I read an interesting article today about the money taboo. Here it is
Yeah there are issues alright. I think the reason for the taboo is that essentially a lot of how we deal with money is based on greed and fear… and we don’t really like talking about those things. Surely there’s a better way to live.
Sometimes people who are naturally giving by nature, or people who are opening themselves up to being giving, fall into situations where they give to much. What do I mean by giving to much? They give to the extent that they become tired, drained and worn out, to the extent that their own wellbeing suffers and their ability to continue to give is reduced. Giving starts to feel like a chore or a burden, maybe an obligation or even resented, instead of the joy that it can ideally be.
I have seen this, and experienced this myself many times in different situations. One such situation is serving in non-profit organizations – I’m going to save discussing that one for another blog post though, as there are some other issues to do with that dynamic that I would like to bring out. Another more recent situation has been in hosting couchsurfers.
Couchsurfing
If you haven’t heard of couchsurfing I suggest you check it out – there is a website at www.couchsurfing.org Basically it is a network for travellers where people can meet locals and request to stay with them short term during their travels. There is no cost, and requiring payment is explicitly prohibited. I think the underlying spirit of couchsurfing fits really well with the principles of Give Freely Receive Freely.
I have been hosting couchsurfers for the last year or so. At some times during the year I get TONS of requests, and there have been times when I have taken the attitude that if I have space to fit someone in I would take them. That has been fun at times, but then there have also been times when I have taken people in, and I have had too many people in a row, and some of them haven’t been entirely considerate as guests and it has taken up too much of my time and started to get in the way of my day to day activities and things that I need to get done. These times have left me feeling a bit jaded with couchsurfing, and it has even been a bit stressful at times. So I stopped hosting people.
End of the story?
The story could end there. That could be the end of my couchsurfing story. “I tried hosting people for awhile, then I had some bad experiences and it became a bit stressful so I stopped”. Too often that can be what happens when we give too much. We get drained and have bad experiences, so we get put off and think maybe its not such a good idea after all and stop doing it. Fortunately with couchsurfing I didn’t take this approach. Instead of stopping completely, I just stopped hosting for awhile. I took a break so I could have time to myself and then came back to it refreshed and better able to manage my hosting so that it doesn’t become overwhelming and wear me down too much. I now say ‘no’ to far more requests than I previously did and am much more careful to not host people at times when it may cause problems with my other activities, and also to just allow myself more down time when I need it.
I’m glad that I did this and didn’t just give up on couchsurfing, because I have met some really cool people since then through doing this. And from time to time in the future I will continue to take breaks from hosting when I need it so that I can come back to it fresh each time and continue to enjoy the experience.
A bit like Italian parsley?
This reminds me a bit of an Italian parsley plant we had in my mothers garden. Often parsley plants are quite small, and after picking from them a few times, there isn’t much of the plant left, but this plant was amazing. It was allowed to grow until it was quite large and then when we picked from it, a few days later it seemed that it had regrown to the same size again. We picked parsley from that plant again and again for several years. In fact if we didn’t pick from the plant the leaves would start to get too long and the quality would deteriorate, so picking from the plant actually made it healthier. There were times when we picked maybe a bit too much from the plant and then it would be left a bit bare and take awhile to regrow, but if we took care of it and gave it the time it needed without taking mare from it, regrow it did back to its former health and lushness.
I think each of us is a bit like the Italian parsley plant. Giving makes us healthier and more lush, but we sometimes need to make sure that we manage the level of our giving so that it doesn’t make us weak. If we do find that we have been giving too much, sometimes we need to take a break and take care of ourselves to let ourselves recuperate so that we can get back to giving joyfully. When we do this we help not only ourselves, but also those we give to, as we are better able to give when we are healthy, strong and happy ourselves.
I just wanted to post this link, as much to remind myself of it as anything else. Its an article about how hard it is to gather tax in the developing international economy. I take from it a message about the inefficiency of a system based on taking (ie coercion) rather than true free will.
People will often try to avoid things they are coerced into (like taxes) and so it becomes difficult and inefficient to make these systems work. There is a little example in the article that gives a little insight into the scale of these inefficiencies. It refers to the threshold for charging GST (goods and services tax) on packages imported into New Zealand. This threshold kicks in at $400. It says in the article that this threshold is derived from the cost of inspecting a package and its documentation as it comes into the country. GST is 15% here in New Zealand, so the implication is that the process of inspecting the goods and gathering that tax is around $60 per package… Coercion systems are inherently inefficient.
I dream of a world based around greater freewill which cuts out this inefficiency and makes a better world for all of us. I know its a bit hard to imagine this working, but it doesn’t hurt to dream.
Anyway, heres the link: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=11211133
I came across this video clip from a comedy show where the guest pointed out that GFRF is the natural order of nature. It is so great to see people discussing these ideas and also doing things to live more in this way.
I thought it was worth a watch, so here it is.
Lately I’ve been thinking about some of what I do on a Give Freely Receive Freely (GFRF) basis and how I feel about it, and how I feel when I interact with others about it.
Sometimes communicating to someone about GFRF goes really well, it is easy and they get it. Many other times it is awkward and they are a bit uncomfortable about it and really want me to just tell them a price – which kind of defeats the purpose to some extent. I have wondered about why it feels so awkward sometimes and I think I have at least a bit of an idea why.
Giving And Receiving Are Both Important But…
I think part of it is to do with communicating that I am giving something to them, with no price attached, but I am also expecting something back from them. I think the message gets confused somewhere in there. They then seem to think that how much they give back will be judged and they have anxiety about how much to give etc.
In starting to experiment with GFRF at first I have put quite a bit of emphasis on explaining the exchange relationship, because for many people it is an unusual idea. But the more I do it, the more I want to focus on just giving and not so much on the other person giving back.
This is interesting because I need to receive. I am not independently wealthy and need to receive back financially in order for me to be able to continue my work and sustain myself, yet somehow setting the expectation of receiving back doesn’t feel quite right, or at least not as good as I would like it to be.
Giving More Freely
I wonder if I focus more on just giving freely myself, the receiving may take care of itself. I wonder if naturally as a result of myself giving more freely, others will reciprocate in giving more freely as well, without having to be told or have it explained to them.
This is certainly what I feel like doing, so I am going to give it a try.
What I’m Doing About It
With my clinic work… not much, I’m reasonably happy with how that is going at the moment with GFRF. Maybe I’ll make some changes in this area later.
The area that I will be changing things right away is with my online qigong courses. I will be de-emphasising the GFRF aspect of the courses and just giving them away free. I will still have donate buttons available for people to donate if they choose to, because I need to be open to receiving back and I need to have an avenue open for this to happen via. There will still be a link to this site for anyone who is interested in the thinking behind why I am doing what I am doing, but I won’t put as much effort into explaining the two way exchange on the pages of the courses, I will just leave it up to individuals to give back if they want to.
It’s Still An Experiment
Of course this whole thing is still an experiment for me. I expect there is still a lot to learn, and I expect I will tweak and change lots of things and I continue to try living GFRF. I look forward to seeing what happens with this latest tweak.
Well it has been a little over a year since I began my experiment with ‘Give Freely Receive Freely’, so I thought I should post a bit of a review of the year.
Clinic Work
I began by choosing to offer my clinic services on a GFRF basis. You can read what I first wrote about that here. I was quite nervous about this, and not really sure what to expect. But I felt good about it, so I put it out there and have stuck to it throughout the year.
Over the year I have found that on average I am probably a little busier in the clinic than I would have been previously. Payments have varied quite greatly, which is as it should be as people have greatly varying financial means, but overall I would estimate that the average payment has probably been a little higher than it would have otherwise been.
I have become more and more comfortable with this type of exchange over the year, but with each new person exposed to it there is some initial discomfort as they need to have it explained and so on. Many people, even those who really like the idea, still ask that I tell them some kind of price to begin with. This isn’t ideally in keeping with the GFRF philosophy, but my purpose is also not to make people uncomfortable either, so I generally tell them a price range to help them initially.
I have enjoyed working on this basis as it helps me to see people and their true needs more clearly and to think less about the payment I will receive for the work. It helps me to focus more on providing them with what they really need rather than on what they are willing to pay for.
After using GFRF for awhile in my clinic, I wanted to expand it out into other areas of my work as well.
Online Courses
The next area I tried to use GFRF in was for an online qigong course I was developing. I had previously offered this as a home study course and figured that by reformatting it and putting it online, I would not have the costs involved in printing manuals and DVDs etc, which would make it possible for me to offer it GFRF even if no-one paid me anything in return for using the course. So my first online qigong course went live in August last year. There is a blog post about it here.
The plan was always to develop a series of online courses, and I had ideas about trying different ways of setting them up to see which was most effective for receiving payment using GFRF. I wrote about this in an earlier blog post here. My plan with my next online qigong course was to set it up behind a ‘pay wall’ people could still pay whatever they like for the course, but they couldn’t have access to it without registering and entering a number – even if that was zero. This would create a strong prompt to make payment.
As the end of 2012 approached I really wanted to get the next qigong course online, but every time I thought about doing it and setting it up with a pay wall, it was like darkness filled my mind and I couldn’t bring myself to make progress. How much of that was to do with not having the technical know how to set up the paywall (this would have required research and learning new skills) and how much was due to a subconscious aversion to walling off access to the course in this way – I don’t know. But then I decided to go ahead with just putting the course up with unrestricted access and all my mental blocks just cleared away. I ended up working long hours right through what was going to be my Christmas holidays and just got the first weekly installment of the course online by New Years day. Additional work after that allowed me to keep up a weekly schedule of course updates until the whole course was online.
Since then I have put a third course online, also with completely unrestricted access. You can find all three courses here.
I feel really good about having the courses online and freely available for people to use, and I have received some really lovely feedback from people of how they have benefited from the courses, but payments have been very slow to come in. I have several more courses I would like to put online, but each one takes a significant amount of work to plan and prepare the instructional materials. Not being independently wealthy, I have to fit this in around my other work and I need to prioritize to some extent those things that will pay me because… I have to eat and pay rent and so on. For me to be able to put the time into more courses I will need to find a way to receive more for that work than I have so far.
I think a lot of it comes down to communication. People are not used to the GFRF way of exchange so they don’t go out of their way looking for a way to give for what they have received. I have some simple ideas of things I can try to encourage more people to give for the courses, and I may even need to revisit the idea of a paywall. I think there is potential for it to work, but it might require some experimentation and refinement.
Classes and Workshops
I decided to try GFRF with some of my workshops and classes as well. I did a few workshops completely GFRF, but found it was a real hassle explaining to each person who wanted to come along, and I also got the feeling that maybe more people would have come if there was just a set price, so more recently I have run my workshops with set prices and the option of GFRF – which has worked ok, but I still get the impression that some people find even that uncomfortable.
I also ran a series of qigong classes at the beach over Summer GFRF, and really enjoyed it. I have thought long and hard about expanding GFRF into the other classes that I run, but haven’t felt comfortable to do this. I think there are many reasons for this, but that would take a whole blog post by itself to explore. Instead what I have done is offered some of these classes GFRF on an underground basis – you can read about that here. A few people have taken up this offer and I have felt really good about that.
Conclusion
It has been an interesting year. I really like exchanging with people on a GFRF basis. I think that it helps me to look beyond some of the constructions and preconceptions that are common in society and see people more as they really are. I think it helps me to be kinder, more compassionate and patient. I think it helps me to have greater respect for people and treat everyone more as an equal.
Experimenting with GFRF has opened my mind to viewing many things in ways I would not have before. In some areas I think it has helped me to ‘see behind the curtain’ of societal conditioning – so much of which has an economic basis.
I feel like there is great potential for interacting with people in this way. I think there is potential to help me be a better person and have better relationships. I think there is potential to solve many problems in society if this were adopted broadly.
I would like to write more about both the potential of broader application of GFRF and the very personal psychological insights that have come from using it, but find it difficult as I am so busy with the rest of my work. In the end I think it is probably more important that I live it than that I write about it, but still I think there is value in the writing if I can find the time.
The biggest challenge with GFRF so far is that people are often uncomfortable with it. It is so diametrically opposed to how many of use have been brought up to view our interactions with the world that many people have a hard time interacting with it. I wrote about this here. Trying to operate GFRF in this environment has been tough in some ways, but I see enough potential in it that I want to continue with my experimentation and see if I can become better at communicating this and achieve better results with it. I will try to keep you posted 🙂
Some food for thought in here. I would suggest that you can go further than changing your thoughts and awareness into changing your actions and interactions as well. Give freely receive freely can be part of that.
This video is about the inner transformation caused by giving. It has a lot of nice stories in it, including one about a rickshaw driver who essentially is running his business ‘Give Freely Receive Freely’.
Sometimes it is hard to operate using GFRF. People are often so unfamiliar with it or even suspicious of it that it sometimes seems easier to just operate in the way that is the ‘norm’. Stories like these help to remind me of the bigger picture though, and certainly I have experienced these sort of inner changes myself as I have worked in this way.
This guy has some interesting views on charitable giving and how charitable organizations should be run. I think he makes some good points, but he also suggests that these organizations should be run like big businesses, with what seems to me like an underlying assumption that people will work better when motivated by how much they can GET for themselves.
Maybe that’s a pragmatic assumption, but I think you then just end up with more of the same problems. I would like to think that instead it is possible for big businesses to operate more like charitable organizations, with people working motivated more by what they can GIVE to the world.
Anyway, what do you think?
Here is a great talk about someone using GFRF principles, particularly in the music industry, but she also talks about her earlier experiences with it as well.
Some of the big points she draws out are about asking, not being ashamed and making real connections with real people. I found it very touching and inspiring.
I think a lot of us including myself are often better at giving that we are at receiving, but Give Freely Receive Freely has two sides and we are missing the power of it if we don’t learn to receive as well. To do so is very humbling…
Enjoy!