The Abundance Mindset That Does Not Ask You to Pretend

It is 11:40 p.m. and you are still holding your phone. Another headline about AI and jobs. Another thread about what will be obsolete by next spring.

Your jaw is tight. Your shoulders have crept up toward your ears. And the to-do list in your head has quietly collapsed into one long sentence: there is not enough.

Not enough time. Not enough certainty. Not enough of you to go around.

If that is where you are tonight, I want to start with something true. You are not weak, and you are not behind. You are paying close attention to a world that is changing fast, because people depend on you and you take that seriously. That is not a flaw. That is love, running hot.

I am Joe McVeen. I trained as an electrical engineer, and I build AI systems for mission-driven businesses every day, so I watch this transition from very close range. I am also about to become a father, which means I think a lot about the world my child will grow up in. This is the post I wish more people read before they read the news.

What is an abundance mindset, really?

An abundance mindset is a steady, grounded sense that there is enough room, enough time, and enough of you to respond well to what is in front of you. It is not a belief that everything will turn out fine. It is not a promise about money. It is a stance your attention takes.

The opposite stance, scarcity, is not a character flaw either. It is a state your mind slides into under pressure. And researchers have studied it carefully.

Why does scarcity make your mind feel so small?

Scarcity narrows your attention: it pulls you deep into the most urgent problem and leaves very little for anything else. In a 2012 paper in Science, Anuj Shah, Sendhil Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir showed across several experiments that scarcity "changes how people allocate attention," leading people to "engage more deeply in some problems while neglecting others."

A year later, Mullainathan, Shafir and colleagues went further. A 2013 study in Science found that the same farmers performed worse on cognitive tests before harvest, when money was tight, than after harvest. The authors suggested that pressing worries "consume mental resources, leaving less for other tasks."

In fairness, not every study has found this. A study in the American Economic Review that surveyed low-income US households just before or just after payday found no difference in cognitive test performance. So hold the bandwidth idea as a useful lens, not a settled law.

Here is why I think it matters for you, even if your finances are fine. The research is about having too little of something you need. On a hard night, the scarce thing might be certainty. Or sleep. Or the feeling that you still have a place in what comes next.

And notice how it spirals. It starts with one headline. Then the group chat. Then the quiet math about your role, your team, your kids' future. All while dinner still needs making and the email still needs answering. Oh, and somewhere in there, the thing you love most, being fully present with the people in front of you, becomes the thing you get to last.

You are far from alone in this. In a 2025 Pew Research Center survey of 5,023 US adults, 50% said they were more concerned than excited about the increased use of AI in daily life, up from 37% in 2021.

So let me say it plainly. The narrowing you feel is not you failing. It is a mind doing what minds do when something feels scarce. It was never your fault.

Isn't an abundance mindset just toxic positivity?

No: a real abundance mindset makes room for hard feelings instead of painting over them. Toxic positivity tells you to stop feeling what you feel. Grounded abundance tells you the feeling can stay, and that it does not get to be the only thing in the room.

The research backs this up. A 2018 paper in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology from researchers at Toronto and Berkeley found that people who habitually accept their emotions and thoughts, without judging them, had better psychological health. In their longitudinal study, acceptance predicted less negative emotion during daily stressors, and that in turn helped explain better psychological health six months later.

Read that again, because it is counterintuitive. The people who stopped fighting their hard feelings ended up feeling them less.

Then there is the widening side. Psychologist Barbara Fredrickson's broaden-and-build theory, published in American Psychologist in 2001, proposes that positive emotions "broaden people's momentary thought-action repertoires," and that over time this builds lasting personal resources. Scarcity narrows. Positive emotion, when it is real, widens.

Abundance is not the absence of fear. It is having enough room inside you that fear is not the only thing in the room.

How do you build an abundance mindset without pretending?

You build it by first naming the scarcity honestly, then deliberately widening your attention, a little at a time, with practices you can actually feel. Here are the ones I trust most.

1. Name the scarce thing

Say it out loud or write it down. "Tonight the scarce thing is certainty." Naming it turns a fog into a fact. It also reminds you that one scarce thing is not a scarce life.

2. Let the feeling stay for a minute

Do not argue with it. Notice where it sits: the jaw, the chest, the pit of the stomach. Acceptance is not agreement. It is simply refusing to add a second fight on top of the first one.

3. Settle the body before the mind

A tunneled mind rarely reasons its way out. Your nervous system usually needs to come down first. A few slow breaths can be a reasonable place to start, and our breathing reset for anxiety walks through what the evidence actually shows.

4. Count what is actually here

In a classic 2003 set of experiments, Robert Emmons and Michael McCullough randomly assigned people to keep regular records of things they were grateful for, of hassles, or of neutral events or comparisons. The gratitude groups showed higher well-being on several, though not all, measures, and the lift in positive mood was the most reliable finding.

That is a modest result, and I like it more for being modest. Gratitude is not magic. It is a counterweight.

5. Go find something bigger than you

Awe may be the most underrated antidote to scarcity. In three experiments published in Psychological Science in 2012, Melanie Rudd of Stanford and her colleagues found that people who felt awe reported having more time available, were less impatient, and were more willing to volunteer their time to help others.

Think about that. A moment of genuine wonder made time itself feel less scarce. A big sky, an ocean, a child asleep, a piece of music that stops you mid-step. These are not luxuries. They are how a narrowed mind remembers its full size.

6. Change what you feed the tunnel

If the scarcity arrives through your phone at 11:40 p.m., the phone is part of the practice. Our guide to a humane news diet covers how to stay informed without letting the feed set your nervous system's thermostat.

A quick, honest note: this is perspective, not medical advice. If the tightness has become constant, if sleep is breaking down, or if you feel hopeless, please talk with your doctor or a mental health professional.

What does abundance look like in the AI decade?

In the AI decade, abundance means seeing clearly what is becoming plentiful and what is becoming more precious, and choosing to spend your attention on the second category. I see this every day in my work. Tools that draft, summarize, analyze and generate are getting faster and cheaper by the month.

What is not getting cheaper is the stuff that makes a life. Your full attention. A person who can sit with someone in a hard moment. Good judgment when the answer is not obvious. Trust, built slowly. Care that shows up on a Tuesday when nobody is watching.

Those things are not threatened by abundance in machines. If anything, they become the center of the story. That is why the next piece in this series is about purpose and health in the AI age: meaning is the thing scarcity hides from you first, and the thing you most need back.

So here is who I believe you get to be in this decade. Not the person frantically keeping up with every headline. The calm one in the room. The parent who looks up from the phone when their kid starts talking. The leader whose steadiness gives everyone else permission to breathe.

Picture it. It is a Saturday morning. The news is still the news, and somewhere a new model just launched. You know, and you let it be. You are on the floor with someone you love, a coffee going cold beside you, laughing at something small. Your jaw is soft. There is room in you.

That is not pretending. That is abundance.

The Future of Wellness letter is education only. It is not investment, medical or financial advice, and it is not an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy any security. No business or practitioner mentioned in this letter paid to be included. If New Earth Capital ever has a financial interest in a business named here, the letter will say so. This is education, not medical advice. Talk with your doctor or provider about your own health.