The Scarcity Mindset

Do you have a scarcity mindset? You are if you fear you won’t get enough of what life has to offer, especially with food. If the shoe fits, read on to find out more about your irrational viewpoint and how to change it. In SCARCITY: WHY HAVING TOO LITTLE MEANS SO MUCH (Economist, 8/31/13), authors Sendhil Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir focus mostly on poverty and the minds of people who are poor. But they also universalize their theories about feeling deprived in general. They insist that “People’s minds work differently when they feel they lack something. And it does not greatly matter what something is. Anyone who feels strapped for money, friends, time or calories is likely to succumb to a ‘scarcity mindset,’ which shortens a person’s horizons and narrows his perspective, creating a dangerous tunnel vision. Anxiety also saps brain power and willpower, reducing mental ‘bandwidth’.” Note the authors’ use of the word “feels” as in “strapped for money, friends, time or calories.” There’s a big difference between feeling something and being something (see my Feeling versus Being blog). Reading the above description got me thinking about disregulated eaters who hold a scarcity mentality about food, even though they have and can afford enough of it. One might think that this mindset stems exclusively from not having had enough to eat when you were young. Not so: if your need or desire for certain foods was not met, you also may have felt as if ther...
Source: Normal Eating - Category: Eating Disorders Authors: Source Type: blogs