I have been exploring living in the gift in alignment with Charles Eisenstein’s work for some time now.

What does this mean? Charles Eisenstein discusses it in depth in his book Sacred Economics, and in articles on his website.

What it means for me is I will share my gifts with my clients in the way I’m being called to do so.

In return I ask to be gifted with an amount equal to the value received by my client and in alignment with their financial means. More importantly it means moving from a scarcity consciousness to an abundance consciousness. It means trusting that all my needs are always taken care of.

It means that when I give my gift to the world in the way I am meant to give it and use my God given talents that I have developed further, that I will be taken care of beyond my wildest dreams.

When someone enters into an agreement to work with me in this way, we both begin to change the consciousness around money, right livelihood, and community. When we move into a new paradigm of abundance in one area of our life, it begins to shift all areas of your life. The same is true of scarcity. It you live in a scarcity mindset around money, scarcity permeates all aspects of your life.

If you are in a place where you feel you can’t afford any monetary amount at all right now, I ask you to provide a gift equal to the value you have received from me, and your financial means. You won’t know what that is until after our work has begun, so gifts can be given at any time during or after our work.

What does it mean to live from scarcity?

Lets take a look at language that is used to talk about money.

Do you often say you can’t afford things?

Do you run out of money before the end of the month?

Do you have to scrape something together?

Do you rob Peter to pay Paul?

All of us have lived from a place of scarcity; it’s the way we were conditioned.

There were many times when I was living there that we needed money for something, a specific amount of money for an unexpected expense. In those moments, when we truly didn’t know where the money was going to come from, I always surrendered and trusted that whatever we needed would come to us and I didn’t need to know how it was going to happen. Mind you this was way before I started on my journey of trusting my intuition, of investigating abundance and of looking into sacred gift economy.  Each time I did that the money always came, each an every time without fail.

Maybe that was the beginning of my learning to trust that my needs would be taken care of before I could name it as that.

Maybe that was planting the seeds to further investigate sacred economy. Whatever it was, it impressed upon me what happens when we let go of expectations and trust we are in good hands.

As I have grown my business, whenever I go deep inside to ask my inner wisdom for guidance, changing the structure of how I get paid has been jockeying for attention for some time now. Every time I get close to stepping fully into this new system, the stories come roaring into my thoughts. Stories based on fear, scarcity and fear go hand in hand. When I lived full time in scarcity fear was my constant companion.

Fear kept me from living my life fully.

Fear kept me safe, or so I thought.

I’m sure you have heard that real growth happens just outside your comfort zone. That’s true, and the more I lived from abundance, the more my comfort zone expanded. The more it expanded, the more I grew, the more abundant my life got and the more I was urged to take a closer look at living in gift economy.

I wrote about it, I prayed about it, I sat with it, and each time I was ready to fully implement it, the fear came back.

My stories wondered if I would be taken advantage of, if I would not make enough to pay my bills, if anyone would find value in the work I am doing in the world. Eventually it became more difficult to ignore the urging than to follow my guidance. As I recovered from shoulder surgery I had an opportunity to be with the relationship of giving and receiving. It hasn’t been easy to ask for help, however in the first days and weeks after surgery I needed help with just about everything, bathing, getting dressed, getting settled in my chair, getting out of my chair, doing anything that I needed more than one hand to do. It was truly humbling, and I also have a better understanding of the role gratitude plays in the giving and receiving relationship.

Yes, fear still does make its way into my life.

The difference these days is that I get curious about that fear, about what growth is possible if I enter this particular uncomfortable place. The last vestige of scarcity still tries to hold me back from radically trusting that this is an abundant world where my needs as well as everyone else’s needs will always be met. As I write about scarcity I can feel my body constricting, getting smaller, my breath shallow.

Do you feel it too as you read this?

Take a deep breath with me. Expand our belly with your breath, feel your body relax and expand. Breathe in abundance and love and gratitude.

Gratitude and love live in the same neighborhood as abundance.

My body expands when I live there, and as I take a stand and say out loud and publicly that I now operate my business in a sacred gift economy consciousness I do so with gratitude.

Living in the gift means stepping into community, stepping out of isolation.

It means unraveling the old story that we are separate. I’ve always danced on the edge of isolation, its time for me to step into creating community. I invite you play in the mystery with me.

For our work together to be successful, my clients must be committed. Some coaches believe that their clients will pay for high dollar programs because they believe they are valuable.

I know my work to be highly valuable, however, I don’t know its value to you.

When you have made your gift commitment, you also have a strong commitment to the process and stick with it when the process becomes a little more difficult as we do the difficult work of meeting uncomfortable feelings.

There are many good coaches out there who teach money mindset and abundance.  I am not one of them.

I have learned from several that when we begin to live in abundance we will recognize how it affects other areas of our lives. There will be enough money, gifts and resources for all of us to live a life that sustains us completely. Peter and Paul can both have what they need, and we can all relax in the knowledge that not only do we have enough; we are enough. When we name an agreement as a barter, it is a contract that has a beginning and an end and does not invite community. When we call it or pay what you can, it can evoke a scarcity mindset.

I have a crazy notion that one day we will not need money.

That everyone living from abundance will freely share their gifts with the world and we will all have our needs met in ways we can only imagine now. I’m not suggesting that we will evolve to a beings that can live without money, that we will magically be able to transform intention into what we need. For now though money is the currency that provides our needs. By bringing consciousness to our spending and our earning, to our gifting and receiving we are changing the world.

Here are some other ways to think about this new paradigm of living in the gift.

It is generosity and based, and generosity goes both ways. It is based on gratitude.

Don’t think of it as a “something for nothing” free lunch. Think about how you show up when something is “free”. Do you find a program, event, or activity more valuable when you make an investment in yourself?

What commitment do you need to make in order to fully show up to do the work?

I’m asking you to create a bond of trust & mutual support:  I trust you to take good care of me, just as I am taking good care of you by offering you options.

Living in the gift will bring up stuff. It did and does for me. Whatever comes up can be addressed in our work together.

It’s another offprtuntiy to grow and step into the fullness of your life.