THE ALTERNATIVE TO ABUNDANT THINKING

Deficit Motivation/Entitlement Thinking

Deficit motivation is the opposite of abundance motivation. It is also known as entitlement thinking. This is how victims are made.

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 causes a little grimace, or a headlong plunge into an empty chasm. The latter happens when delusion is largely responsible for a person’s expectations. Think the tone-deaf crowd in the first round of “American Idol”.

This sort of 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 disillusionments that can cause our lives to be so miserable, and our emotions to be so fraught and charged with anger and resentment.

These emotions are caused by the belief that you have received less than you expected or less than you deserve. It is setting too-high minimum expectations. This is down to often arbitrary personal assessments that have no basis in reality, and that have been bolstered over the years by well-meaning but ill-advised encouragement from others. Think the relatives of the tone-deaf crowd in the first round of “American Idol”. 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 more annoying. Either way, however, the stumbling block is the same: expectations. These are what cause the unhappiness.

Recognizing entitlement thinking is easy. It is feeling that we are in a hole and trying to climb out. It is the sense that we are constantly struggling to keep our head above water. Although these situations may be true now, they should not become who you are. A better way to think of things is to realize it could be a lot worse: the hole could be your grave that you never get out of; and at least your head is above water and you’re not drowning. With these new interpretations, it instantly becomes apparent that you have a lot to be grateful for.

Deficit motivation can cause serious harm to an individual. It can make them aggressive and negative to be around, even with those people closest to them; or especially so. It can 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 some truly outstanding opportunities because they do not completely conform to the individual’s preconceived ideas of how their main chance will appear to them. By the time they realize that they may have misconstrued the situation, their window 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. This is the selling of The American Dream. Yes, almost anything is possible with abundant thinking, but we have been not been schooled in the workings of abundant thinking, we have been taught that we are entitled, and this has created expectations.

You have to separate the ideal of entitlement from the reality of what you can honestly expect. We all believe we have the right to life, the basic entitlement to live our lives peacefully, but try telling that to the have-not who intends to join the haves by using a gun on you. Nothing can be taken for granted, and once we realize this we can truly begin to be grateful for what we do have, because we will understand that it is all a gift.

Over the centuries, and recent years especially, our notion of what we are entitled to has changed beyond all recognition. Perhaps we feel we are entitled to foreign holidays twice a year, but that’s only thanks to the Wright brothers a hundred years ago. Before that, trips abroad were far more arduous and expensive affairs. Luxuries have become necessities, and our values have been screwed up. We no longer look at the simple things in life that used to make people grateful, we notice instead all the things we are lacking. We are teaching ourselves to be unhappy, and to feel that we are victims of some awful fraud.

Deficit thinking can even create paranoid thinking; that we are being “robbed” of what we deserve. We can start to view other people negatively and with deep suspicion. Anyone we perceive as having the things we want becomes the enemy. We cease looking inwardly for answers and instead focus on who is to blame for our deficit.

frhebron