For a long time, I worked from a place of need. At the time, I didn't know that fear was behind almost every financial decision I made. I was afraid I wouldn't have enough. I was afraid of losing the little I had. I was scared of making a mistake and making things worse. So I held on to what was safe.
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I kept working at jobs that didn't pay me enough. I turned down chances that involved even a little bit of risk. Even when I didn't have enough, I told myself to be thankful for what I did have. From the outside, I looked like I was in charge. I was stuck on the inside. That's what having a scarcity mindset does.
It makes you think that money is always tight, that there's never enough to go around, and that wanting more makes you greedy. It keeps you small, careful, and always ready for the worst. I didn't grow up with a lot of money. There weren't any empowering talks about money. It was always about how to make it last, how to avoid wasting it, and how to work hard for it.
People with trust funds and high-paying jobs thought the idea of abundance was too good to be true. I didn't see how it could help me. But everything changed when a friend questioned my thoughts during a casual chat. Even though I had the skills, I had just turned down a freelance job because I didn't feel "qualified enough."
She looked at me and said, "You're not broke because of your budget." You don't have any money because you don't think you deserve it. That really hurt. I was so focused on saving money and cutting back that I wasn't thinking about how to grow. I didn't even let myself think about a bigger version of my life.
That moment broke something open. I began to read books and listen to podcasts that weren't about budgeting but about how to think. I paid attention to how people who made a lot of money thought about money. They weren't careless. They were sure of themselves. They didn't keep things. They put money into it.
They took risks that they knew would pay off. And most importantly, they thought they could make more instead of just protecting what they already had. I didn't believe that, but I was interested enough to give it a try. I started by going over my thoughts. I stopped and rewrote it in my head every time I heard myself say something like, "I can't afford that" or "I'll never make that much." I didn't make myself fake happy.
I just changed the tone. Instead of saying, "I can't afford it," I would say, "How can I make this happen?" That little change got me out of a dead end and told me to do something. After that, I stopped charging too little for my work. For a long time, I was scared to raise my prices because I thought people would leave.
Some did. But some people didn't even flinch. They paid right away. That opened my eyes. I realised that I had been making assumptions about how much people were willing to pay instead of letting them choose. My fear was costing me real money. I also started doing small jobs on the side of my main job around that time.
Not because I was desperate, but because I was finally willing to think that I could make more money. I stopped believing that one pay cheque was my limit. I gave my skills more than one way to show them off. That one change in my mind opened up doors I never would have seen before. Things that had always been there but I couldn't see them because I was too busy trying to stay alive.
The biggest change happened when I stopped seeing money as something to chase and started seeing it as something to work with. I started to ask myself honest questions like, "What do I think I'm worth?" Where am I being small because I'm afraid? What would I do if I thought I could make more money, not just for "other people"? The answers weren't always clear, but they helped me stop waiting for someone to tell me what to do.
My income almost doubled within a year of making these changes inside the company. Not because I was lucky, but because I finally stopped getting smaller. I began looking for jobs that paid more, pitching bigger clients, and standing taller at work. I stopped thinking of making money as a dream and started thinking of it as a duty. Getting out of the scarcity mindset wasn't just about making more money.
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It was about becoming the kind of person who could hold it, grow it, and respect it without being afraid. I still have times when I fall back into old habits, but now I know what they look like. I understand how you feel. And I know how to switch from a mindset that holds on to one that builds. If you've been trying to fix your money problems by spending less and cutting more, maybe the answer isn't in your budget. It could be how you see yourself.
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