Hey, it’s Erik Thor here!

Today I was sitting atop a mountain watching the sunset and the clouds, and I was just thinking, woah, beauty is all around us. It struck me how much is available. There are so many people out there who’d genuinely like to be your friend. Countless communities and organizations that would welcome our support and participation. Unlimited music and art just a search away. Millions of stories free at our libraries. More knowledge accessible than ever before for anyone curious enough to learn.

Objectively, we live in a world overflowing with abundance.

But here’s the catch: to a person operating from a deficiency mindset, this abundance can feel like hell. I was reading about “lifestyle inflation” – how when our income increases, our expenses magically rise to meet it, and thanks to the “hedonic treadmill,” our happiness level often snaps right back to where it started. It’s a cycle that keeps us feeling like we never quite have enough.

Personally, I’ve been making some conscious shifts. I started exploring Vinted for second-hand clothes, getting more life out of what already exists. I even got my favourite shoes repaired instead of instantly buying new ones. Small steps, but they feel like leaning into the abundance already present, rather than constantly chasing the new. Maybe it’s not abundance I’m looking for, but Enoughness? 

For someone stuck in that state of deficiency – feeling not good enough, craving approval or status, wanting something they can’t quite name – the sheer idea of limitless abundance can be terrifying. Uncomfortable. It highlights what they feel they lack even more starkly.

So, what happens if we surrender to abundance?

This really hit home for me at work recently. I found myself drowning in anxiety over my to-do list. It just kept growing. No matter how much I accomplished, more tasks appeared. It felt like hell, like I could never do enough to satisfy my boss, my colleagues, anyone.

It took a long time, but I had a realization: I wasn’t in hell. I was actually in a version of heaven. Being needed, having a constant stream of opportunities and challenges – that’s a state of abundance! I had an infinite list of potential contributions, endless options available every single day. I was in abundance, but I was acting and feeling like someone in deep deficiency.

Being surrounded by possibility brought up all those anxieties: Am I good enough? Fast enough? Can I deliver quality? Do I meet expectations? It poked at my sense of status, value, worth, and capacity. The moment I saw how much was available, my mind immediately jumped to deficiency – what I couldn’t do, what I might lose, how I might fail.

This pattern shows up everywhere. Start a new relationship? Fear of losing the person. Make a new friend? Worry they won’t like us. Pick up a hobby? Wonder if we’ll get bored. When we’re deficiency-minded, we’re magnetically drawn to the lack, the not having, the not being.

This isn’t entirely our fault; it’s a trained response. Think of a monkey in a rainforest filled with banana trees. It doesn’t obsess over the bananas it can’t reach or hoard piles of them. The thought is absurd – it can just grab one when needed. Yet, our society – built on mass consumption, waste, and relentless advertising (often fueled by its own fear of competitors) – constantly trains us to fear missing out, to feel we need more, to worry about scarcity even when surrounded by plenty. Our collective “rat race” mentality, where striving to be the best out of fear puts others in fear, perpetuates this cycle. [ __ ] in, [ __ ] out, right?

What if we already live in an age of abundance but haven’t truly realized it or, more importantly, felt it?

Yes, I know there’s real lack in the world. People starve, lack shelter, lack basic necessities. Often, this is by design – a consequence of systems that value profit over need, believing (or arguing) that hunger motivates. As the saying goes, “Enough for everyone’s need, but not for everyone’s greed.” I’m not here to dictate your politics, but to prompt reflection on your own sense of worth and sufficiency, right here, right now.

Do you feel like you have enough? Or do you feel you need more? If a genie appeared, sure, you might wish for billions. But could you pinpoint the exact amount you’d need to finally feel abundant? $1 million? $10 million? The goalposts always seem to shift, don’t they? That’s the hedonic treadmill again. Even lottery winners often return to their baseline happiness (or unhappiness) surprisingly quickly.

The alternative exists. There are people who don’t relentlessly pursue wealth, not because they’ve given up, but because they genuinely prioritize relationships, family, meaningful hobbies, contribution. They’ve found contentment. We just don’t make Top 10 lists of “Happiest People Who Decided They Had Enough.”

This brings me back to you, right now. I believe most of us can find happiness and contentment in our current jobs, relationships, families, and friendships. But it requires a different feeling, not just a different thought. It’s not just intellectually knowing you’re safe and have enough, but feeling it deep in your body – a sense of ease, of looking at the world with contentment rather than hunger.

When you shift into this felt sense of abundance, your perspective changes:

• From seeking approval to desiring connection.
• From needing to be unique to listening to your inner voice.
• From distraction to genuine play and fun.
• From needing control to being driven by purpose.
• From perfectionism to surrendering to creativity.
• From seeking external validation (looking nice for others) to cultivating your own aesthetic and sense of wonder.
• From constant busyness to full engagement in the present moment.
• From arrogance/status to lifelong learning and a beginner’s mind.

I explore this whole journey – the anxiety of the never-ending list, the realization of being in abundance, and the deep shift required to truly feel it – in my latest video. It dives into how moving from that deficiency state changes everything, from our motivations to our interactions.

You can watch the video here: 

The signs of abundance are all around us: more material possessions than ever, 8 billion potential friends, nature’s bounty, easy access to second-hand goods because others have too much. We have the external reality of abundance, but often, our internal reality, our felt sense, is still stuck in lack, like we’re poor and imprisoned despite living in a palace.

The big question I’m wrestling with, and the one I explore in the video, is this: How do we get our bodies, our feelings, aligned with the abundant reality we already inhabit? How do we truly act like we live in abundance?

Thank you for reading, and I hope you’ll check out the video.

Wishing you presence and connection,

Erik Thor