Operating From Abundance

Layoffs are hard - a simultaneous feeling of rejection and abandonment with fear for the future. And that kind of change hijacks our thinking brain and spirals back into the barriers that helped our ancestors to survive: win at all costs, cement your position in the group’s hierarchy, if others win you lose.

You can see this in the narrative people share about their experiences: “It’s like the Hunger Games out here” or “no one’s talking to anyone.” Fear of falling behind limits our ability to connect, to collaborate, to learn from each other. In Amanda Ripley’s book High Conflict, she emphasizes that humans are wired for both conflict and collaboration - and small triggers in our environment can trip either the conflict or collaboration response.

But even when everything in the environment is guiding us towards conflict, towards guardedness, towards insecurity, we have another choice: we can operate from a place of abundance, from a belief that there is enough in the world for all of us, and that only when we all win can any of us succeed. It’s an incredibly risky and arguably naïve choice. As we all know from the Prisoner’s Dilemma, choosing collaboration when your partner chooses self-interest only ends in you getting burned. And yet, we will only succeed in our endeavors - as individuals, a team, a community, a business - when enough people take the risk and choose collaboration.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve thinking a lot about the choice of collaboration, choosing to operate from abundance. I’ve realized that while I have gotten burned through choosing to trust and choosing vulnerability, that burn hurts way less than constantly living in fear and isolation.

Choosing abundance takes constant attention and diligence, preventing your brain from defaulting into protection mode. It’s not a choice you make one time but rather something you come back to every hour, every day.

And so as we close out the year, I’m feeling tremendous gratitude to my people around me, who chose collaboration and abundance time and time again even when everything was stacked against it. To the people who helped me choose abundance even when I wanted to hoard all my acorns. To two people in particular - you know who you are - who helped me even when it went against their own self-interests, and supported me when I did the same back. This support of each other helped us all to win - albeit in different ways than we may have anticipated. 2025 will be our year!