Giving vs. Charging A Price? My reflections as a creator and entrepreneur.
“We’ve all been given a gift. The Gift of Life. What we do with our lives is our gift back.” - Edo
At it's best, I enjoy spend my time working on things that light up my heart and soul on a day to day basis, with no particular concern about trying to "monetize." I have created heaps of online content, videos, live-streams and more. Over this year of living Project:SoulFam and giving almost everything I create for free, I've learned a lot how money pervades our lives and it's not as black or white.
I do understand now that when people pay more, they tend to value what they receive more. They take the content seriously, which helps them.
Reasons to Give It Away
One philosophy of giving is that I never owned it anyway. Who am I to take something from you for it? Divine inspiration is a gift and should be shared. However, there are times when a basic price needs to be set because certain costs need to be covered.
At it's best, I give it away and I receive something back in gratitude.
I also understand now why it feels good to give some of my programs away for free. It gives me permission to also just create it for people with no regard to how much money I will get in return.
The soul does not care about money, only the ego does.
While I haven't found the perfect answer yet, I am on the path to uncovering my truth. I'm see more and more people wanting to give things away as Give What You Can and I think it's because our souls know that money disconnects us. It turns love into a transaction.
Sometimes it's tricky when I worry about my personal needs, but that's what Project:SoulFam is all about.
Reasons To Charge A Price
At the same time, I now understand the benefits of just charging. I would have more money to hire more people to support the work and therefore we'd be able to reach more people. I realized this when I recently spent weeks creating Global Meditation Scope and had to deal with a huge team of volunteers. While we did create something meaningful, it was not as coordinated, impactful or smooth as it could have been.
I also understand why it feels icky when someone only donate $1 for a program that I spent hours and hours developing and creating. It feels like they are wasting my efforts.
The Bold, Overriding Philosophy
You might be thinking, well, I gave it away but then nothing came back to me. Now I’m in loss even more than before! This is not true. You have put out a surplus into the world. There is a karmic economics that will - divine economics - that will reward you in due time. The time where you live on less and you THINK you experience loss is a time for you to connect more deeply to your spiritual truth.
It WILL come back. It WILL. In fact it already has. The REAL GIFT is the joy of giving. of giving to more and more people.
What if I believed that EVERYDAY I AM STILL ON EARTH, all of my earthly needs will be met without having to make their fulfillment the object of my experience? In my heart and soul, I know this to be true. My mind, however, sometimes still fears. I see now that one is not necessarily "wrong" but they stem from a different level of consciousness.
My commitment to you is that I will always do best to make the decision that will allow us to help and inspire the most people in the most effective way. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for being part of this journey.
If you have any additional thoughts on this topic. I'd love to hear in the comments below!
Infinite Love,
Anita
If you've been inspired by my work and want to support this mission in a bigger way, feel free to give by purchasing something in my shop, or donating via PayPal or Patreon.
