The rot at the core of most men’s problems with women is what’s commonly called a “scarcity mindset”—the distorted view that there are too few options and too little time. Heartbroken and hung up on one girl? Scarcity mindset. Feeling the sting of rejection too keenly? Scarcity mindset.

Before the term “abundance mindset” became popular as the antidote to these limiting beliefs, your great-great-grandfather was giving your grandfather the same advice in different words: “Chin up, kiddo. There are plenty of fish in the sea!”

The best thing about abundance mindset is that it’s true. It’s not a distortion you feed your brain to think more positively about reality—it is reality. There are plenty of fish. This should be incredibly liberating for men, not least because so many other truths about seduction and sexual dynamics can be bitter and hard to swallow.  

When a man first learns about abundance mindset, it’s like a eureka moment. A weight is lifted and stress and anxiety melt away. He feels galvanized to boldly approach women (after all, there’s a near infinite supply of them), to explore more freely and, crucially, to fail, since failure is less daunting when you get so many tries. As Mystery writes, “if your man dies, just hit the reload button and play again.”

But then, inevitably, the effects of abundance mindset fade and he reverts to his habitual, self-limiting beliefs. This is normal: de-conditioning takes time. People default to scarcity because that’s all they’ve known.

I think there’s another reason abundance mindset doesn’t seem to stick for men, however, and that’s because they’re trying to apply it to just one domain in life: women. Abundance doesn’t work like that. If you’ve internalized the idea that there’s an endless supply of women but deep down you only think there is one employer who would hire you, or one city you could ever live in, or one group of friends that you click with, then you haven’t really internalized abundance. You need to apply abundance to all areas of your life.

You also need to apply it like salve to all of your problems. I’ve found that 99% of the things I stress about are rooted in scarcity. Even if I’m just having a rotten day for no particular reason, if I tell myself “there are many more good days to come,” my stress fades. No matter what sort of problems you face, whether they have to do with women, work, money, health, you name it—abundance will fix it.

I’m not saying you should wear rose-tinted glasses. I’m not trying to sell an unrealistically optimistic world view. What I am saying, however, is:

• the world is abundant, and
• it is far more abundant than your self-limiting mammalian brain can comprehend.

So relax. There is more in this life than you’ll ever need, and it’s yours for the taking.