By Joy Stephenson-Laws, Holistic Coach, J.D., Founder

There’s a kind of poverty that doesn’t live in wallets or bank accounts—it lives in the body.

A tension in the chest when you spend money. A knot in your stomach when someone gives you something freely. A persistent whisper: “Be careful. It could all disappear.”

This is the legacy of lack mentality—not just a financial mindset, but a way of being that quietly governs how we approach money, trust, safety, and worth. And for many of us, it’s not something we chose.

It was passed down—spoken or unspoken—through generations who had to survive more than they had space to dream.

A Story from the Inside

Marcus didn’t realize he had a problem with money. He was frugal, smart, debt-free. He worked hard and saved well. But he also hadn’t taken a vacation in years. He rarely treated himself to something unless it was on sale. And every purchase—even a $15 lunch—came with a pang of guilt.

It wasn’t until a conversation with a friend that something cracked open.

“You’re not afraid of spending money,” his friend said gently. “You’re afraid of not being safe.”

The words hit a nerve. He started tracing the feeling back and saw it clearly: his father’s voice, warning about the collapse of the economy, criticizing every dollar spent. His grandmother’s worry about “wasting” food, electricity, or joy. It wasn’t just about being responsible—it was about living on alert. A life where anything good might vanish.

What Is Lack Mentality?

Lack mentality, or scarcity mindset, is a psychological framework where people believe that resources—money, love, time, opportunities—are finite and always just out of reach. The term was popularized by Stephen Covey in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, who described it as the belief that “if someone else wins or is successful in a situation, that means you lose.”

But deeper research backs this up.

In a widely cited study, psychologists Sendhil Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir explored how scarcity affects decision-making. Their book, Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much, explains that when people operate in a mindset of lack—whether it’s money, time, or even social connection—it creates a kind of tunnel vision. The brain fixates on immediate needs and becomes less capable of long-term planning, impulse control, or broad thinking.

In other words, scarcity hijacks cognitive bandwidth.

You can be intelligent, capable, and motivated—but if your mind is caught in fear, you’ll stay in survival mode. And survival mode is no place for joy, trust, or expansion.

Why We Inherit It

Most of us didn’t arrive at a scarcity mindset on our own.

We inherited it through stories:

“Save every penny—you never know what might happen.”
“Don’t get your hopes up.”
“Nice things are for other people.”
“You have to work twice as hard to get half as far.”

These messages often come from parents or caregivers who lived through real hardship—war, colonization, recession, migration, systemic oppression. Their warnings were born of love. But love steeped in fear becomes control.

And fear, repeated over time, becomes identity.

Psychologist Dr. Nicole LePera, author of How to Do the Work, refers to this as intergenerational emotional inheritance—unprocessed anxiety, shame, and scarcity passed down through behavior, beliefs, and body language, not just words.

Unless we examine these patterns, we end up living our parents’ fears instead of our own lives.

Scarcity in Immigrant Families: A Special Kind of Legacy

Among immigrants and their children, scarcity often takes root not just through individual experience, but through collective history. Many immigrant families come from environments where resources truly were scarce—where political instability, economic collapse, or social upheaval made fear and hyper-vigilance a matter of survival.

When they resettle, they bring not just memories, but mindsets. And rightly so—starting over in a foreign land with limited support requires grit, sacrifice, and deep caution.

But even after some degree of stability is reached, the scarcity often lingers. Not just in behavior, but in the narratives passed down:

“We didn’t come this far for you to be careless.”
“We struggled so you could have a better life—don’t waste it.”
“Hard work is the only way to succeed.”

These mantras are often meant to instill resilience, but they can also plant seeds of guilt, hyper-responsibility, and emotional austerity. Children of immigrants often learn that rest is laziness, joy is indulgent, and mistakes are betrayals. Even when their external life looks stable, internally they are still preparing for collapse.

Unless questioned, these inherited fears quietly dictate how people work, spend, love, and dream.

Why We Must Grow Beyond It

To grow out of lack is not to shame the past—it’s to outgrow its limitations. It is to honor our ancestors’ survival, while choosing to live more fully than they could.

Remaining in a scarcity mindset when you no longer need to is like continuing to wear armor long after the war has ended. It keeps you safe, but it also keeps you stuck. It constricts risk, creativity, generosity, and rest.

You might stay in the wrong job, fear investing in yourself, sabotage relationships, or simply never feel like enough.

Abundance isn’t about excess.

It’s the felt sense of sufficiency.

That you are enough. That there is enough. That you can trust life—even when it’s uncertain.

And that shift changes everything.

Moving From Scarcity to Sufficiency

This transformation doesn’t happen overnight. But it begins with awareness.

Name the inheritance. Acknowledge that the voice of fear in your head may not be yours.
Separate past from present. Ask yourself: Is this fear relevant to my current reality—or is it a ghost from the past?
Redefine security. True safety isn’t hoarding—it’s knowing you can rebuild. That you have support, resilience, and options.
Practice sufficiency. Begin making small choices from a place of enough: spending on joy without guilt, resting without shame, investing in your growth without apology.

Healing the Line

When Marcus began working through his inherited scarcity, he noticed something shift. He didn’t start overspending or chasing luxury. He just started living more consciously. He took a trip without spiraling. He started a creative project without worrying about how it would “pay off.” He let joy in—and it didn’t destroy him.

He was no longer carrying fear that didn’t belong to him.

And in doing that, he didn’t just heal himself—he began healing the line.

We are the transitional generation.

The ones who are safe enough to examine what we’ve inherited and brave enough to choose something different.

Because the world we’re building won’t run on fear.

It will run on sufficiency.

On trust.

On the quiet, steady knowing:

There is enough. And we are enough.

Sources & Further Reading

Mullainathan, S., & Shafir, E. (2013). Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much. Times Books.
Covey, S. R. (1989). The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. Free Press.
LePera, N. (2021). How to Do the Work: Recognize Your Patterns, Heal from Your Past, and Create Your Self. Harper Wave.
Twist, L. (2003). The Soul of Money: Transforming Your Relationship with Money and Life. W. W. Norton & Company.
Shah, A. K., Mullainathan, S., & Shafir, E. (2012). Some Consequences of Having Too Little. Science, 338(6107), 682–685. DOI: 10.1126/science.1222426
Yehuda, R., Daskalakis, N. P., et al. (2016). Holocaust Exposure Induced Intergenerational Effects on FKBP5 Methylation. Biological Psychiatry, 80(5), 372–380

The Inheritance of Scarcity: Unlearning the Fear That Shaped Us