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In this episode, Pam, Anna, and Erika explore the abundance mindset. We often find ourselves thinking about abundance versus scarcity in conversations on the podcast and in the Living Joyfully Network. In this episode, we dive into the many ways that shifting to abundance has helped us and our families with creative problem solving. We hope you find our conversation helpful on your unschooling journey!

THINGS WE MENTION IN THIS EPISODE

The Living Joyfully Shop – books, courses, including Four Pillars of Unschooling, coaching calls, and more!

The Living Joyfully Network

Watch the video of our conversation on YouTube.

Follow @exploringunschooling on Instagram.

Follow @pamlaricchia on Instagram and Facebook.

Check out our website, livingjoyfully.ca for more information about navigating relationships and exploring unschooling.

Sign up to our mailing list to receive The Living Joyfully Dispatch, our biweekly email newsletter, and get a free copy of Pam’s intro to unschooling ebook, What is Unschooling?

We invite you to join us in The Living Joyfully Network, a wonderful online community for parents to connect and engage in candid conversations about living and learning through the lens of unschooling. This month, we’re talking about seasons—in unschooling and in life. Come and be part of the conversation!

So much of what we talk about on this podcast and in the Living Joyfully Network isn’t actually about unschooling. It’s about life. On The Living Joyfully Podcast, Anna Brown and Pam Laricchia talk about life, relationships, and parenting. You can check out the archive here, or find it in your your favorite podcast player.

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

ANNA: Hello, I’m Anna Brown with Living Joyfully, and today I am joined by my co-hosts, Pam Laricchia and Erika Ellis.

ERIKA AND PAM: Hello! Hi!

ANNA: Before we get started, I wanted to encourage you to check out our shop where you can find books, courses, coaching, and information about the Living Joyfully Network. And this also includes our new course, Four Pillars of Unschooling, where we explore four foundational ideas and paradigm shifts that helped us along our journey. The shop has resources and support for every stage of your journey. You can find the link in the show notes, or you can visit livingjoyfullyshop.com.

Today we’re going to be talking about the abundance mindset, how to cultivate it, and how it can help us on our unschooling journey. Erika, would you like to get us started?

ERIKA: I would! I love a mindset shift and the word abundance just feels so good to me, so I’m excited to dive into this one.

So, when we talk about abundance in our conversations on the podcast and on the Network, what we’re really talking about is a mindset. And when we’re cultivating that mindset of abundance, we open ourselves up to possibilities. We’re telling ourselves there’s plenty of time. We know that even if things don’t go as we initially imagined, that there are solutions and possibilities. It’s a feeling of keeping ourselves open.

And then the flip side of abundance is scarcity. And if we’re mentally in a place of scarcity, it can feel like there’s not enough time. We don’t have enough money. I can’t possibly do all the things that I need to do. We need to try to speed through things to get to the next thing. And so, a scarcity mindset is at play if I’m worried about the timeline of my children’s learning or if I’m feeling like a lot of pressure around making the proper decision in this moment.

And so, we end up using those two words a lot, abundance and scarcity to describe our mental states. And I think just recognizing when I’m getting stuck in that scarcity mode can help me to reframe and get to that more helpful mindset of abundance.

PAM: Yeah, I love that. It’s absolutely a mindset shift. And I think, like in your examples, it’s so great to remember that it applies to so much more than just money. Many conversations where you hear talk about scarcity and abundance mindset, they are in relation to money and income and those kinds of things. But yes, bigger picture, that same mindset shift can be so helpful to recognize, it’s a scarcity of time if you’re worried, oh, what are my kids learning? When are they going to learn this? And, oh my gosh, what if they don’t learn this?

When we shift to that lifelong learning perspective, and we recognize that, you know what? When something becomes interesting to them or important to them or just hits something that they’re wanting to accomplish or do, that’s when they can learn it and that’s when they will learn it with less effort. Or it doesn’t seem hard. It almost doesn’t seem like you’re learning, but that’s because you’ve got a reason for it. It’s become important. It’s not like, learn this now for some day. That’s hard, because, what are you going to connect that to? How’s that going to make sense?

But when you make that shift to lifelong learning, it takes that scarcity of time component away and helps you realize that there is an abundance and there’s a lifetime of it where things can bubble up along the way. So, I just find it really fun, too, when I’m stressed about something to ask if there is an abundance component to it or a scarcity component to it. Just because that starts helping me think about it in a little bit bigger picture. And that’s when there are possibilities and solutions versus the more tunnel vision that happens to me when I’m thinking scarcity.

ANNA: Yeah. And I think for me it’s really the same thing that you both just said, but it’s that energetic shift. Because, like you said, Erika, we can put it into those categories a lot. When I’m thinking about if I’m feeling some tightness or something, it’s like, ooh, what’s happening there? And then I recognize, oh, I’m bringing that scarcity energy to this. It is tunneling me in and I feel the contraction just even thinking about it. And so, that abundance is almost like the deep breath. It’s like, oh, okay, I’ve got time.

And it’s funny, because I’m glad you brought up plenty of time, because you know I say that all the time and it really is, to me, exactly abundance. It really centers me to, this is a long game. Whatever it is, even if it’s something that’s going to complete in the next week or two, it’s like this deep breath. There’s plenty of time. We’re going to work this out. And so, that energy that I bring to it is really what we’re talking about in terms of the paradigm shift today.

But there are specific things that come up that I think are fun to explore. And one of the big ones for me was the idea that everything didn’t have to come from me. I think as parents, especially when we have little kids, everything’s coming from me, food, and all the things. And so, this shift to recognizing like, oh, there’s a broader world here. There are more people in my kids’ lives. And I noticed them finding ways to make things happen that I didn’t know could happen, and I couldn’t find the path myself.

And so, that’s when, again, I realized I was tunneling in on, okay, they’re asking for something or wanting to do something, and I’m thinking there’s one path to this thing that they’re asking about. “I want to get a horse,” or, “I want to do,” whatever big idea thing they might have. And I’m thinking there’s one way. That’s tunneling me in.

And so, when I can breathe into, the world is big and abundant and there are so many different ways, then we just saw magical things happen, just interesting connections and meeting new people and things. And so, again, for me it was always about checking that energy, but recognizing that this is broader than just me having to say, oh, we don’t have the money for that, or we don’t have the time for that, or whatever might be the constraint.

ERIKA: Yeah, I, I actually was going to mention horses, because I feel like it’s just one of those potentially scary, big things that could come up. So, just imagine any kind of moment when your kid comes to you with an interest that just feels like, oh my god, we don’