A dear colleague confided in me today with, “I feel awkward charging money for helping people. It should be for free.”
My response: –
And a burger feeds people – because feeding people should be free too, right? And a car should be more expensive than helping someone, who suddenly can feel loved, is able to love and begins enjoying their moments loving life itself? Do we value driving but devalue the ability to deeply love the moments?
You see, we are only ever trading our skills and producing things of value. We do not decide what is value to someone else – they do. For us to project what they should value and by how much they should value it, is disrespectful to their experience and free will. We also are foolishly denying the rich adventure of how the world wants to reciprocate and how we can adapt, to unleash the abundance so we can give MORE.
It’s only ever trading. Money is just a measurement of the value exchange. That’s what it’s for – but it gets treated like the asset itself. This is where we have lost our way. If I have a billion dollars – am I hoarding? Is it a dynamic billion that is circulating and stimulating trade in my community?
Or am I just hoarding it? Depriving the giving and receiving flow, leaving my environment impoverished of giving back because I stopped wanting to receive? Am I not best to leverage the billion into investing in people, their passions, new innovations, new businesses and jobs; that improve the community?
What is money for? If we spend more than we earn – why? Are we naive, disconnected from the sustainable exchange?
Are we self entitled, expecting to take more than we give, out of touch with giving value, being valued?
Money is the measurement of what we give and receive. If we give more than we receive, we become enslaved to debt and money becomes evil to us. If we push to constantly receive more than we give, it’s because we are in the fear of being impoverished and therefore have made it a god to worship.
Money is a leveraging tool. Powerful and necessary for trading effortlessly. Our focus should be on adapting so we are always giving amazing value. Adapting so we can also receive value and let that value-wheel turn faster and faster – because this is what it means to be exhilarated by the abundance of life.
Chasing get rich quick schemes with no personal focus on creating value ends up being a very dysfunctional attitude that rarely ends well for any of us.
Richard Branson and Elon Musk appear to me, to be some of the leaders who are using their global value exchange wisely to leverage a better future for all of us. What would happen if every person committed to this path?
