As a party host in a crowd filled with 30s and above, I need to do a lot of convincing to get them to at least have a slice of cake.
But with children? All you need to do is convince one, and then like dominoes, they would begin to flock around the cake to get a piece. Not just a meager slice, mind you. Each would want to have a generous slice.
But how to divide a limited cake for an unlimited hunger or desire to have more than what the other gets?
As the responsible adult holding the knife, I told the children that they could each get a piece of cake as long as they told me honestly how much cake they could finish. And if they want to have more, they can always come back, as long as they finish the piece I gave them first.
Simply asking them to be honest with themselves about how much their appetite needed to be satisfied helped them make better decisions. And removing the idea of scarcity by giving them the sense that they can always come back if they want more made them more realistic about how much they can actually finish.
As adults, we do the same thing but with higher stakes. We hoard, we overcommit, and we take more than we need because we are afraid there won’t be enough later.
Having a scarcity mindset makes us bad at knowing what we actually want.
But when we trust that there will always be enough, we stop grasping and clinging. We learn to take only what we need and leave room to come back for more.
jessa 