have too many leaves. Oh, there's not enough sunshine. You know, it just, like, that's not a thing. That's not a thing.
Kate Northrup:Nature is an abundant system. And so when we go sit in the forest, when we go get in the ocean, when we go put our bare feet on the earth and allow us ourselves to coregulate with the nervous system of the earth, we are always reminded of the truth. We always can come back to plenty because that's a deeply regulating practice. And when we can find regulation in our nervous system, we actually can be at choice. And when we're at choice, we are able to see our lives more in truth, more in like, oh, I'm not seeing now only through the eyes of scarcity.
Kate Northrup:I'm also seeing like, oh, well, maybe there's not a lot in my bank account, but I actually have x y z unpaid invoices that I could just follow-up on. Or I have this person who I totally forgot about who called me the other day with a gig, and I didn't even call them back because I was so panicked about my bills. What happens is when we are embodying scarcity, we completely block out through the reticular activating system, the RAS in the brain. We completely block out anything that is not a match for our scarcity programming, But when we can regulate our nervous system and pop out of scarcity, even if it's for a couple of moments and we can feel the truth of infinity and we can feel the truth of unity, then we start to see all the resources that were there all along, but we just were repelling because we were embodying scarcity. You're always going to find a match for what you are embodying, but and so that can work, you know, against you or for you.
Kate Northrup:And so when we practice embodying abundance, embodying infinity, then our resources, our lives will become a reflection of that inner state as well. And when it comes to not wanting to take on other people's scarcity, I really love to just not discuss topics where scarcity comes up with people who are stuck in embodying scarcity, and I just really trust that if they're going to move towards embodying abundance, they will do so. It is not my job to tell them. It is not my job to bring them along. It is just my job to embody abundance so that the part in them, their mirror neurons have the opportunity to allow me to be a thermostat and for them to join in if they want to.
Kate Northrup:But practically speaking, there's just certain conversations I don't have with certain people. And if the conversation turns to scarcity, whether it's about how expensive stuff is or there's not enough time or there's not enough whatever, I either just don't contribute or I change the subject. And you absolutely can do that as well. But I will say that if scarcity conversations are coming up a lot around you, I would look inside and just say, where does this live in me? Because life is just a hologram, and everything we come into a contact with is simply a reflection of what is going on inside us.
Kate Northrup:So within, as within, so without. Thank you so much for listening. I hope this was helpful to access the truth of abundance inside and outside yourself. See you next time. Thanks for listening to this episode of Plenty.
Kate Northrup:If you enjoyed it, make sure you subscribe, leave a rating, leave a review. That's one of the best ways that you can ensure to spread the abundance of plenty with others. You can even text it to a friend and tell them to listen in. And if you want even more support to expand your abundance, head over to kate northrup.comforward/breakthroughs, where you can grab my free money breakthrough guide that details the biggest money breakthroughs from some of the top earning women I know, plus a mini lesson accompanying it with my own biggest money breakthroughs and a nervous system healing tool for you to expand your abundance. Again, that's over at kate northrup.com forward slash breakthroughs.
Kate Northrup:See you next time.