Change your mind. Change the world.

I typed that pretty darn quickly. Reading it will be quick too, but doing it – that’s another matter.
I’ve shared that “my work for time” mentality needed to be refocused to finding work that makes money whether I’m there or not. I’ve also shared that looking for those options Lucy talked about was scary/exciting. What I didn’t share is that I didn’t know I needed to change my mind-set to find some of them. When I first retired, my intent was to supplement my pension with sewing for people, computer projects for people, or daycare. I found out that having my time controlled by someone else wasn’t such a fun retirement. I also learned that there weren’t a lot of folks lining-up in my yard for my expertise. Deciding to jump into real estate investing with my kids was a knee-jerk reaction to wanting to help them.

What I didn’t know was that I needed to learn the real estate stuff as fast as possible. And along that journey is where I found my mind being blown away by cluing in on today’s style of doing business. One of the books I’ve read during that time is Abundance by Peter H. Diamandis and Steven Kotler. I want to share some of the things I found out about the present and technology. He paints a picture that I can still hardly process, but now I at least know there are things to see with open eyes and mind.

There are several things outlined by the authors to prep us for what comes next.

“…evolution shaped the human brain to be acutely aware of all potential dangers….has a profound impact on human perception: It literally shuts off our ability to take in good news.”
“…a quick look at history shows that progress continues through the good times and the bad.”
“The 1918 Influenza epidemic killed fifty-million people, World War II killed another sixty million.”
“…this period also saw infant mortality decrease by 90 %, maternal mortality decrease by 99%, and,
overall, human lifespan increase by more than 100%.”
“…using almost any metric currently available, quality of life has improved more in the past century than ever before.”
“…In today’s hyperlinked world, solving problems anywhere, solves problems everywhere.”

If we can finally tackle some of the global standards of living in undeveloped countries through technology, what will happen? I think this is the most interesting part! Diamandis and Kotler posit that, “Over the next eight years, three billion new individuals will be coming online, joining the global conversation, and contributing to the global economy. Their ideas – ideas we’ve never before had access to – will result in new discoveries, products, and inventions that will benefit us all.”

Technology, that’s what will prove the old way of thinking obsolete. When I hear about more and more money and resources leaving our country, or funding being cut by our government, I keep wondering how much longer we can do so much for so many with so little? That thinking is labeled as a “scarcity mind-set.”

Too often we have given into the “scarcity” viewpoint. Depression era children learned conservative habits because scarcity was their reality. But was there a need for that conservative mind-set when they were adults in the 50’s and 60’s? Often, time itself will make us question whether there was really a scarcity, or just a “scarcity mindset.” What is proven, over and over, is that what is hard to come by today will likely be made plentiful tomorrow through technology. Something to think about?