Are you "yes, and..." or "yes, but..."?

The American poet Anne Sexton wrote, “Abundance is scooped from abundance, yet abundance remains.” In the Upanishads, we read, “All this is full. All that is full. From fullness, fullness comes. When fullness is taken from fullness, fullness still remains.”

You may wonder how this can be. It defies logic. If you take something from A, then A is diminished. If I have 100 dollars (or acres or boxes of cereal or widgets) and you take 10 (or 40 or 93) I have fewer dollars. That is true. I can’t argue with that.

But I will argue that we are so deeply identified with and attached to our way of being in the world, that we cannot easily bring ourselves to step out of our own zero-sum thinking which basically posits, “If I have something and give some to you (or you take some from me), then I have less. I am diminished. I am harmed in some way; lessened, less than.” Okay, so while that may be true for dollars or widgets, what about love? Love is not diminished when you give it to another. Indeed, it grows. Light? The light from a single candle can light thousands.

Am I playing word games with you? No, I am not. I’m pointing out that the fundamental ways we see the world – the ways we think – influence every interaction we have. If you think that you lose every time someone else gains – if you are someone who keeps careful track of what is yours – then that attitude permeates everything. Forget the obvious things like dollars or widgets. What about your commute? What about your desk at work? How about your education or health or politics? Does it feel like you are losing space or ownership or an argument when you face a challenge? How you see this simple notion of fullness or abundance colors everything in your life. Am I telling you to give everything away and live as a hermit in a cave? No. Am I telling you to consider the abundance in your life as a starting point leading toward a happier you? Perhaps I am.

An abundance mindset thinks, “Yes, and.” A zero-sum mindset thinks, “Yes, but.”

© 2025 www.megreilly360.com

9/8/2025