Scarcity Mentality Cost Me Thousands of Dollars Last Week
Please learn from my mistake and stop saying yes out of fear because constant accessibility won’t save you.
The flashing lights and sirens didn’t surprise me. Yes, I didn’t do anything wrong, but I was in the part of town where that sort of thing happens at the time of day where that sort of thing happens because I overrode my instincts.
I knew better, and now I was about to start paying for it.
Morning Reset Interrupted
The day has started with me doing something I didn’t want to do. It was someone else’s blessing, and I stole it.
The assignment came through, and I jumped on it even though I had enough work that day to easily turn it down.
I felt like I couldn’t say no. Because everybody has been telling us, it’s been a really, really tough year to be not just a writer, but a creative, in general. And everybody has been saying how bad things are, how it’s so much harder to get assignments. It’s so much harder to get your pitch through. Budgets are shrinking, and editors are getting laid off, and every time that I get a chance to do something, I think to myself, well, I have to do it. have to do it right now. I have to because otherwise, I’ll be fumbling an opportunity. They won’t want to work with me again.
So I have to show up right away. Or else! That’s what I was telling myself, but it wasn’t true. Even if it was, saying yes wouldn’t have changed anything. I could have gotten in my car and done what I was scheduled to do. I let scarcity mentality and fear delay me from what I had planned for the day.
Wrecking My Own Routine
There’s a trend going around about people trying not to treat everything like an emergency. I should have learned from it last week.
I’m a pretty productive person, but I was even more on GO for no reason. The rent was paid, there were no creditors calling, but I had the gnawing feeling that if I didn’t pick up every crumb from the ground I would soon be starving.
This made no sense! Fear rarely does.
