[Animats]

This looks like an attempt to monetize an evangelical Christian concept.[1]

From the article: The ideal attitude is what she calls Abundant Thinking — a mindset that gives you the creative agency and grit to reach your vision — and, on a daily basis, to design your own life. When Verresen first meets most of her clients, they’re in reactive mode. It’s like they’re in a movie, acting in their job and life without knowing the script or having perspective. Her goal is to put them in the director’s chair, with more choices, perspectives and possibilities to rewrite and upgrade the script as they go.

From an evangelical site: One way of viewing abundant life is to see when people have been changed by the power of Christ; they live different lives, which affects all aspects of their experience. In missiololgy, we call that "redemption and lift." This isn’t just true individually, but can also be on a cultural level. So, spiritual change, accompanied by better decisions, does often lead to better circumstances financially. (Sometimes it get's you arrested and martyred, so don't miss the point here.)"

[1] http://www.christianitytoday.com/edstetzer/2015/march/what-d...

[dang]

Lest anyone dive into religious polarization around this, it's worth pointing out that such psychological doctrines have a long history, back through Norman Vincent Peale and Napoleon Hill to the New Thought movement of the late 19th-early 20th century [1] and a whole kaleidoscope of religious splinter groups. Many of these were Christian, but mostly marginally so; a famous example is [2]. Then there's the New Age wing to this (think The Secret) that goes back to the Theosophists and alchemical traditions. Then again there were more philosophical versions, like the Transcendentalists. You can find this type of thing in Emerson. The history and literature is rich. More recently it is beginning (as one would expect) to take scientific and quasi-scientific forms, including attempts to test it experimentally. Not clear yet what will come of those.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Thought

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/As_a_Man_Thinketh

[theoh]

I'm happy to see the intellectual history of this subject discussed in a cautious way.

The New Age contrast between scarcity and abundance is compelling when applied to the question of adapting to changed circumstances. (Take for example the link posted in the last day or two about people raised in poverty finding it difficult to regulate their food intake.) The New Age arguments boil down to a simple diagnosis that we have been conditioned, by scarcity, into habits that are no longer appropriate.

There was a Wired article about 7 years ago which discussed this contrast from another angle. In that article, like the original link under discussion here, the Scarcity mindset is caricatured as mean and rigid. The Abundance mindset is healthy and open to alternatives. It's not at all about "manifesting" abundance out of nowhere, as per The Secret. I think Stephen Covey might be a major source for the Wired version of the polarity.

From the Wired article "When scarce resources become abundant, smart people treat them differently, exploiting them rather than conserving them. It feels wrong, but done right it can change the world.

The problem is that abundant resources, like computing power, are too often treated as scarce."

Hard to disagree with that.

http://www.wired.com/2009/06/mf-freer/

[duaneb]

Not to mention existentialist philosophy, which again can be theist (kierkegaard) or not (too many to count).

[et1337]

The evangelical Christian concept of "abundant life" is already an attempt to monetize the religious imperative of tithing. It's the "prosperity gospel": give us money and God will make you rich. I say this as an evangelical Christian myself.

[chris_wot]

I really object to calling all evangelical Christians supporters of the so-called prosperity gospel. Whilst there are a lot of adherents, many, many evangelical Christians consider it to be an aberration and an utter misreading of scripture.

[et1337]

To clarify: I agree with you and count myself among those who consider it a butchering[1] of scripture.

[1] http://babylonbee.com/news/joel-osteen-ordered-acquire-butch...

[chris_wot]

Oh. Sorry then, it's just you called it an "evangelical concept" so I was a bit confused...

[oldmanjay]

I can't imagine anything more intellectually fulfilling than arguing from imagination about the one true way to love an imaginary being

[chris_wot]

There's nothing intellectually fulfilling about a circular argument.

[_yosefk]

The religious version in fact seems more restrained in its promises, with the "arrested" bit at the end. (Not unexpectedly BTW; IMO comparing any such pitch to a religion is usually a compliment to the pitch, as religions of today evolved over many centuries and so are better debugged than many an age-of-reason attempt at scientific-sounding wisdom. And personally I'm deeply not religious, but still.)

I did read that rats run faster towards a reward than they run from a punishment etc., so yeah, scarcity vs abundance, sure, but if someone is paid to coach me when I have a deadline to meet, I'll show them some abundance.

[Animats]

The religious version in fact seems more restrained in its promises

I picked one of the more conservative sites promoting "abundance". There are much worse. See "Prosperity Theology" in Wikipedia. That, however, seems to have declined since the 2008 recession.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosperity_theology

[_yosefk]

Sure there are worse sites - I wasn't 100% serious there...

[kaybe]

I suspect many religions also suffer heavily from legacy issues. Maybe a rewrite would help, debugged or not.

[TheOtherHobbes]

The original technical debt.

[douche]

Christianity in particular seems to suffer from the Lava Layer pattern[1]

[1] http://mikehadlow.blogspot.com/2014/12/the-lava-layer-anti-p...

[sametmax]

It's also soufism and buddhism. Most religions has those embedded in their core, but people tend to practice anything but the most important bit of theirs.

Practially, this is what meditation leads to. This is what therary leads to. This is what "being in the zone" really means.

Bottom line, this is a state that is good for us, and that we avoid most of the day, despite being adviced as a practice by almost all the important doctrines for a long time.