by Tara Joyce | Sep 11, 2015 | Cultural Creativity, Self/Business Growth
Luxury can be a trap. It can be so comfortable to live in—that it can be so very hard to leave… Hard to stretch yourself beyond the sumptuous and secure life you’ve come to know. Most of the world isn’t as comfortable as you are, and living with this truth can make it hard to leave your protective and pleasant container.
Luxury is a trap—if you let it be. For when you have the ability to live self-indulgently, you also have the ability to not challenge yourself with the realities of life. You have the means to avoid the uncomfortable and, often times, the ability to find someone else to take on their responsibility.
Money—and the power it offers—can be used and abused like anything else that affects your energy. Like drugs and alcohol, it can be an escape—a means to numb the pain. Your richness can keep you separate and shielded. It can keep you trapped—in a luxurious life.
Like you’re in the womb, the privilege of abundance provides you with the opportunity to remove yourself from the undesirable. You have the means to create a world where you do not have to deal with the uglier truths of life. Insulated and cared for, you are afforded the luxury of having a choice.
The problem with abundance is how you can trap yourself in its comfortability—keeping yourself small and shielded. Living in this gilded space, you can’t see your abundance as a thing of beauty—and a gift of grace.
Abundance is beauty. Stay mindful to the richness of your life, it’s here to expand you—but it can do the opposite. It can contract you—if you let it. This is the only true money trap—and no matter your stage of wealth—you have the choice to not fall into it.
photo credit: Mike Bitzenhofer
by Tara Joyce | Aug 5, 2014 | Cultural Creativity, Pay What It's Worth Pricing
There’s always been something about the statement, “give freely, receive freely” that didn’t work for me, but I could never quite put my finger on it. The sentiment sounded so lovely, but I knew there was something I was missing. I needed to see beyond the freedom ideal, to the totality of the statement.
Have you ever been given something that is more work to receive than the value you place on it?
Have you ever been given something that came with conditions?
If I give freely, without restraint, I will receive freely, without restraint. But is giving, and receiving, in this way what’s best for me?
What I really need is to NOT be totally free. What I really need is to have some constraints. Because the truth is, sometimes, the thing I’m giving is something you’d benefit from NOT receiving.
Sometimes, I’m unbalanced in my giving. Sometimes, I give for the wrong reasons. You do not need to receive everything that I want to give you, just as I don’t need to receive everything that you want to give me. Sometimes, you and I give for the wrong reasons, and it’s important to honour this truth about ourselves.
I could leave myself open and free to receive whatever, and open and free to give it too, but I know that’s not what’s best for me. I could “give freely, receive freely” without bias, but then I wouldn’t be responsible to the whole truth of myself, and of you — that sometimes the things I want to give, you do not need; and sometimes the things you want for me to receive, I do not need. Sometimes, our giving isn’t helpful or generous.
So truly, giving freely does means receiving freely, and this includes exchanging all our “stuff” that would more responsibly be managed with more constraints, not less.
photo credit: Ari Moore
