Deficit motivation, or entitlement thinking, is the exact opposite of abundance.
Entitlement thinking has already been discussed to a certain extent. It is that awful feeling that says you have been cheated out of your just desserts, your rightful inheritance. It is how people think when they set specific expectations for themselves that are based on their belief that they deserve more.
Entitlement thinking can create the narrow miss that might cause a little grimace, or a headlong plunge into an empty chasm. The latter can happen when delusion is responsible for a person’s expectations - think about the tone-deaf crowd in the first round of “American Idol” for example.
Entitlement thinking takes many forms. It may make you think you deserve more money, a better job, more praise, a more attractive body, better opportunities, skills, friends, partners etc. It covers the whole gamut of disillusion that can cause our lives to be so miserable, and our emotions to be so fraught and charged with anger and resentment.
These emotions naturally flow from the belief that you have received less than you expected or less than you deserve.
Setting your expectations too high is often down to arbitrary personal assessments that have no basis in reality, and that may have been bolstered over the years by well-meaning but ill-advised encouragement from others. On the other hand, entitlement thinking may be based on a sound assessment of a person’s skills and abilities, which makes missing the mark even much more annoying. Either way, however, the stumbling block is the same: it is our expectations that cause the unhappiness.
Recognizing entitlement thinking is quite easy; it is feeling that we are in a hole and trying to climb out, or the sense that we are constantly struggling to keep our head above water.
Although these situations may be real enough, we should not allow them to influence who we are. A better way to think of things is to understand that it could be a lot worse. The hole could be an abyss from which you never escape and, if you are struggling to keep your head above water, well at least you’re not drowning. With such new perspectives, it instantly realigns your thinking as it becomes apparent that you always (in all circumstances) have something be thankful for.
Deficit motivation can cause serious harm to an individual. It can make such people aggressive and negative, even with those people closest to them; sometimes, especially so. It can also provoke a reckless attitude to life, where dangerous and uncalculated risks are taken. Or it can cause a person to feel so sorry for themselves that they withdraw and give up, which can lead to depression or worse.
The really sad part of deficit motivation is that it can cause people to miss truly outstanding opportunities, simply because such opportunities do not conform to the individual’s preconceived ideas of what their chance will look like, or how it will appear. By the time they realize that they may have misconstrued the situation, the window of opportunity has passed.
To defeat entitlement thinking, we must ask ourselves exactly why we believe we are entitled to anything at all. Mostly, it is because we have been born into a society that promotes the idea that anything is possible. Yes, almost anything is possible with abundant thinking, but we have been not been properly schooled in the workings of abundant thinking; instead, we have been taught that we are entitled, and this has created a certain level of expectation.
You have to separate the idea of entitlement from the reality of the abundant universe. We all believe we have the right to life, including the basic entitlement to live our lives peacefully, but try telling that to the ‘have-nots’ who intend to deprive the ‘haves’ by using violence. Nothing can, or should be taken for granted, and once we realize this we can truly begin to be grateful, because we will understand that life is a gift.
Over the centuries (and in recent years especially) our notion of what we may be entitled to have changed beyond all recognition. Perhaps we might feel we are entitled to foreign holidays twice a year for example. But before the Wright Brothers, trips abroad were far more arduous and expensive affairs. In our modern world, luxuries seems to have become necessities, and our values have become skewed. We no longer seem to appreciate the simple things in life that used to make people feel grateful. In the process, we have taught ourselves to be unhappy; the undeserving victims of some awful fraud.
Deficit thinking can even create a kind of paranoia; that feeling of being “robbed” of what we deserve. We may start to view other people negatively and with deep suspicion. Anyone we perceive as having the things we want may effectively become the enemy. We cease looking inwardly for answers and instead focus on who is to blame for our deficit.
This kind of thinking happens when people focus on what they do not have in their lives. People who live by thoughts of scarcity are creating the very circumstances that will cause further scarcity, because they are convinced that there is a shortage of the things they want in life. They do not embrace the concept of abundance, and thus do not invite it into their lives through a positive attitude.
Scarcity thinking can also produce more far-reaching negative repercussions. It can cause people to take things they don’t need, or too much of what they do need, or can turn them into hoarders, which stops them from giving. Those who think abundantly, on the other hand, are happy to take only what they need, despite the knowledge and confidence that the universe has a limitless supply.