Choosing Conscious Plenty

I’ve been untangling my thinking around scarcity, plenty, expectation and growthI have been invited to join Design Thinking Academy London as a coach and my May retreat launches next week. As my business surges forward, I have been deepening its roots and doing some mental work to ground success and support my own learning.

I’m part of a group coaching programme with Ray Dodd called Money Mastery. I joined the programme as I recognise some patterns and conditioning hat might be unhelpful to my future development.  This week I’ve been focusing on the ‘plenty’ element of this course and its shadow, scarcity. 

Whilst completing the workbook, I started thinking about the conscious competence model developed by Noel Burch in the 70’s and how it might relate to the concepts of scarcity and plenty.  The model describes a learning pathway, from being unaware and lacking skills to automatically and proficiently performing a skill.

Conscious Competency model

I recognised some of these stages in my journey from scarcity to plenty and started mapping these out in relation to the work I do and resources I use.

I began my career with unconscious plenty.  I didn’t know a lot about the industry I was starting to work in, I wasn’t aware of the potential limitations and I had the exuberance and optimism that come with not knowing.  I mined my own resources and used the small amount of knowledge, tools and ideas around me to create something out of nothing.  At this point in my career I felt creative, entrepreneurial, the energy was exciting. 

As success came I started to see bigger limitations and bigger prizes and moved into conscious scarcity. I became aware of conditioning, marginalisation, power injustices and my work took on a striving gritty energy. I became aware of possibility and my personal limitations.  I negotiated and sought resources that I could see were available, but were not easily accessed by my industry (charity) and the people we served.  This knowing amplified the impact of my work but also led me down the road of burnout.

Then I see a choice.

One consequence or option following living in conscious scarcity feels like a move into unconscious scarcity. Burnout leading to apathy, inaction.  Ive definitely leaned into this mode when the systems and structures seem too powerful and I seem too small. 

My choice is to move towards conscious plenty.  I can see that this space has plenty, there is generosity and flow.  In this space I can breath in plenty and breath out impact. Conscious competency feels like a space where big shifts can happen, where trust replaces determination and movements begin.

And I need some help to move into that space!  Rays programme, continuing personal development, my writing and speaking, conversations with others on this path, all support this journey as I unfold and unfurl into conscious competence.

If you feel this unfurling and stretching too, I’d love to have a chat.