by Tara Joyce | Dec 19, 2014 | Cultural Creativity
We share stories to share our voice and our perspective in a way we feel will be emotionally impactful. We craft our stories in a particular way, changing them each time we tell them. We craft them from our experience and imagination, and the beautifully unique way we each perceive our world. They’re not the truth, nor our truth. They are our stories.
It’s not even the whole story that we get the privilege of hearing or sharing with each other when we’re storytelling. It’s only a glimpse that we can see, and/or show in our moment of connection together. It might sound like the complete story I’m sharing but please believe me, it’s only part of a greater whole. The truth, my truth, is far more nuanced and complex than my story can share.
If our stories were our truth, we might call them that.
I love stories… but I don’t put a lot of energy into them. My stories and the stories of others are here to entertain, to persuade, to educate but to take them as “the truth” or to hold my own experiences up to them in comparison, is a game I’d rather not play.
I’d rather work on treating stories lightly, for my own health and happiness. They are not “the truth”, nor “my truth”. Our stories are a reflection of us and our own unique way of perceiving things. They’re our version of events. They’re our tools for connection, for empathy and for identity. They’re integral to us but they are not, and can not, be all that we are. We are so much more than our stories.
photo credit: Alessandra Di Nunno
by Tara Joyce | Oct 27, 2014 | Cultural Creativity, Pay What It's Worth Pricing
I like to think about money as an idea in the form of credit. To get in the money game, I need to build up my credit. To build up my credit, I need to work on my inner and outer relationship with my self and money.
My Outer Credit Work:
- identifying & communicating the value I offer (marketing my self and my business)
- growing my wealth (creating opportunities for higher pay and more abundance)
- caring for my wealth (managing my money and my self)
My Inner Credit Work:
- connecting with the value I offer and the abundance of wealth I possess (transforming my thoughts, feelings, beliefs, attitudes, and actions about money and my self)
As I practice with Pay What It’s Worth and not setting prices, I’m noticing the system naturally supports me in doing my inner and outer work. It supports me in clearly identifying where I still have work to do in improving the quality of my thoughts about my self and money. When I feel something isn’t working in my business and/or in an exchange with my customer, I have an opportunity for inner work and outer work. My business is a mirror for my relationship with my self and money, and my customer is a powerful guide in showing me what is working in this relationship, and what is not. My customer’s feedback and behaviour in our business exchange, and my satisfaction with it, highlights where my thoughts and actions are adding value and where they are not. How am I building my credit? How am I taking from it? If I don’t feel fairly valued, I explore how I am creating this imbalance in my relationship and I work to correct it.
Psychology is to money what an engine is to a car, and my motives, my drivers to action, determine my results. My thoughts about money determine where I go with it, the quality of my ride and my response, and how fast I travel. If I want to live and love abundantly, I must be working on thinking abundantly. As I work at increasing the quality of my thoughts, and in turn my actions, my wealth increases. As I learn to value my Self and how I am of service more wholly, my customer naturally does too. This is the work and the reward of building my credit.
photo credit: Matt Jiggens
by Tara Joyce | Apr 20, 2013 | Personal Branding
There is no demand for my message.
Personal branding isn’t about packaging myself up into a pretty box and showing only the good and glowing. The whole me, not my tidy little message, is what people want and will see, whether I attempt to control it or not.
Establishing a message for myself, deciding on a pretense, trying to make you think what I want you to think about me, is not of benefit to me. And it’s not of interest to you. You don’t care about what I want to pretend to be.
My personal brand, it is my Marketing, and it’s not something I do to you. Marketing is something I do with you. It’s about creating great conversations.
That’s what’s really in demand. Connection.
My message, my pretense, can only prevent me from reaching that place with you.
