128. How to Stay in Abundance When Everyone Around You Is in Lack

Have you ever found yourself on your abundance journey—doing the inner work, healing your relationship with money, and leaning into prosperity—only to feel pulled back into scarcity because the people around you aren’t on the same path?

If so, you’re not alone. This episode of Plenty was inspired by a listener who asked: “What do I do when my family, friends, or community are still operating in lack, while I’m working so hard to step into abundance?”

I know how challenging it can feel when the people you love aren’t aligned with your vision of “more than enough.” That’s why in this episode, I share three powerful practices to help you protect your energy, stand firmly in your truth, and continue expanding into abundance—without cutting people out of your life or downplaying your growth.

You’ll learn:
✨ Why who you spend time with deeply impacts your prosperity (and how to gently shift your circles if needed)
✨ How to recognize and release the “belonging tax”—that tendency to downplay your success so you don’t outshine loved ones
✨ Why your expansion isn’t selfish, but instead makes space for others to rise
✨ How to lovingly hold boundaries when others project scarcity onto you

This conversation is about more than money—it’s about honoring your own path while inviting others into their own growth, in their own timing. You’ll walk away with tools to stay rooted in abundance while still being in relationship with those you care about. 💛

“When we expand—whether it’s in our healing, our earning, or our education—we’re not leaving people behind. We’re changing things for our entire lineage.” –Kate Northrup

🎤 Let’s Dive into the Good Stuff on Plenty 🎤
00:00 Introduction to Abundance Journey
00:33 Energy Management and Scarcity
02:20 Navigating Relationships in Scarcity
05:49 Choosing Positive Interactions
07:48 The Belonging Tax
11:58 Celebrating Success Without Guilt
15:05 Encouraging Others' Growth
17:26 Setting Boundaries in Relationships
19:37 Conclusion and Personal Focus

✨ Ready to stop overthinking money and start feeling your way to true wealth? ✨

If traditional financial strategies have left you feeling disconnected—especially as a sensitive, intuitive, or creative person—you're not alone.

That's why Kate created the Embodied Wealth Method: a self-paced, audio-based journey that helps you rewire your relationship with money from the inside out. No spreadsheets. No hustle. No shame.

This transformative method combines nervous system regulation, energetic alignment, and practical tools to help you cultivate genuine wealth—peace, power, and possibility in your body, bank account, and life.

What's included:

7 transformational audio chapters
Companion integration workbook
Lifetime access
All for just $97 USD

If you're ready to feel safe receiving abundance, expand into your next level of prosperity, and create a financial reality that honors your wholeness...

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Episode Transcript

Kate Northrup (00:00):
A question came in on Instagram, and it was
basically, I'm really on myabundance healing journey. Like,
I'm really working on myprosperity consciousness. I'm
really doing my healing aroundabundance and stepping out of
scarcity, but what do I do whenmy community or my friend group

(00:21):
or my family is operating inlack? How can I stay actively on
my abundance journey when my thepeople I'm around are in lack?
Welcome to Plenty.
I'm your host Kate Northrup andtogether we are going on a
journey to help you have anincredible relationship with

(00:42):
money, time, and energy and tohave abundance on every possible
level. Every week, we're gonnadive in with experts and
insights to help you unlock alife of hunting. Let's go fill
our cups. So I have three thingsfor you on this today, and

(01:03):
there's a connected episode tothis, which is how do I stay in
abundance when my spouse or mypartner is in lack? That's a
separate episode that we'regonna link in the show notes.
Quite frankly, a lot of the samewisdom applies, but there's
there's, you know, there's somenuance here, so I thought we'd
answer this question too. Sonumber one, you really wanna

(01:26):
think about energy managementand the hidden cost of scarcity
by proximity. So our the datareally shows us that who we
spend time with dramaticallyimpacts our health, our
well-being, our mental health,our levels of happiness, and

(01:46):
yes, also our income. It'sactually true. You know, I'm
sure you've heard people sayyour income will be the average
of the five people you spend themost time with.
I don't know if the data isupdated on that, but what we do
know is that overall, when wespend time in community, we

(02:10):
become who we're spending timewith. And this can be used for
anything, right? Like if youwant to be healthier, spend time
around people who are healthier.If you want to read more, spend
time around people who read. Ifyou want to stop drinking, stop
spending time around people whodrink.
If you want to stop smoking,stop hanging out with smokers.

(02:32):
If you want to be abundant, weneed to spend time with people
who are also in abundance. Nowthat's tricky when like our
primary coworkers or our bestfriends or our family are any of
those categories of things, youknow, that we are wanting to
move away from. But that doesn'tmean we have to cut everyone out

(02:56):
of our life. Right?
So sometimes people will belike, I'm on my abundance
journey. You're in scarcity. Wecan't be friends anymore, or I
can't spend time with youanymore. And I think that that's
too extreme in many cases. Nowthere are times when we may need
to take a break from certainrelationships.
We may need to take space fromcertain relationships. We may
need to minimize the amount oftime we're spending with people,

(03:20):
but I don't always think thatmeans you need to just, like,
cut people out. When I moved toNew York City, I ended up
spending time around a lot offolks who were in the early
stages of becoming wildlysuccessful with their online
businesses centered aroundpersonal development and

(03:43):
empowerment. I know for sure, Ididn't like go there for that
particular purpose, but we justall found each other and
gravitated towards each other. Iknow for sure that spending time
with those people accelerated mygrowth.
The same thing when I moved toMiami from a small town in
Maine, I started being aroundpeople who were playing a bigger

(04:08):
game, entrepreneuriallyspeaking, and our income went
up. Not necessarily because wewere quote unquote trying, but
because when you hang aroundpeople who make more money, you
tend to just make more money.Now of course, money isn't the
only form of abundance. It'sjust one form of abundance. And

(04:29):
I know people who live wildlyabundant lives who are on the
lower end of earners, and I knowpeople who live lives of
scarcity who are high earners orwho have access to a lot of
financial resources.
So I am not saying in any waysthat you only can spend time

(04:50):
with people who make a lot ofmoney, because abundance and
earning are actually twoseparate things. But really
consider who in your lifeoperates in terms of there is
more than enough to go around,operates from a place of
generosity, from a place likerelational exchange, where

(05:11):
there's a give and a take. Whoin your life is operating from
abundance? Those are the peopleyou want to spend more time
with, and the people who operatefrom lack and scarcity, you just
want to dial down the amount oftime you spend with them, and

(05:33):
when you spend time with them,have topics that you know are
great to talk about or haveactivities that you know you can
do together that bring out thebest in these people. Right?
So just because somebodyoperates in terms of scarcity
when it comes to money doesn'tmean that they don't have parts

(05:59):
of them that can really be in afeeling of abundance. Like maybe
you have someone, maybe your momoperates out of scarcity
financially, but she actually isdeeply connected to the earth
and has an incredible garden, oris really connected with the
woods and knows tons of thingsabout the plants and animals and

(06:20):
whatever, like maybe you go fornature walks with her instead of
chatting about finances or theeconomic news. Right? So we can
bolster ourselves and protectourselves by choosing what
topics and what activities weengage in with people who are
not on the same path ofabundance as we are. And then we
can limit the time that we spendwith people who are in

(06:45):
constriction and contractionaround abundance, and expand the
amount of time we spend withpeople who are in a world of
expansion.
And that may mean that you needto find some new friends. How
can you do that? Well, a lot ofpeople find new abundance
friends inside my program,Relaxed Money. They show up at

(07:06):
Relaxed Money Live, and theymeet their soul sisters. This
happens all the time.
The stories of synchronicitythat I hear just blow my mind.
And not only our events, right?There's other people's programs,
there's other events, there'sother incredible things going on
in your town. One of the ways Idid this when I moved to
Portland, Maine from New YorkCity, I was like, okay, I'm

(07:30):
moving from a real big pond to areal small pond. How am I going
to find my people?
So I actually started a bookclub around a particular book
that was about abundance andtransformation and healing, and
I put it on my blog, I think,and then meetup.com, and I ended

(07:50):
up meeting incredible friendswho came to the book club, and
it was really powerful, and someof those people remained my
dearest friends throughout mytime in Maine. So there's always
ways to meet people who are alsoon the abundance journey. The
second thing is you really wantto be conscious about not

(08:11):
downplaying your abundance whenyou get around people in order
to belong. So there's somethingthat I call the quote unquote
belonging tax that we often payunconsciously in the following
ways. Number one, maybe we'rearound our family and our family

(08:35):
has struggled financially, andso it feels like on some level a
betrayal of them to thrive.
So maybe we actually findourselves playing small in our
business or playing small in ourcareer, again unconsciously or
subconsciously, so that we cancontinue to belong and get the

(08:59):
love from our family, because inour family we connect through a
collective financial struggle.That's really, really common.
People can have survivor's guiltif they're like the first one to
go to college, or the first oneto make a million dollars in
their business, or the first oneto buy a home, or whatever it

(09:20):
may be, and there can be a realfeeling of like, if I do this,
I'm leaving them behind. Butthere's a paradigm shift here
that I want to offer, which isthat when we expand, whether
it's in our education, whetherit's in our healing, whether
it's in our earning, whetherit's in entrepreneurship or our
career, we're actually changingthings for our entire lineage.

(09:44):
You know, I think about mygrandmother, my granny, on my
mom's side, she was not borninto a family that had
tremendous possibilities andprivilege by any stretch of the
imagination.
And I'm living a life that shewouldn't have been able to
create. I know for sure that I'mdoing that leaving off from

(10:06):
where she ended things. Right?She died at 94, and I'm carrying
out the legacy not as thoughwe're separate people, but as
though I'm carrying on amaternal legacy. Even with my
mother, you know, there's somethings that are possible for me
that were not possible for mymother because of generational

(10:29):
limitations and societallimitations.
I don't think about that myhaving the freedoms and some of
the possibilities that I havemeans I'm in any way betraying
her. I know that I'm furtheringthe lineage, and I know that my
girls are going to havepossibilities and options that I

(10:51):
never will have. And I want themto embrace those things
wholeheartedly, because I wantthem to go further than I did.
And even if a family member ofyours or a friend of yours talks
down to you or throws shadeabout your success or the

(11:13):
business you're growing orwhatever because they can't
handle it and they see it as athreat, know that actually
what's happening is a risingtide does in fact lift all ships
in the harbor in any community,whether it's a biological
family, whether it's a friendgroup, whether it's an industry.
And this is an opportunity forus to really look into the place

(11:36):
in us that still believes thelie of separation, which says
that if somebody else is havingsomething, that means I can't.
That's also tied into the lie ofscarcity that says there's only
so much to go around, and ifsomebody has, that means I
can't. What's actually true isthat one person's success makes
another person's successpossible, right? Like when Oprah

(12:00):
created her empire, she birthedan entire industry that
essentially made possible mycareer, and certainly all the
careers of many of my peers. Shemade this possible for us
because she went first, so I'mso glad that she didn't hold

(12:21):
back and continue to pay a quoteunquote belonging tax by either
actually limiting our successsubconsciously or talking about
it as though it's harder than itis or downplaying it. So another
way the belonging tax can showup is like, let's say you're at

(12:44):
a family dinner and your sisteris asking you how business is
going, and actually business isgoing really great and you had
your best year ever, but youfind yourself, instead of saying
that, complaining about how hardit is to have employees, talking
about how much you have to work,talking about all the pressure,
because you want to make surethat they know that even though

(13:07):
you're doing really well, it'sreally hard, so you're still one
of them.
Right? This happens, and I'msure at least one person is
listening right now being like,oh shit, I am doing this. And
honestly, why have abundancefinancially if you're
downplaying it? That's not thepoint. Now I'm not saying that

(13:28):
if you massively out earn yourfriends or family, you need to
go hang out with them and liketalk all about your, you know,
dollars 10,000 week or whatever.
Like, that's not what I'msaying, but I don't think we
need to downplay it either. Andso if somebody asks, how's it
going? You can say, we're havinga really great year. We just had

(13:49):
our biggest launch ever, and myfamily just asked me about it
over the weekend. And in timeswhen I would have previously
paid the belonging taxsubconsciously and toned it
down, I said it went reallygreat.
We had our biggest enrollmentever, and I was so proud of the

(14:10):
way we did this launch. We leftit all on the floor. I'm so
proud of it. And was it aperfect conversation? No.
Did it feel a littleuncomfortable? Yeah, it did. But
I was able to just fully stay inthe celebration, and then we
went and talked about somethingelse. Like, that was it, and it

(14:31):
was great. It was great, right?
So I understand every family isdifferent. We all come with our
own historical baggage, but knowthat if you are downplaying your
success by undercutting it inany way or sabotaging yourself,
you are actually betraying yourabundance, right? So by trying

(14:53):
to not betray your family oryour friends, you're betraying
your abundance, which I think isactually from the divine. And so
you really are betraying thedivine when we do that. Like we
are essentially receiving agift, and then turning around
and throwing it back.
So let's stop doing that, shallwe? So that was the belonging

(15:15):
tax. And then the third piece isthat when you expand your own
abundance and your own capacity,you are making space for others
to rise, which we talked aboutalready. But I want to highlight
that folks in your life steppinginto abundance with you is their

(15:38):
choice, not your choice. Soreally frequently, people can
start on their spiritualjourney, or their health
journey, or their mental healthhealing, or their abundance
journey, and then suddenlythey're trying to constantly
enroll their friends and family,or their husband, or whoever.
And your enthusiasm iswonderful, it is life giving,

(16:01):
however it is not your job toget anybody to do anything. And
one of the most repulsive thingswe can do is be constantly
trying to get someone else onboard with something when they
are not willingly leaning in toget on board with it. So I

(16:23):
really recommend being more likea cat in this regard, having
more of an inviting, seductiveenergy, like, you know, the cat,
you come home, maybe the catlooks at you from across the
room, maybe you've been home forfive minutes and it comes, walks
slightly by, rubs on your leg,and then leaves again, right?
It's just the slightestinvitation for a snuggle versus

(16:46):
the golden retriever is likecoming to the door, barking,
wagging its tail, jumping onyou, slobbering everywhere. We
do not want to be the goldenretriever when it comes to being
the invitation to step intomoney healing or an abundance
journey.
Be the cat, right? We can shareour own experience with zero

(17:08):
attachment to whether or notsomeone joins us. It is not our
job to get someone on board, andalso we don't actually know what
someone else's journey issupposed to be. We don't know
their soul's path. We have noidea.
All we know is our own soul'spath, and that is the only thing

(17:32):
we're responsible for. So insummary, number one, we cannot
underestimate how scarcity canrub off. So you want to be
really careful about who youspend time with, because we
can't overestimate howprosperity and abundance also

(17:53):
rubs off. So make note. Spendtime with people who are also on
that abundance journey as muchas possible.
And when you are spending timewith people who aren't, just
have good boundaries. I will sayone last thing that I didn't say
on that. If someone is aconstant negative Nelly about

(18:14):
money or about your own journeyaround this, you can say to
them, Listen, I am doing thisfor me. I understand it's not
your philosophy, it's not whatyou want to do. I am going to
ask you to be supportive.
And if you can't say supportivethings, I'm going to let you

(18:36):
know that we are not going totalk about this topic at all. So
you either support me, or we'renot going to talk about it, and
that may include letting themknow that that means you may
need to spend less time withthem if they're constantly
negative about whatever it isthat you're doing around your
abundance and money. And thatgoes with health, sobriety,

(18:57):
really literally anything.Number two, be mindful about
paying the belonging tax, andeither literally sabotaging your
success by playing small inorder to fit in, or by
downplaying it verbally aroundcertain people. And then number
three, don't discount how yourexpansion actually makes more

(19:21):
space for others, and know thatthey're going to step into that
as they're ready, and all youneed to do is stay on your path,
share as it's appropriate, andlet them make their own
decisions when it is right forthem.
I hope that this helps younavigate any relationships in
your life that feel like maybethey're not on the abundance

(19:44):
journey like you are right now,that's completely fine. Everyone
gets to run their own race intheir own way. You get to let
go. It is not your job to getanyone to do anything. All you
need to do is focus on yourself.
Thanks so much for listening.I'll see you next time. What if
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(20:07):
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