This week not only represents the start of the holiday season but also the coming together of family and friends. We all come together and sit in front of an amazing spread of food to celebrate how thankful we are for the sacrifices our forefathers made to journey so far and under such risky conditions in order to start a life in this new land, which was not so plentiful at times. They did this, so they could have a level of freedom that they were not experiencing in their home country.

They likely never envisioned how plentiful and varied the food in this new land would eventually become. Since it seems so natural for us to have all this food, we forget it wasn’t always this way. We sometimes lose sight of the potential for abundance all around us in all the areas of our lives. If we would just open up to the possibilities that other entrepreneurs and technology have harnessed, we could create vast abundance in our lives. We should be thankful for both what we currently have and also what we could potentially have. We have created this abundance, and we have so much more potential to do it over and over again.

I listened to Peter Diamandis speak at the EO Conference in Istanbul this September, and he shared stories of Abundance (also the name of his book and some of my blogs). His stories could make your jaw drop, especially when you consider their implications. We have the potential for abundant energy, food, water, education, computing, health care, and freedom. If you would like to know more about the potential of abundance, read Peter’s book or some of my blogs learn more about the abundance we have the capacity to be thankful for tomorrow.

I am thankful for the entrepreneur and that we live in a world filled with them. I am thankful they are passionate about something that drives them to put forth the effort to go out and create these new inventions. This allows us to live in abundance and gives us the potential for so much more.

Go make it happen, my entrepreneur friends, and show the world that a scarcity mindset is not necessary because we have the ability to live in a world that serves us all.

Let’s continue our discussion from last week’s blog. How does Abundance solve the future problems that seem to loom before us like population growth, water needs, hunger, and power?

Abundance Thinking holds the understanding that we have the capability to solve our pains with the technologies we have already created. Those technologies are at such a level that the continued connectivity of each of them creates exponential opportunities for solving all the issues of the day and the problems out ahead of us.

Click Image below for TED Talk.

When I talk about technologies, I am referring to ubiquitous broadband networks, nanomaterials, digital manufacturing, synthetic biology, artificial intelligence, robotics, and infinite computing. These areas of exploration are a game changer for the world in which we live. For those skeptics out there, let’s look at a few examples.

Consider the issue of water needs, which is a major one. Dean Kamen was working to get sterilized water to dialysis patients, when he realized he could solve a problem of clean water for billions of people by creating the Slingshot. This device is the size of a dorm room refrigerator and has an intake hose and an outflow hose, so you could stick it into anything wet, and out would come pure pharmaceutical grade injectable water for dialysis. Great for drinking also! Anything wet includes salt water, arsenic-laden water, and even the latrine. Can you imagine that?

This ultimately translates into helping to solve the population explosion. How? Most people that have large families are rural farmers that need more people to work their farms. They have more children because they tend to have a higher mortality rate in rural areas without clean drinking water. Solve the water problem, and you take huge steps toward the over-population problem.

Next, let’s tackle food. Vertical farms will change the game here. This would consist of utilizing buildings that would be immune to weather changes, so crops could be grown year round. It would take ten to twenty soil-based acres to produce the same amount of crops as one acre of skyscraper or vertical farm. This also means no pesticides or herbicides to runoff and effect the environment.

Now, we will take a look at the power issue. An updated version of the stirling engine can burn almost anything, and it is being used to power things like cell phones and lights. This engine can also power the Slingshot. Guess what powered it during a six month trial in a Bangladesh village? Cow dung!

All these examples prove that we really can solve huge problems and realize how abundance will raise the living standards, save resources, and provide ecological benefit to all on the planet.

If you are wanting to explore this more or still not convinced check out the TED Talk by Peter Diamandis or read the book.

The pervasive worldview today suggests limitations and scarcity, and this restricted perspective seems to be spreading with all the negative feedback we are continually inundated with at every turn. When human civilization and technology repeatedly prove the limited and scarcity thinking wrong, why do we let it consume our consciousness?

If this scarcity mindset was accurate, we would have mostly starved to death by now after all the cries in the ‘70s that insisted the exploding population would consume all the food. Have you been to a grocery store lately? What about how we were scheduled to run out of oil a decade ago? We should all be walking now and burning our furniture to heat our homes.

This is scarcity thinking, and it gets the best of us because our minds were built to think this way in order to save us when we lived in a day of surviving off the land and running from predators. However, we really live in a world of abundance! A little more awareness and understanding of this could take a lot of stress off our shoulders.

In previous blogs, I have discussed how an abundant mindset opens people up to achieving the success and goals they desire. It also prevents us from getting so depressed by the world’s problems and issues, which Peter Diamandis and Steven Kotler explain in their new book “Abundance: The Future is Better Thank You Think.” In this book, they discuss that resources are open to the benefits of technology. Few are truly scarce; they are mainly inaccessible. They show this by the analogy of an orange tree. If I pluck all the ones I can reach from the lower branches, then I am out of usable fruit until technology kicks in, and someone builds a ladder.

Diamandis and Kotler say “humanity is now entering a period of radical transformation in which technology has the potential to significantly raise the basic standards of living for every man, woman and child on the planet. Within a generation, we will be able to provide goods and services once reserved for the wealthy few to any and all who need them.”

Are you letting the negative messages get to you, or are you looking at the world with all the abundant opportunities?

Next week we will explore how abundance will make this happen!