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RE: Dear steemians, Can you help a brother out?
MMM< that is a tough one.. yes its hard to help and feel intergrous when you need to charge.. the same can be said for healing! \
My BEST advice, which has worked well for me with my healing work is to just work on DONATION.. That way when they feel helped they will give, maybe more than would have charged.. and everyone is happy..
Removing that pressure makes all the difference, and you can say if they don't feel helped that they don't have to pay anything
Best of luck with this!
I think you made a great point here. And I want to add something too. Maybe working as a healer can give you the best of the two paths, I've been a healer since before I realized that even existed, and after that never even asked for a donation, because it's true that the mixing of money and healing can be a tough call, specially for people who don't think they have to pay what you ask for, instead they want to make that choice for you. So it's indeed a hard choice and I'm going to speak about my experience doing so. I never asked for money neither get paid a donation (I didn't ask for it), but I made more money when I realized the work I was doing was worth it and as I became better at it my other works started to bring more money to the table, so it ends up being a "comic superhero" kind of job. You can't rely on it to pay your every bill, but its earnings go way beyond a paycheck. I don't hink I'll ever charge for my work as a healer, because it's the most genuine way I have to help people "change", and if I don't change first, it would be maybe not useless, but not that integrous as Alex said.
My final thought for you has to be to give you my story. I've been working more as a coach than as a teacher since 2010, and I find it more real and integrous because I can truly take the time to help one person or a couple at a time, never 30 people at the same time, it's not that I think it's better for anyone, but I learned that for me it's just a way of truly passing my knowledge and helping instead of just trading my more precious time for money. I have been working without a paycheck or regular job for 8 years and it gets better with time if you aim at big things. Trust me. I live in Venezuela, where the minimun wage is about 1usd a month! The communist government also has like an integral "for food money" that is mandatory for all legal jobs an it's about 5 $ plus the one for a month of work... so, most people here are getting paid 6$ a month, I'm talking about teachers, doctors, and the mayority of the population that doesn't want to succeed more than in their given job, and it's not even 9 to 5, but sometimes 7 to 7, and believe me, because of the crisis we're currently in you can't buy much with that. The reason I'm telling you this is that maybe you would think that you need a regular job to get some kind of a money income, but the truth is that if you're ambitious enough you could receive more in one day than in an entire trimester working for someone more than yourself (ethically and economically). I realized this when I was 21, but I had given it a lot of thought before I decided to quit my regular job for a life full of art and owning all of my time. I'm not teaching since 2014 (only taken a few people for basic english, most people here doesn't learn by choice) because in 2011 I realized that the garden I was working on in my parents house had more than 500 plants (I started it with my mom and we barely had 50) and the reason for that being that as I quit my job and spent more time working at home, I put more energy on that garden and started to learn that many plants propagated themselves without the need of seeds. I picked no more than 20 plants that I liked and took them to my back yard. Less than three years later, my plants stock surpased the 1000. I started to make my own compost, by not throwing away food scraps in the trash. I made a comittment to the environment, because in Venezuela people don't separate their trash nor stop the pollution in any way or law (They don't think they need to), so by trying to do something that didn't get me a paycheck I started to sell my plants as well, because they were beautiful, and because I was good at propagating them without buying seeds or spending money which I didn't had (still don't, the money I make barely helps me to take care of my family). Now the crisis is getting worse every day. If you have a regular job and get paid let's say 6 bucks, only a regular pizza costs 2, so, you can figure out that we cannot afford much here.
That is the reason why I think that even though you live in a better country and can get paid well for a regular or 9 to 5 job, you're always going to have the possibility (or choice) to earn a lot more than just that. I currently have more than 10.000 plants and I don't only sell them at the lowest price, I travel to schools and start projects of environmental awareness and climate change, I give speeches and I don't even charge the cab bills (we have even a crisis with cars, we cannot afford even one tire, because it costs more than one can make, besides not even the supermakets have every product you need, the situation here is really hard, it has been for almost 20 years). I regularly give new flower plants to all of my neighbors and the entire community (when I have the time to propagate that many), and I'm currently working to be spotted by the elected major to see if they can help me to get to more people and to raise and achieve more development on my entire region. I know I'm on the right track and if I tell you about this, is because I think you can be inspired by knowing that you can not only help others, but get the best rewards by not charging at all for some things. There's always going to be those people, like Alex said, noticing you and giving you a signal (or a donation) that you're following the right direction. I want to make a change in people's minds, and I think you guys are in the same page. You can own your time and own your work. We have a choice now and it's about time that we change things around.
I now started to experiment with growing food (I only grew to sell flower, ornamental plants) and have been for at least 3 years. I realized that in the arid zone I was living the trees were dying, we had big droughts because of the crisis (Many people don't have access to water or electricity, taht all caused by the government and people itself depending on others), there could been three to four years without even one rain season. But I always knew I was meant to fix that. So what I'm up today? I do what I already told you (plus now I'm on stemit, made almost 100 usd in my first 21 days and thats A LOT here in Vzla, now I'm 23 days old on the network and really grateful for doing so, there are people here really turning things around), I'm an apprentice at a tattoo shop, and I grow seeds until they grow to engineering beasts called plants (I make tons of oxygen per year, all gardeners do and don't get recognition for that). But the most important part being: I own my time. I have three beautiful children, I work from - and in my home. I make murals, I work for commisions because I'm also a creative person, I can say that I sketch drawings for a living and get paid well (never enough, that's for sure), I'm also a musician and I always try to invest and learn what could be the next best choice for me, both finantially and psychological. I'm sure that you can commit and relate to my story too! There are also new options like upwork, online jobs, etc. Cheers and kudos to both of you. We can be heroes!