Time cost

The only thing I sell is my personal time.

I don't sell my mind, I don't sell my energy, I don't sell my body. Because none of those things actually belong to me. It makes no sense for me to offer them for money. All of that I share for free and only with those I decide to share it with. This is the applied philosophy of the Gift Economy for me.

I also don't sell my values, my integrity, or my opinions. Because there is no money in this world that can buy that from me. It's just not for sale.

The only thing I offer for money is my time. But when I sell my time, I actually completely and unconditionally offer to you all the rest: my intellect, my insight, my energy, my creativity, and my physical base.

Sometimes I offer my time for free, but in those moments, the energy I contribute is not about you. It's either about me, about us, or about the whole. But never about you, personally.

Because if you don't pay me something in return (it actually doesn't need to be money), but you still receive my energy as if it were meant only for you, you create a very nasty distortion in your system. If you appropriate my energy to yourself, you ingest too much of something that does not belong only to you.

What I create for free is for the whole. I offer what I have received. My time in those moments is actually timeless. And I don't mind giving it unconditionally.

What I create for money is specifically done for you and about you. When I take time to use my energy to better see you and help you to see yourself, it's not about me or us anymore. It's about you specifically. Or your project. Or your company. Your network or your tribe. And when you receive something from someone that is specifically about you, you should always pay them back!

This is the basics of energy exchange in this world. There is a mandatory transactional part to it, even if it's not done with money. Energetically, there is always a balance to respect. If this balance is not maintained consciously, your unconscious will make sure it's properly done at some point.

This is actually also true for the things I buy myself and use my money for. I pay mainly for the time. Not for the knowledge or energy or even space. What is important to me is how joyful, happy, and coherent people are in providing me with a certain service or product I pay for. If they are unhappy with what they do, I feel uncomfortable paying for their time.

Because it makes no sense to me to fund their unhappiness. If I pay for the time that people have suffered through, the energy of what I get in return is probably very unhappy too. Why would I use my money to buy unhappiness and suffering?

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I see this clearly with food.

During summertime, I buy my food from local farmers. Yes, it is organic and all of the above. But, I don't actually do it for that. I pay for the 'made with love' part. When I buy my veggies and I can see the smile on the farmer's face, I can feel the love emanating from his hands that have touched my food, I know his work is worth paying for. He is proud of what he offers. He is passionate about his products, respectful of his land, and mindful of the time he has invested in this.

And this makes all the difference. When you put in your body something done with unconditional love and joyful presence, you literally eat love and happiness!

When you ingest something in your system created through suffering, abuse, violence, and depression. Well, this is what you pay for and what you eat as well.

You contribute, share, and experience the pain and the suffering of an unhappy workplace by paying for it with your money.

But, you can also contribute to healing the system and the workplace in general by investing in people who are simply happy, joyful, and passionate about what they are doing. When you invest in their happiness and well-being, you buy the same thing for yourself.

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There is a new grocery that opened next to my home a couple of weeks ago. And, I am just amazed by this creation. When you enter there, you can literally feel the love painted on the walls. Everything was touched by the hands of joy and bliss. The way the owners select, place, handle, offer, and sell their product is done with the most exquisite sense of pleasure, simplicity, and respect for what they do.

I have rarely seen this. It's truly mind-blowing. Seriously, you enter there and your day just changes. You just can't not smile. You leave with a piece of happiness this place emanates. Just because people who have co-created it have done it with pure and unconditional love.

I am ready to pay and to finance this kind of service, happiness, and power of systemic transformation.

What is most interesting to me in this particular case is to actually observe how it works in a larger system and realize that it has nothing to do with the actual products they are selling. The fact that they do their work with so much love, attention, and care, it's almost like they are transforming the energetic qualities of the products they sell as well. It's weird to explain. But, I swear I feel like their love for what they do heals and transforms the stuff they sell too.

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This is why I feel uncomfortable using too much high-tech stuff, or too many phones or technology in general. Or funding government or big corporations. Because most of the people I know who work there are actually not very happy or joyful. They are often miserable, depressed, and burned-out.

It's actually almost impossible to live in society today without paying our money for time where people suffer doing their work.

We collectively fund and invest in the workplace pain and we suffer together deeply because of it.

We think cheap is good. But, it has nothing to do with the actual cost. Don't look at the numbers. Look at the energetic quality of the person offering you something. You pay for their time and its energetic imprint.

Why is this important?

It's only important if you want to invest in something authentic, creative, powerful, and regenerative. Because all of those qualities are only present when you do the work from your inner source and from your heart. When you are not happy at your work, you cannot create something that will make others truly happy.

Real creativity and joy are not accessible to people who don't like what they do daily and fully.

And when you pay money to fund the job of those people, you invest in a very painful and quite incoherent transaction for yourself.

Remember, energetically, you share their suffering, simply because you have paid for it.

And this is true even if this is all done unconsciously and under the secret or in the other country.

You experience what you have invested in.

You don't pay for things, energy, or thoughts. You pay for the quality of the invested time others are offering to you. The level of their desire and happiness to actually want to give you that time will define the actual price and the cost of things you get in return for your money.