# DTD 191
[00:00:00] This is the Drive Time Debrief, episode 191.
Hey guys, welcome to the podcast. I'm Amanda. I'm Laura. I'm Kendra. And last week we talked about a scarcity mindset. So today we'll explore the abundance mindset, which is different from naive optimism. It's different from gaslighting yourself. It's different from toxic positivity. But [00:01:00] it is a practical shift in attention that widens your mental space, opens up creativity, and allows you to be more generous. When you feel there's enough of whatever it is that you value—time, love, possibility—you end up thinking differently.
And that shift is powerful. And the good news is it's learnable. It's a little similar to pessimism and optimism. I happen to have the opinion that maybe the person I'm married to is a little on the pessimist side, and he's like, "It's not pessimism, it's realism." I've never heard someone say that they're a pessimist. They are always like, "No, I'm just a realist." If you have ever said that about yourself, just keep an open mind. If a little more abundance would be helpful for your life. It's all about your results. So if what you're doing is making your life more painful, you can continue to do that. You can do that all you want. We are not telling you what to do. But if you would like it to be more, I don't know, open and [00:02:00] fun and everything else, do you need a little scoop of abundance mindset? It's just a question you get to answer it.
Okay, so how does abundance differ from scarcity? Abundance mindset is a way of seeing that there is more to be noticed. There's more to be learned. There's more to be shared or created than the "not enough" story that your brain is telling you. It's not about unlimited resources in every situation. You don't need unlimited resources in every situation. It's just the tendency to see possibilities and potential gains rather than only the gap, only the deficits. This framing is often described as the abundance mentality in popular psychology and leadership literature.
The core psychological contrast with scarcity is that scarcity narrows your attention. It taxes your mental bandwidth. Abundance broadens your attention, and it builds your resources. Whereas scarcity causes you tunnel vision and short-term fixes, abundance opens your mind to curiosity, [00:03:00] creative problem solving and pro-social behavior. So Barbara Fredrickson's broaden and build framework explains how positive emotions broaden thought-action repertoires—what the heck did I just say?
A thought-action repertoire is like your automatic defaults for how you respond to a situation. When this happens, I do this. What you're doing is you've got more cards in your deck now. You've got more ways that you can respond when your brain is open to responding in a different way. So that's what that means by you broaden your thought-action repertoire. When you do that over time, you build more durable resources, be they social resources or cognitive resources or physical resources. Practically, an abundance frame invites you to look for options and build relationships, rather than metaphorically hoard.
So a practical nuance. Again, we want to clarify this over and over. An abundance mindset doesn't pretend that real shortages don't exist. [00:04:00] Of course they do. Absolutely they do. This is just a psychological posture and a set of practices that help people respond more flexibly to real limits. It's not a "blame the victim, just think positive" line—that is very activating to me. Oh gosh. I feel like that happens to doctors a lot. Like, "Why can't you keep up?" Oh, I don't know. You just put 80 people on my schedule for today. We're not talking about your clinic date or your inbox. Yes, exactly. No, it's just a tendency we're asking you to take a thought that has not been examined and examine it. See if it's true. So we're inviting you to clarify the limits. "I don't have enough time." Okay. Did you write down your list and figure out how much time each takes? Do you really not have enough time? If so, then that's an accurate statement. If not, then you've just been attaching to this story that you don't have enough time.
And then just be open and curious about possibilities. So it's not wishful thinking that we're wanting you to [00:05:00] engage in, it's a different way of noticing and acting, and here's how it might look in daily life. And I will say this is huge. I have been fortunate that one of my passions in life is taking everything that I've been trained to do on the mission field. I do love to go to underserved communities and countries and really bring, you know, free medical care. But it's more about that once you enter into that country—yes, there are scarce resources where we go, there are very scarce resources—but when you come in and you show these people what is possible, so we bring, you know, we dig a well, so they have fresh water, we stock their pharmacy with medications. When you show them what's possible, that is living out the opportunity to shift from "it's always been this way, it's always gonna be this way" to "oh, what else might be possible? What else could we do?" if, [00:06:00] given the attention and the training that may be, could break a generational thought of scarcity.
When I was in Vanuatu last summer on a mission trip with my son, it's a fourth world country. I didn't even know that there were fourth world countries before going there. That just means that a lot of the country is not even in touch with modern society and still lives in, you know, traditional tribal ways. It was absolute abject poverty. One little village we went to was literally, you know, corrugated steel nailed together with cloth for doors. And after visiting these people, the kids came running to find us and all brought us necklaces and whatever gifts they had to give to us. And I just think there's lessons that we could learn—that if we live in the US we truly are more [00:07:00] resource blessed than anyone else on the planet and we're okay. We're gonna be okay and we can share.
Yeah, I just wanna make certain that we clarify. There is such a thing as real scarcity. That's not what we're talking about. We are talking about unexamined thoughts that somebody like us who have far more than most of the people in the world and we're still living in scarcity—that's who I feel like we're trying to reach. Like, why does that person in Vanuatu live with more abundance than we do? Probably because we're just habitually thinking in a certain way, and we can change that.
So how does this show up in everyday life? Well, an openness to options. So when you see more possibilities rather than a single binary choice, instead of thinking, "I must choose career A or I fail," you explore side projects, phase transitions, learning that keeps options open and alive, and a [00:08:00] possibility. This reduces panic and leads to long term better decisions. Why does this matter? Well, one of the leading causes of burnout is that thought you get stuck in, that you're stuck, like you're stuck in this. I know I speak for myself in my situation when I finally realized and woke up one day and I'm like, "Is this it? Like, am I stuck doing this forever and ever? Amen." Well, no. You can actually start thinking in one of the better questions I asked was, "What else is possible?" Right? And so it keeps you curious, it keeps you asking what else is possible and it prevents short-term tunnel decisions. Same thing with anything you could say like, "Do I have to still live here all my life?" Like you have dreams of living somewhere else or traveling somewhere else, and it's like, "Oh, but I'm just stuck here." Well, is that the truth or is it possible that you could plan a year, four year? What does your five year plan look like? What does your two year plan look like?
It also opens you up for generosity and reciprocity. So the willingness to share time, [00:09:00] credit, resources, talents, because you assume cooperation produces more than hoarding. So instead of just closed fist, like what we say, hold on tight, right? You start to loosen your grip and you actually open your hand to either give or receive. And so praising a colleague publicly, this is what this might look like. Mentoring a junior resident or a new doc without immediate payoff. Sharing knowledge freely. So this is like what we do. We love this podcast. We do this for free, but we have to let go of what we have experienced in order to really live in an abundance mindset. Why does this matter? Because building social capital opens collaborative opportunities and small acts of generosity often return benefits that actually exceed the initial cost. We talk about this all the time, sowing seeds. We sow small seeds of kindness. It usually comes back, you know, a hundred [00:10:00] fold. You sow small seeds of knowledge and wisdom. It usually will come back. I can speak, testify to that time and time again. It pays dividends when it circles back around to you.
The other thing is savoring and noticing micro abundances—this is deliberately noticing small positives. So when my lips hit the cup of that hot coffee in the morning, boy do I savor that. I have learned to really be intentional about like, "Thank you Lord for this amazing cup of coffee and bring it on," right. So I associate that with the brain on, a patient smile, an uninterrupted 10 minute walk. I love 10 minutes to myself, no beeping, no nothing. So sometimes I'll show up to work early just to sit in a quiet car and be like, "Okay, I'm getting ready to walk into chaos, but I'm gonna treasure this five or 10 minutes in silence to center."
So a daily gratitude habit is great to refocus, to start savoring and noticing, realizing your blessings. Research shows [00:11:00] that it increases positive affect and life satisfaction. We've talked about that before. And why does this matter? Well, positive emotions broaden thinking and it replenishes you. It gets you up into your prefrontal cortex, and really allows you to be intentional about your next steps.
Another thing is problem framing as growth or an opportunity for growth. So reframing setbacks as data and invitations to learn rather than the evidence of fixed scarcity, right? So for example, "I don't have time," or "There's no time for this." What is a better question? "What can I remove from my schedule today? Or what can I delegate to get it off my schedule today? What is possible?" right? So you're asking better questions.
And why does this matter? Well, it lowers stress, therefore reducing reactivity, and it allows you to be creative. It allows you to be innovative in the ways that you're going to accomplish [00:12:00] the most important things you need to accomplish today.
And then there's boundary-aware optimism. What is this? Well, it's realistic hope that acknowledges limits, but chooses constructive steps. So not toxic positivity, y'all. Okay? This is a realistic hope, okay? That acknowledges there's limits, but it chooses to consider what is possible. So saying, "I can't do that right now. But check back with me in three days and I'll see where I can go." You offer up an acceptable alternative. This is boundary setting at its best, people. So it acknowledges your limits, right? It protects you from giving all of yourself out to the world that doesn't deserve or need that, and it helps the relationship, right? So if you're constantly giving out to a certain somebody, family member, colleague, whatever, coworker, it preserves your boundary and it makes you less resentful in the end, right? You get to choose where your time goes and where the relationship gets watered, so it keeps your agency. These behaviors aren't airy. They have measurable effects on mood, [00:13:00] relationships and problem solving. And so taking each one of these and just considering, you know, even small steps in order to promote these in your own daily life. I guarantee you you'll see some accelerated results.
Yeah, I love that. And it made me think too, when you're talking about boundaries, that abundance always feels good. And sometimes we can do things and stretch ourselves beyond where we feel comfortable because we're people pleasing or trying to create safety, social safety for ourselves. And we know that that is not abundance because we feel resentful for it. So it's an interesting distinction and really important. I think abundance feels amazing.
The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Teens book, which I have read with some of my kids—in it there's this [00:14:00] analogy of the Red Sea and the Dead Sea, and I loved it. The Red Sea, as you may or may not know, is full of life. I think it's a really popular dive site because of all the coral reefs there and beautiful marine life that is in this sea and the river that feeds it flows into the Red Sea, and then it flows out the southern end of the Red Sea, so it flows through it, and that would represent abundance.
The Dead Sea, by contrast, the river flows into the Dead Sea and it does not flow out, and the Dead Sea is dead dead. There's no life in it. And I love that analogy that if we allow resources to move through us, rather than hoarding them, it creates life. So that's the goal. And we're gonna give you a few little practical evidence-informed moves you can [00:15:00] do to increase that abundance in your life.
So number one, notice and name micro abundance daily. So this would be like a gratitude practice. I feel like backpacking is such a great way to develop a gratitude practice because you realize how very little you actually need to survive. And when you get home, you are incredibly grateful for tiny things like water, like a hot shower, like yeah, even a cold shower or a washing machine or a bed. So many things that we take for granted. One of the tiny things that I think about all the time—toothpaste and toothbrushes. I mean, it wasn't that long ago that they didn't have a great way to take care of their teeth, and [00:16:00] there's so many things to look around and be grateful for and doing so can really transform our lives.
So what you could do is maybe write a three item or think a three item gratitude list—what went well today and what was your role in it? Two to five minutes each evening or morning? We do at the dinner table with my family, we do something called peaches and pits where we talk about the best thing of the day and the worst thing of the day. And a lot of times we don't have pits. We just talk about peaches and it's so connecting and it really does feel so good.
Why this works: Randomized and experimental work shows that gratitude exercises boost positive affect or mood, optimism and pro-social behavior. They literally shift what we attend to. So here's a quick script—tonight, name three small things that went well and why. And write them down. I will offer, even just thinking about them can make a big difference. And it is a practice of mindfulness, meaning being in the present and noticing [00:17:00] and experiencing life as it is. What are you experiencing right now that is really miraculous? Are you driving down the road in a car? Are you driving down the road in a car that you're not afraid is gonna break down? Like to me, that is miraculous, 'cause as a teenager I had so many cars and I broke down on the side of the road so many times. I just am so grateful for cars that don't break down now. So what are all the things that you could experience in this moment that are absolutely miraculous?
Practice two: micro generosity experiments. So what do you do? Once this week, give a small, low risk resource—a compliment, time, a useful link without expecting return. If you have the opportunity to, you know, eat out and give a tip, round it up, give a little extra, see what happens. I waited tables [00:18:00] for several years during college, and I will tell you, I still remember there were a couple of times when somebody left me a hundred dollars as a tip. I will remember those people till the day I die. And what ripple, what positive ripple are you putting out when you give somebody a little bit extra to surprise them and show appreciation? And what does it do for you? How does it change how you feel? If you're not in the practice of doing this, you're going to be pleasantly surprised.
With my house cleaners, I appreciate them so much because they do something for me that I don't wanna do, and they do it so well. And so I'll go to Trader Joe's—every third or fourth time they come, I'll go to Trader Joe's and get them a couple of little plants and some chocolate and leave those for them. And I feel so good doing that. And they love it. It just builds connection and we both feel great and it costs like 20 bucks. [00:19:00] Nothing literally, and it feels so good. So try some little things like that and see what happens. You're never gonna go poor by giving generous tips and little gifts like that, I promise. If you struggle with money scarcity, hopefully you don't. But if you do, I promise it'll come back to you in multiples. I can't explain why it does, but that's been my experience is that it does.
Generosity signals trust. It builds reciprocity and it shifts your internal calculus away from zero sum thinking. There is enough on this planet for everyone to do well. There is more than enough for us all to live amazing lives, and we don't have to be afraid of not having enough because we're sharing. Behavioral and social psychology findings support reciprocity effects. When we're being generous, it really is sending out a positive ripple into the world to increase our positive impact and make the world better.
Practice number three, [00:20:00] broaden your inputs—curiosity and play. So what to do? Schedule 20 to 30 minutes of low stakes exploration weekly. Read outside your field or read outside under a tree. Try a new hobby. Go to the axe throwing place. If you haven't done that... One thing we did this week was we went to see Hamilton, the movie on the big screen, which was just awesome to see them larger than life. It was really amazing. Ask a stranger about their favorite thing. I do this a lot of times at the grocery store again—Trader Joe's just has the highest vibe. I just love it. The people there working there are always just amazing, and I'm always like, "What's your favorite product at Trader Joe's?" And they always have something new to share.
So doing these little things to explore outside our comfort zone, outside our routine are going to actually get us up into our higher brain, [00:21:00] into actually our right brain, which is gonna be more socially connecting, and it's gonna make us feel better. Why this works: Fredrickson's broaden and build theory, which we'll link the citation in the show notes, shows positive, curious states increase cognitive flexibility and resource building over time. Little bits of novelty expand what you see as possible. Being curious is going to make our lives better, I promise.
Practice number four, reframe constraints as design problems. So what do you do when you hit a limit? Given this constraint, what three creative options exist? So say, you know, you run out of time to get the things done that you want to get done. What are some creative options? Who can I delegate a task to? Force the brain out of reactivity into design mode. I don't have to cook dinner. I can get a healthy [00:22:00] dinner delivered actually, or I can get some groceries delivered and ask one of my kids to make dinner.
Why it works: Reframing reduces that tunnel vision that we can get into and invites some solution-focused thinking. This is a practical complement to structural changes like delegation and creating slack like we talked about earlier. One other skill that I wanted to highlight was the attention audit, especially with time scarcity. If we think we don't have enough time, a helpful thing to do is just to take one day, write down how we use our time and attention. And notice—like each hour, what is it that you did that hour? How much of the time were you doing things that you really want to be doing that align with where you wanna be going? How much of the time were you ruminating or scrolling social media or doing things to avoid feelings of discomfort? Doing that attention audit [00:23:00] really can be very eye-opening and shows us where we actually have, oftentimes, a lot more resources than we think.
Practice number five, build small buffers and external support. So what do you do? You create those micro slack moments, which we talked about in the last podcast—little 10 minute margins to give yourself some breathing time. An emergency petty cash fund or a checklist or a planner. We talk a lot about time blocking. Those things help reduce cognitive load, so we're not having to make a lot of decisions during the day. If one of the lists that runs through your mind is the things that you want your kids to get done, a helpful thing is to help them have a list so you're not having to say, "Did you do your homework? Did you take the dogs out? Did you empty the dishwasher?" That helps both you and them because you can just say, "Hey, how's your list going? Do you need help?" They feel more supported and less nagged and more connected.
I was gonna say, [00:24:00] I've even heard of like super successful people who wear the same thing every day. Like they have the same black shirt times seven, the same whatever pants, because they were noticing they were spending forever in their closet staring at all their options. Now some people—that is absolutely what they wanted to be spending their time on. For those people, they're like, "Here's the deal from here on out. This is my thing." It reduces the amount of decisions you have to make. You already made it, you already know what you're gonna wear tomorrow. Yeah. Yeah. And I do a version of that where like my daily uniform is jeans and a top. A top. I have some cute tops. That is my daily uniform unless I'm going to do something else. So you can do a version of that if you want, but yeah, several meals too. Meals too. Absolutely. Yeah. A lot of people do, you know, like a two week rotation where they have the same thing and it works great. You have, you know, Mexican night, [00:25:00] Chinese night, whatever, and yeah, it works great. So whatever things that we can...
Cognitive load will help. Abundance thinking really performs better when our cognitive bandwidth isn't constantly taxed by all the minutiae. And so that's what we're talking about here. Those decisions we can make ahead of time to make things easier—buffers protect the mental space that we need to notice abundance. So this is gonna tie back to scarcity research showing that bandwidth gets eaten by perceived shortages. And so if we're feeling super burned out, we don't have enough of anything—relationship, connection, money, time, energy—let's look at some systems that you can put in place to free up some bandwidth and that [00:26:00] is going to help you regain some of that mental space you need to be able to notice some abundance.
Here's just a quick caution. We want to avoid performative positivity. So what this means is we don't wanna confuse abundance practice with denial. If you really don't have enough—if you really don't have enough sleep, energy, if you really don't have enough time, money—let's reckon with those things and look at it and see what needs to happen to create those things for you. Recognizing real lack, validating hard feelings, and then deliberately apply these practices.
I would say the biggest issue that we see with our clients is lack of self-compassion. So have compassion on yourself for whatever situation you're in. You have infinite worth regardless of how much money, time, energy, what your relationships are, how efficient you are in clinic. [00:27:00] You have infinite worth. You deserve to feel joy. You deserve to feel abundance. It starts with being kind to yourself and agreeing that you deserve those things. And if you notice that you're not treating yourself like you deserve those things, that is something that needs some attention. That's an old thought loop that you can override and it needs to be overridden for your wellbeing and honestly for the wellbeing of everyone with you. This is so, so crucial because we can't have true compassion for others if we aren't giving it to ourselves, and that may be the biggest roadblock to abundance mindset that we have. Just notice how you talk to yourself.
So abundance is a practical stance. It broadens the mind, builds resources, and creates possibilities without denying real limits. So just a recap on your drive home—name one tiny abundance experiment you'll try [00:28:00] this week. A gratitude practice or extending a micro generosity, a compliment, five or 10 minutes of your time. You know, think about a way that you can extend some generosity in a small way that will pay dividends and stay curious and see opportunities or roadblocks as a way to come up with something creative. Figure out three options to overcome something unexpected or something that shows up in your day. And then, you know, making sure that you are being able to recognize what's important and what you need to do to cultivate your best self in whatever you do.
So that's it for today, friends. If you found this conversation helpful, the best way to support us is leave a review. It helps other physicians find our podcast and it moves us up on the list. And we'd love to hear from you. If you try this little abundance [00:29:00] practice experiment, tell us about it. Email us at [email protected] and don't forget to follow us on the socials @thewholephysician. You'll find us on Instagram, Facebook, X and YouTube.
And before we go, we'd love to invite you to check out a free gift we have for you. We've created the podcast Fast Track. It's a handpicked collection of our most high yield episodes designed to help you jumpstart your journey to freedom from burnout. We are just about at 200 episodes. And while that might sound a little bit overwhelming and you may not know where to start, that's why we've done this work for you. Head over to www.thewholephysician.com/fasttrack to discover your personalized path to wholeness and healing.
Thank you for spending time with us today and until next time you are whole. You are a gift to medicine and the work you do matters.
[00:30:00]
