Not Playing The Zero-Sum Game
Have you ever heard the term “zero-sum game”? It’s refers to a situation in which resources are considered to be limited, and in this situation, what is one person’s gain is another person’s loss. The resource is now off the game board. It’s unavailable to anyone else.
We’ve grown up playing games like this. Games where you compete to obtain or control the resources, and you either win the resources (and the game) or you lose. One example that comes immediately to mind is the game of Monopoly, which, by the way, was originally invented by an anti-monopolist as an education tool.
Although such games can be fun to play, it’s important to point out that in real life, playing a zero-sum game is purely a matter of choice. The thought that there is only so much to go around or that if you gain something, others will suffer is simply not true.
Zero-Sum Pie
The usual effects of having a “small amount” mindset is that you are going to only ever have a small amount. That is the major difference between the haves and the have nots. Haves know that abundance is their birthright. Have nots don’t believe it and so they don’t have it.
Have nots look at the world as if there’s a limited supply of stuff… a pie that is to be divided. They say things like, “The rich keep getting richer and the poor keep getting poorer.” And, of course, this becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy because they unwittingly continue to participate in that “small amount” mindset.
Haves know there is more out there than what meets the eye even when they don’t yet possess what they want. They don’t compete for what’s in front of them. They look at what is outside of the pie because they are convinced there’s more than what’s in front of them. They innovate stuff from what seems like thin air!
Sure, there are people who seem to have a lot but who also play the zero-sum game. Their mindset is really have not. They’re focused on taking what they can from the pie. There will be always be “small amount” minded people who operate out of greed and try to take from others because they only see a small pie in front of them. But the important thing to understand here is that everyone has a choice. The have nots can, at any time, move into a have state of mind. That’s because it’s everyone’s birthright to have abundance. Everyone has the ability to tap into the limitless supply of matter and energy to create from, which is outside of that zero-sum pie.
The Abundant Universe
Just take a look what’s in the universe, which you are part of. There’s not just one type of tree on our planet, or even only a dozen. There are around 100,000 known species of trees. Why do we have so many tree species? Wasn’t about a dozen or so enough? Apparently, not.
When it comes to stars, scientists tell us that there are more stars than there are grains of sands on all the beaches of Earth. And even your own physical body reflects this obvious abundance. We don’t know the exact number, but it’s estimated that your body contains 50+ trillion cells.
Earlier I referred to the limitless supply of matter outside of the zero-sum pie. I’m sure you remember the law about matter that we learned in physics class: “Matter cannot be created or destroyed, it can only change forms.” Well, I’ve been talking a lot about trees and stars and the human body’s cells, which are just the visible parts of the universe’s abundance – visible matter. There’s a bunch we don’t know about the invisible parts of the universe – the part that we call dark matter and dark energy.
In their article entitled Dark Energy, Dark Matter, here’s what NASA says on the subject: “…roughly 70% of the Universe is dark energy. Dark matter makes up about 25%. The rest – everything on Earth, everything ever observed with all of our instruments, all normal matter – adds up to less than 5% of the Universe.”
Can you believe it? What we see and know about – trees, stars, human body’s cells, and whatever else that we can see of matter that is malleable and can change forms – this normal matter – it makes up less than 5% of the Universe!
The article’s author goes on to quip, “Come to think of it, maybe it shouldn’t be called “normal” matter at all, since it is such a small fraction of the Universe.”
The Expanding Universe
Wallace Wattles was a visionary personal development author in the early 20th century. I consider him my mentor from another century. In 1910, he wrote something that makes one really wonder if he was describing what scientists call dark matter and dark energy. Here’s what he said about visible and invisible matter while he was explaining that everyone has equal opportunity and access to abundance:
New forms are constantly being made, and older ones are dissolving; but all are shapes assumed by one thing.
There is no limit to the supply of Formless Stuff, or Original Substance. The universe is made out of it; but it was not all used in making the universe. The spaces in, through, and between the forms of the visible universe are permeated and filled with the Original Substance; with the Formless Stuff; with the raw material of all things. Ten thousand times as much as has been made might still be made, and even then we should not have exhausted the supply of universal raw material.
No man, therefore, is poor because nature is poor, or because there is not enough to go around.
And, by the way, while talking about the expansion of the universe, the NASA article also points out that Albert Einstein, being the first to realize empty space contained something, discovered that “it is possible for more space to come into existence.”
More space? Maybe the universe’s expansion makes it possible for more energy and more matter to come into existence. Or as Wattles might say, more “Formless Stuff.”
Your Birthright, Your Choice
So, putting the science aside, we come back to the basic choice you have regarding your mindset. What do you choose? Do you want to play the zero-sum game? Or do you want to go with the concept that there’s more abundance accessible to you than you can conceive of?
I, for one, am NOT playing the zero-sum game. I’ve been choosing to have an abundance mindset for some time now, and it’s ultimately been a lot more fun… and productive.
If you want to as well, then know that the first step to shifting into an abundance mindset is to accept that abundance is your birthright. You’re meant to have it!
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Angela Loeb is into self-development & personal empowerment, being awed by nature, writing, and being inspired by superhero stories. She’s also a career expert who’s advised job seekers for more than two decades.
http://angelaloeb.com
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