what happens if you miss out?
on impatience and scarcity
A big theme for me this month has been impatience. I’ve found myself rushing from place to place, trying to finish each task as quickly as possible, constantly measuring myself against the clock. I’ve fixated on where I am vs where I want to be, and felt an urgent need to close the gap.
All this has been accompanied by a rising frustration. I need to get there. I need to get this done. I need to go faster.
Part of this impatience seems rooted in a positive ambition. I’m starting to have a clear vision for my life and what I want to build, in terms of both my writing and my 1:1 coaching.
I’m excited about the future and eager to get there. When an energizing idea arises, I want to set it in motion immediately. I want to build a podcast and start a community and launch a group coaching practice all at once.
But the impatience isn’t just affecting the big stuff. It trickles into my day-to-day. My todo list becomes a list of obstacles I need to overcome. The traffic on my drive home is costing me time I don’t have. I have places to be! I have things to build!
Though I’m excited about the future, this urgency doesn’t feel like excited energy. It feels scared, stressed, and small. It makes my body tense and brace. It’s depleting, draining my energy.
The underlying emotion is fear. Fear of what? What’s there to be afraid of? After all, being a few minutes late here and there won’t make much difference. Taking an extra hour to finish my todo list hardly matters in the scheme of things.
But the fear is there. It feels like a fear of losing my chance, of letting an opportunity slip through my fingers, of missing out.
impatience as FOMO
It feels like if I don’t move fast enough, I’ll miss out on what I want to create. Like there’s a narrow window in which I can achieve what I want to achieve, and it’s rapidly closing.
For the past year, I’ve had recurring dreams of me trying to get to the airport before a flight, and arriving just a bit too late. That’s exactly what this feels like. I need to get there in time. But I can’t.
Whenever I feel this kind of “I need to” energy, I like to ask a simple question: What happens if I don’t?
What happens if I do miss out? What are the consequences? What is this fear envisaging? What am I bracing myself for?
In this case, I found the fear is that if I don’t move fast enough, I won’t create the life I want. I won’t have the fulfilling business I so desire. I won’t create enough content to build a big enough audience to sustain my coaching. I’ll lose my momentum and won’t be able to connect with readers anymore.
In short, I’ll stay where I am.
Now we get to dig deeper: what happens then? What would staying stuck say about me?
The answer that emerges: I won’t be the person I want to be. I won’t be as admirable or cool or impressive as I want to be.
Then what?
Then… I won’t be as loveable. Which means I won’t be as loved. I won’t get the acceptance I desperately desire.
There we have it. At the root of all this impatience and stress is a simple need: to be loved and accepted.
seeking acceptance
It’s always like this, by the way. With all my clients, once we start digging into the “I need to do ___ or else” story, it always comes down to a desire for love, in the form of connection and warmth and acceptance.
That’s a fundamental human need; that’s THE fundamental human need.
Many of our acts of ambition or self sabotage are just elaborate strategies to feel worthy of love.
The more urgent our ambition, the more urgent our need. At some point in our lives, we received a message. The message was “acceptance and love are scarce resources, so you need to work hard to earn them.”
“You need to be clever and smart and successful, or else you won’t be worthy.” And if you don’t do all the right things at the right time, then you’ll fail. And failure means being alone.
This lesson creates a scarcity mindset, a way of looking at the world where what we need is hard to find. In that world, it makes sense to rush around and keep pushing myself. It makes sense to be constantly stressed and grasping at any opportunity. My body has to be tense, so that I’m ready to both move quickly towards what I want and brace myself for failure. I have to be ready for anything
But there is another way of looking at the world.
from scarcity to abundance
Imagine a world where love and acceptance are easy to find, where there is an abundance of connection. Imagine what it would feel like to know that those experiences are easily available. As you envision this world, notice how your body relaxes, and how you feel a tiny bit more calm.
In this world, there’s no rush. We can take our time, and savour each step. We can choose, as Clarissa Pinkola Estés puts it, to be “insistent our own tempo”. We might decide to rush when it feels good to do so, but the necessity is removed. There’s no need to grasp at every little chance, so we’re comfortable letting them pass us by.
If I had abundant access to love and connection, my fundamental needs would be met. At that point, I might still choose to be ambitious and striving. But I would do it from a place of want, trying to amplify what I already have, rather than from a place of need.
It would be more about the journey, about having fun along the way. It would be about expansion and ease, rather than contraction and stress.
creating internal abundance
Our best sources of love & connection are other people, but their love isn’t always available. The love of others often more abundant than we think, but there are times where we do feel isolated and alone. In those times, the most consistent source of loving acceptance is ourselves.
Fortunately, we’re more than capable of creating that experience on our own. When I relate to myself with love & warmth, I give myself the feeling I’m seeking. If I can make myself feel accepted and loved, then I’m already there.
When I can find those scared parts of me and say, “hey, I’m here, I accept you as you are, I love having you here”… then I have internal access to the love I want. The stress and urgency aren’t necessary to get there.
Those internal parts don’t know the difference between “love from myself” and “love from others”; to your subconscious it feels the same. I get to have the same inner experience as if I had achieved all my grand ambitions.
This practice of internal acceptance does take practice. It is a skill. But we can start right now, and see if we can access just a tiny bit more love within ourselves.
Try saying to yourself, “I appreciate how hard you’re working”. Say it over and over, and notice how your body responds. If there’s even a tiny shift, then you’ve discovered a path forward. It just takes practice.
As I get better and better at giving myself love & acceptance, then I decrease my need to seek it elsewhere. At that point, I naturally start to slow down. I become more patient, not from forcing myself to do so, but as a natural consequence of my internal experience.
I already have what I need.
Everything else is a bonus.
I can take my time.
questions to consider
Where in your life do you feel a need for urgency? What do you imagine will happen if you take your time? If you miss out? If you fail?
Try filling in the blank here: “I need to do ___ or else I will ___”
What is the desire fuelling your ambitions? What is the internal experience that you’d get from achieving your goals?
How can you access that internal experience today, if even in a tiny way?
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With love & appreciation,
Scott