05/08/2026
Scarcity Mode or Savior Mode. Which is your default?
I’m officially in the garden game this year, trying to grow some veggies and little plants.
While sowing these ridiculously tiny tomato seeds, I spilled a handful right onto the ground. Without thinking, I dropped to my hands and knees and started hunting for every single one like it was a life-or-death mission.
My wife (who knows my childhood story and my old scarcity habits) immediately jumped in: “Babe, it’s okay… you don’t have to find them all. We can just get another pack.”
I laughed it off at the time, but the whole day those few lost seeds kept nagging at me. I kept wondering, "Why does this bother me so much?" "Was I really still stuck in scarcity mode over a couple of seeds?" I just couldn't shake how I felt about the lost seeds.
That night we were out with friends and she told the story. Everyone was cracking up picturing me crawling around on my hands and knees in the dirt. Then my buddy John looked at me and said something that landed straight in my chest. John said: “You weren’t in a scarcity mindset, man." "You were in a *savior* mindset." John then explained: "You saw the potential in each little seed, and you wanted every single one to have the chance to reach the soil, grow, and become what it was meant to be.”
I just sat there for a second. He was right. I wasn’t afraid of “losing” them — I was trying to rescue them.
The very next morning I snuck back out, scoped the whole spill zone like a garden detective, and quietly tucked every last seed into the planter where they belonged.
Sometimes the smallest things reveal the biggest parts of who we are.
Anyone else ever catch themselves operating in full savior mode over something tiny? Or is it just me and my tomato seeds?
