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Column: Scarcity and abundance

Bombed out of their home and fleeing from the former Yugoslavia often under machine gun fire, my mother’s family spent several years during and after World War Two as refugees in Germany, awaiting their acceptance in Canada.
Richard Vetter
Richard Vetter is a Certified Financial Planner and owner of WealthSmart Inc. File photo

Bombed out of their home and fleeing from the former Yugoslavia often under machine gun fire, my mother’s family spent several years during and after World War Two as refugees in Germany, awaiting their acceptance in Canada. Reflecting on our current COVID-19 crisis, I asked her if they had rations during those times. “We received rations on a good day” was her reply. Prior to rations, they had to resort to resourcefulness and draw on others’ good will to feed their family, all the while trying to stay healthy when disease was widespread. She views the scarcity that they experienced in those lean years with gratitude, as virtually everything in subsequent years has been a tremendous gift – including the challenging times.

This is a challenging time. Governments around the world are responding with financial relief efforts that are necessary to preserve stability and give people confidence that they will get through this. What is often missing though is “mindset relief.” I received a great tool last week from the owners of Strategic Coach Inc. They published the “Scary Times Success Manual” in response to the September 11, 2001 bombings and the principles apply to this day. If you are interested in the full document, please contact us through our website, but here are the salient points I got out of it:

Forget about yourself; focus on others.

Forget about your job or your business; focus on your relationships.

Forget about the sale; focus on creating value.

Forget about your losses; focus on your opportunities.

Forget about your difficulties; focus on your progress.

Forget about your “future”; focus on today.

Forget about who you were; focus on who you can be.

Forget about events; focus on your responses.

Forget about what is missing; focus on what is available.

Forget about your complaints; focus on your gratitude.

It is all about the beautiful tension between scarcity and abundance. Both can both change the world.

Can scarcity make a difference? Absolutely! Consider Mother Theresa of Calcutta, Vincent Van Gogh, Rosa Parks or Anne Frank, all of whom lived in poverty but poured out their lives for the sake of kindness, beauty, and justice. Poverty can draw out our longing for a better world and trigger that fire in the belly that moves us toward extraordinary measures.

What about abundance? Abundance is the surplus of value that exists in this world to help respond to the scarcity. That value has no bounds. Fred Rogers once said “When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.’”

As a financial advisor, I cannot offer cookie cutter advice within the scope of this column, as everyone’s situation is different. What I can offer during this time of relative scarcity is that kindness, resourcefulness, and abundance are far more powerful than Covid-19.

This column is part of a monthly series courtesy of Richard Vetter, founder of WealthSmart Inc.