When I was studying the welfare state some years ago, and the health service in particular, I discovered that the differences in attitude to welfare between the UK and the US started a long time ago. The fork in the road came in the 1940s  when both countries were looking at their post-war problems - poverty, unemployment, poor health - and came to different conclusions. Very simply, in the UK we decided that poor, unemployed and sick people were unfortunate and needed help. In the US they decided they were to blame, and needed sticks. 

I'm glad that I live in a country where we at least set off with a kindly attitude to people who are disadvantaged, but a recent book suggests that there might be some support for the American way. Not to say that the poor are to blame exactly, but that there are some things about them that are different from affluent people, and that those things contrive to keep them in poverty. The book is called 'Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much' by Sendhil Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir.

Research since the 1990s, the authors say, has repeatedly shown that making the difficult choices that poor people have to make, hour to hour, actually depletes the capacity to make those decisions. In other words, if someone has had to make a decision between paying the rent or buying something for dinner, they are less able to make a good decision about the next dilemma, and may buy a can of beer instead of half a dozen eggs. Food-deprived people, sat at a table with sweets and radishes and told to resist the sweets, performed less well in cognitive tests immediately afterwards, reducing their effective IQ by several points. Indian sugar cane farmers performed less well cognitively when money was tight, compared to post-harvest when money was more plentiful.

"Scarcity captures the mind," explain Mullainathan and Shafir. It promotes tunnel vision, helping us focus on the crisis at hand but making us "less insightful, less forward-thinking, less controlled". What they are saying is not that poor people are poor because they have trouble making decisions, but that any of us who became poor would become like this, and that this psychological problem would contrive to keep us poor.

Interestingly it seems that this kind of psychological depletion occurs in any kind of scarcity state, not just poverty. It happens to people who are chronically busy, dieters, people who are lonely - all these people have a tendency to focus on their scarcity and this leads them to do things, and fail to do things, that makes their condition worse.

But is this difficulty in making good decisions the whole story?

Do you know any people like these:

Martin used to go to the same co-coaching group as I did and his issue was always around time. He never had enough. We would coach him and coach him on how to make more time and he would go away and religiously do his homework, and create some time, but then something else would come along and he'd fill the space again.

22 year old Stephanie was overweight. She managed to lose four stone and looked fantastic. She could buy fashionable clothes, feel good about herself, men were suddenly interested in her. She put on weight again.

Sheetal hates her job and dreams of doing something else. But somehow she is still there, ten years later.

Ben really wants a job, but every time he gets one he somehow sabotages himself and loses it.

Viktor is bored in his marriage and keeps having affairs, but none of them quite work out.

We all dream of winning the lottery and yet people who do notoriously spend it all in a very short time and before long are back to their original financial situation.

What is going on here? I honestly don't know, but it is interesting to speculate and I don't think it's simply that our will power gets depleted. There are advantages to most of our states of mind, even lack, and our subconscious knows that even if we don't. Stephanie felt anxious when men found her sexually attractive and was more comfortable when she was fat. Martin, once he cleared time, did not feel the peace that he anticipated, but fear. 'Who am I if I'm not busy?' he panics. 'What to do with this time?'  Ben gets a job but doesn't think he's up to it, is stressed about commitment, is in a world that scares him. Lottery winners find that their dreams don't come true when they have money, it actually brings a whole load of worry, loses you friends, draws you into a superficial world of material possessions.  

Perhaps there is a part of us that wants to be where we are, dreaming about where we might be, but hopefully never getting there? 

Try this:

1. What do you yearn for? More time, more money, more peace, a partner, a better partner, a better boss, a different house, a different job, more friends, more status, more achievement...

2.  What do you dream that commodity would bring you? Love, happiness, safety, financial security, peace, freedom, self-respect, popularity....

(The problem is that if you are having trouble accessing those feelings now, the chances are that you will still have difficulty accessing them when you have a new job, partner, house, bank balance.) 

3. How does this sense of lack manifest in your life? Do you spend a lot of time thinking about it, working on it, worrying, bemoaning, planning, beating yourself up, dreaming, despairing? How much of your time/space does it take up?

4. Consider the possibility that this feeling of lack is something you like in some way; perhaps it keeps you occupied, it's familiar and safe, fits in with your sense of yourself, allows you to hope, takes your mind off the here and now, puts the blame for your problems elsewhere? 

5. Now consider the possible down sides that getting what you want might entail. What would happen if suddenly you no longer needed to worry, hope, bemoan, plan? What would you do then? 

6. Reflect on what you already have of the circumstances, money, people, environment etc that you dream of.  What if that was enough, and anything else would be a bonus, or perhaps even more than you could handle?

Or, if you really do want more, how might you unblock yourself enough to get it? 

Have an abundant week!

Love

Anita