If we’re interested in forging a future of abundance

Scarcity says that we’re always starting from scratch.

And that what we already have isn’t enough to get what we want.

But abundance counters that assumption by saying, now hang on a minute. Let’s take an honest inventory of the prosperity we already have. Because maybe we can exploit what’s around us to take our work to the next level.

This is what leverage is all about. Identifying our baseline of value, and building out rom there.

Ashe, who broke the color bar on professional tennis in the seventies, once offered a powerful piece of advice around this philosophy:

Start where you are, use what you have, do what you can.

Considering he was the first black tennis player to win three grand slam titles, his is advice is worth following. Not only in tennis, but in any difficult endeavor. The gold is already there, he’s suggesting, but it needs your permission, faith, curiosity and grit to be mined.

You have to allow whatever progress you’ve made so far to create momentum and motivate you to move the story forward.

Maybe you want to open a restaurant, but the labor and expense is far too hefty at the moment. Fair enough. But do you have any hungry friends? Think they would be willing to exchange some honest feedback for a free and delicious home cooked meal?

Outstanding. Start where you are, use what you have, do what you can.

Or what about the musical you’ve always wanted to create? You probably don’t have access to a black box theater and a full production crew. That’s understandable. But are there any songs out there that are so good, they make you angry that you didn’t write them?

Great. Make a playlist of twenty of them. Listen to that music every single day until you can’t take it anymore and have to compose something or you’ll lose your mind. Start where you are, use what you have, do what you can.

Perhaps you’re launching a new software app, but the prospect of acquiring your first hundred users is daunting and paralyzing. Seems normal. But what about all the people in your career who have seen you in action before? Between your colleagues, coworkers, customers and contemporaries, there must be a hundred contacts. These people have trusted you in the past and would love to hear from you.

Cool. Send every single one of them a personal email, ask them how they’re doing, and mention that you have a new project you’d appreciate their feedback on. Start where you are, use what you have, do what you can.

The best part about this process is, it’s incremental. You make small, consistent, deliberate moves to create momentum that propels you to the next step. You take every opportunity available to leverage the value you have today to win opportunities in the future.

And then, once you get there, you do it all over again. You trade up. It’s like a spiral. Always growing, upward, yet never covering the same ground.

The goal is to get caught up in a positive cycle of prosperity that replicates itself.

If you’re interested in forging a future of abundance, this is the path. Accept that you’re never starting from scratch. There is no drawing board to go back to.

Just look around. The gold is there. Start where you are, use what you have, do what you can.

How often do you take an honest inventory of the prosperity you already have?