Without a shadow of a doubt, the job I would do for free and in a heartbeat is to look after pandas anywhere in the world that I was asked to do so. I love them, they are my favourite animal. I watch videos of them on YouTube and Facebook because they never fail to make me smile, I suspect because I recognise something of myself in them – the ability to get themselves into all sorts of scrapes and problems, and their sheer clumsiness. I’m not saying anything about the fact that they eat pretty much the entire time they are awake! Where we differ is that my diet is not 99% vegetarian as theirs is, but I am more rotund than I would like to be, as are they! They’re just gorgeous though I am sure ferocious in their own way, just like me.
Pandas are a conservation success story in the making, not out of the woods yet but no longer critically endangered. Thankfully. They’ve moved from the red zone to amber, and I think the world would breath a sigh of relief if they were to make it to green. For me, they’re like a totem on how the world treats nature. If they do shift to the green zone, maybe we would feel like we were taking the threats we pose to nature seriously. Because their potential demise is purely down to human activity brought about as it is by climate change and deforestation, the encroachment of human activity on a natural habitat that is then lost. The few that remain are in a much smaller space than they were, restricted to six isolated mountain ranges in southwestern China whereas once they claimed vast swathes of land in southern and eastern China, Myanmar and Northern Thailand. Unlike man, pandas are good for their natural habitat. They ensure the proliferation of the bamboo they eat through the release of seeds in their bodily functions and it is ironic that their impact on the forests creates the necessary biodiversity that keeps millions of people safe through preventing flooding, for example. A typical example of where nature gives, of how everything is connected, and humanity believes in its own dominion. Its right to strip the forests of the trees and give nothing back to nature. Yes, I would look after pandas for free in a heartbeat.
Instead, I do other things for free that I shouldn’t. Things I should charge money for because the outcomes for others is positive (not necessarily monetarily). But, I don’t. Why? Well, that’s about self-worth and attaching a value to self. I often hear my inner negative chatter say…charge? For that? Anyone can do that, you’re not special. And while I may not be special, not everyone can do some of the things I can do. Like I can’t do some of the things other people do. Though we both could if we had the training. The other aspect that impinges on my ability to charge money is that I struggle with the link between spirituality and money. I am deeply spiritual, the type of coaching and writing I do is intrinsically led by that spirituality and I have this inner belief that anything spiritual should be given for free. I want as many people as are willing to discover their own spirituality, to realise that we are all one, and so if money is a barrier for them to do that, I want to remove it. Equally, I know that if we really want to do something we will find a way. We may not be able to afford that one thing in that moment, but there are plenty of ways to skin a cat as they say. And plenty of ways to cobble some information together to get started on a journey. Money is only a barrier if we want it to be.
What is money? We attach so much to it, often so much that is negative, when all it is, is energy. And neutral energy at that. It is us, as humans, who attach the negative. We are the ones who become greedy for it, money doesn’t ask that of us. We are the ones who hoard it and actively prevent others from securing it, money itself doesn’t do that. We are the ones who, in that hoarding, convince everyone else that there is not enough to go around when there is. Money will go to whoever welcomes it. We are the ones who place the limiting beliefs on it, the belief that it is evil for example. Or that we are not worthy. The energy of money is neither good nor evil, it just is. It is our interpretation of it that can be good or bad. We often attach our own self-worth (or lack of) to money, as I am guilty of. As I write this, I can feel myself struggling with saying that I am good at something despite the evidence I have from others that I am good at what I do. And I should not rely on the evidence of others to prove that point, I should only rely upon my own sense of self-worth. This isn’t arrogance (though for some it does veer into that), it is about valuing ourselves. Loving ourselves first and foremost.
I sometimes wake up in the morning with a song running through my head that, when I look at it, has a profound meaning for me in that moment. It is spirit’s way of communicating with me, it’s how my Higher Self sometimes communicates with me. This past week, I have been waking up to Miley Cyrus’s ‘Flowers’. I neither like nor dislike Miley Cyrus as an artist, I don’t really know her work if I am completely honest. So I had to look up the lyrics and the meaning behind them. And, no surprise to know, it’s all about self-worth. That after the conclusion of a relationship, she realises that she can provide to herself what she had sought in a relationship. “I can buy myself flowers.” The defining line for me, though, is “I can love me better than you can”. Because the truth is, if we don’t love ourselves better than anyone else can how can we truly hope to be loved as we want to be? It reminds me of a budget meeting in an old job I had where the director asked why he should invest in a project my colleague was arguing for when my colleague had refused to look for alternative sources of funding. Basically, if my colleague didn’t have enough confidence in his project that others would want to fund it, why should the organisation we worked for? It made us all stop and think, and I have always thought the director was absolutely correct. It comes back to – if I don’t think I am worthy of charging money for my knowledge and expertise, no one else will.
How do we love ourselves enough, then? How do we shift sometimes decades of ingrained thought patterns and behaviours that betray a lack of self-worth into a position of valuing ourselves? One thing we can do is to list all of our achievements and no matter how uncomfortable it makes us, force ourselves to recognise that yes we did do this. There may have been a team with us doing aspects of it, but we had an integral role to play and we played it well. That perhaps we have been through some really, really difficult times but we kept on going. We kept pushing through, we didn’t lose sight of what it was we wanted to achieve, and we achieved it. That is worthy of a huge pat on the back. And doing so repeatedly until it sinks in. It is reminding ourselves that we are not our minds, we are so much more than that. And that what we are is marvellous, and wonderful. That while our minds are focused on keeping us safe and alive, that often means we don’t subconsciously act in ways that will lead us to our ideal outcome. Change is something our minds avoid because it means uncertainty, and uncertainty can lead to danger. Certainty is the minds only way of keeping us safe, even if that certainty is keeping us in the loop of a lack of self-worth. If we put ourselves out there, we could get shot down. Putting our heads above the parapet may not get the response we wanted. So, it’s easier not to.
But where does that lead us? If we don’t put ourselves on the line occasionally, what happens? We stay in the same place, and that’s not what we are here to do. We are here to learn, we are here to grow, we are here to shift ourselves forward. Writing these blogs as I do is a part of me putting my head above the parapet. Writing my books is another way I put my head above the parapet. But I know that I only go so far in putting myself out there, and that it isn’t far enough. Not everyone is going to like what we do or what we have to say, and that is fine. That is actually how it should be, if we all liked the same things life would end up being tremendously dull. It only pains us if we allow it to.
So, I am no longer going to give my knowledge and expertise away for free. I am going to charge, and I am going to do more shouting about what I am good at. If for no other reason than I have to save some money to be able to afford to do the job that I do want to do for free…looking after those pandas.
Louisa Simpson 