Scarcity Brain: Fix Your Craving Mindset and Rewire Your Habits to Thrive with Enough

by Michael Easter

Benedict wrote the Rule in the year 516 to guide those monasteries. The Rule eventually became the standard guidebook for Western monastic life, whether monks were Benedictine or not. That’s because, in true Benedict style, the Rule was “neither harsh nor burdensome….[H]e tried to govern his disciples by love rather than dominate them by fear,” wrote Pope Pius XII. Pius XII explained, “The community life of a Benedictine house tempered and softened the severities of the solitary life, not suitable for all and even dangerous at times for some.” The Rule has been called genius in its adaptability, prudence, discretion, and balance of severity and mildness. Benedict inherently understood that cut-and-dried rules often leave too many people high and dry. The monks have a saying, “To some, more is given. To others, less.” For example, a monk who thrives off social interaction may be assigned to a job that allows him to talk more. Days of fasting are also individual; the idea is to take whatever amount of food feels like a sacrifice for you. And most of the monks avoid meat, but some brothers, especially the young who work the physically hardest jobs, eat it to fuel their labor. This regimen of finding and doing with enough, Benedict taught, allows us to focus on what truly matters: time where we discover that something larger than ourselves isn’t absent from everyday life. Benedict believed we find higher purpose and satisfaction in helping others, experiencing and making creat...