Negotiating Dance

You have to persuade yourself that you absolutely don't care what happens. If you don't care, you've won. I absolutely promise you, in every serious negotiation, the man or woman who doesn't care is going to win.

Felix Dennis

Negotiating scares people and yet it can be a thoroughly enjoyable interaction with others. 

If we wish to drag our relationship with money out of the dark ages, the discovery of negotiation as innocent fun will play a central role. The so-called "win-win situation" is a ghastly cliche that has deteriorated to new ways of pulling the wool over people's eyes.

Zero-sum mentality is outdated. The idea that one must lose for the other to win, leads to everybody's guaranteed loss. In the context of negotiating it is impossible for one person to win and to walk away genuinely happy. There is no grace in it. Winning based on losing is shameful no matter how it is explained. 

Change it. It's easy: make sure you accept the outcome only when you are 100% certain that all involved are satisfied with the result. If one person leaves the negotiation with the experience of having lost or with resentment, there is no true winner and all have lost.

The truth about win-win situations is that there is no real alternative. Win-Lose does not exist because it equals lose-lose and nobody is interested in that. Win-Win is a tautology, obviously. Winning suffices. Unless both or all participating parties win, negotiating is a disgraceful waste of time.

So, when you become the guarantee that any negotiation you will engage in has only participants who will emerge as winners, what would stop you from negotiating all day every day for fun and profit?

'Instant Gratification, the latest newsletter issue and blog post stirred up additional questions about negotiating. A friend of mine responded with these questions that I think will be of interest for many who want to discover elements of pleasure in their communications with others in the context of money and business transactions. In case you didn't receive a copy of that particular newsletter issue, you may look it up here: http://bit.ly/1yK8ueg

I hope you'll enjoy contemplating these thoughts as well and I further hope you'll have as much fun with the implementation as I do:

Q: You have said that asking high value from clients is to enable them to experience their prosperity consciousness should they be ready for it. 

A: I didn't use the term 'enable' in particular. By asking high prices, you are giving your clients an "opportunity to discover" their prosperity. Whether they take advantage of your offer and seize their opportunity or not, is not under your control. Great if they are ready for it, as you said, but they may not be and it is not necessary for you to meet your objectives.

Q: However, I have observed that very few see it as that. Most people see it as pain. 

A: Exactly, hence my newsletter. What they see, think, or feel is not your concern. It's theirs. Most people on the seller's side buy into their clientele's pain theory because they have not clarified it for themselves. When you, as the selling party, merely BELIEVE that paying and giving are rewarding, it's not making much of a difference. Only when you, the seller, have brought yourself to EXPERIENCE that giving money is joyful, something "snaps" in your practice of negotiating. You no longer buy into other people's 'pain myth' no matter what they say or believe, and you naturally project the potential of prosperity into your clients while they may continue to hold on to their belief in their own smallness.

Your experience-based confidence that the pain theory is a myth wherever it may be evoked, tacitly or verbally, removes your emotional hesitation from asking for anything you want.

Whether you actually ask client X for anything you want or not, is up to you. There is still no necessity to ask for all you want but it has become an option, freed up from emotional drawbacks. As long as the negotiator on the seller's side vaguely believes the buyer may be right with his/her claim of pain, this option is NOT available and the selling negotiator will be timid. 

When the seller projects pain into her buyer's perspective, she strengthens the buyer's position and weakens herself, the seller. Believing or "buying" your buyer's pain becomes an act of self-sabotage for you, the seller. This type of false empathy ends all negotiations. It creates an imbalance of respect for each other and you don't have two equals left at the table. One of them now seems to have a handicap, a disability even, and the seller begins strangling her own desire. The 'Fog of Resentment' takes over, for different "reasons" on each side, and chances are that both parties will emerge from this emotional mess as unhappy losers. 

Buyer's pain will become the seller's pain because the seller projects it as such. When the seller knows beyond the shadow of a doubt that the specter of pain is a mere bluff of the prospective buyer, perhaps unconsciously used, the seller can silently laugh off the "demon" that the client "sees." The seller can now approach the buyer's pain, poverty consciousness, or limitations as a form of 'phantom pain' and proceed with the negotiation because there is no factual obstacle. Depending on the nature of your business, you as seller may choose to address this issue as an additional opportunity to serve your client.

Q: Somebody told me recently, "The most difficult thing in the world is to get somebody cut a cheque for you."

A: Well, that is a common experience but it is based on corresponding beliefs and projections. Such experience expresses his or her belief in pain as the ruler of business transactions. This belief will guarantee that he or she finds clients who will prove the theory right. It is a subjectively chosen reality. Nevertheless, it is objectively false because checks are being cut everyday, all around the world. Some individuals must have chosen to receive them.

Q: Given that scenario, my offering the buyer an opportunity to pay handsomely is not going to enhance his prosperity consciousness at all. It will only enhance his pain consciousness. Nor do I believe that I, seeing him as prosperous, is going to elevate his prosperity consciousness simply because I see him that way.

A: Again, your prospect's or buyer's prosperity consciousness is not your concern. Your prosperity consciousness gives him the option to discover or expand his prosperity consciousness but he has the right to choose as he pleases, including but not limited to, pain and poverty consciousness. It would be a potentially disastrous idea to threaten somebody else's preference of feeling pain and poverty, as I mentioned in the beginning of my newsletter.

When you give your buyer the freedom to go into emotional contortions but you are not energetically linked to his game, your strategy and tactics of negotiating are unburdened from emotional ballast. You can sit there, be "highly pleasing to yourself" (thanks, Leonard!), and genuinely smile. Your awareness converts his pretty real looking expressions of despondency, pain, poverty, and belief in impending gloom and doom into an act, into a show that you can see through. Pain is not real. It's being used by individuals against themselves and their own interest but also as a smoke screen for the purpose of intimidating others. In our context, pain is used to intimidate sellers, "evil money grabbers," who inflict superfluous pain on poor people.

Q: In most B2C products no vendor has the time and feasibility to educate every client that the deal is empowering for him and not debilitating.

A: Correct. That type of education is unnecessary and may even be counterproductive. Knowing what your client refuses to know can be another trump card in your hand. A trump not for the purpose of exploiting the situation and win while the other person loses, but for the purpose of moving the negotiation swiftly along toward a conclusion that serves your client as well as yourself. "Reading" your clients is fun and the better you are at it, the more entertaining will the process of negotiating be for both of you. Unless it's fun, it's a loss from the start.

There is a phenomenon that I refer to as the 'Power of Weakness'. A client's display of pain is his attempt of gaining power over you by appealing to your empathy. He uses pain as leverage. The seller's perception of the buyer's weakness turns into the buyer's power over the seller, under the disguise of weakness. 

To confuse you completely, when the buyer believes he wins by convincing you of his painful limitations, he cuts himself off from what he wants. If you buy your client's pain, you have failed him. If your client "wins" with his defense of his poverty, you both lose. If you win with your conviction that your client is sufficiently prosperous to pay and he'll discover the joy of doing so, you both win and each of you will be happy with the outcome.

Calling your client's pain bluff is important for you and sometimes you don't want to give away immediately that you have noticed anything at all. Trying to "educate him" will make you look silly because it proves that you didn't understand his game. Still, there is no need to call his bluff verbally. Knowing that what he is doing is a show, is crucial for your next step.

Q: So the whole thing becomes a one-way street where my perception of the clients prosperity consciousness doesn't translate into his prosperity but rather just reinforces his pain and poverty consciousness? 

A: You want to make a sale that is enjoyable during the negotiation and eventually satisfying for all involved but without detours that could limit the buyer's freedom to choose. Trying to force somebody into expanding his prosperity consciousness against his will, is probably going to backfire as an unpleasant experience and as an attempt on his freedom of choice. If you feel the need to control the exact experience that your negotiation partner ought to gain from negotiating with you, you have already lost. His prosperity consciousness is his business, just as he is free to believe in the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Evaluate the type of satisfaction that he is willing and able to receive in connection with your product or service and allow him to choose it freely.

Q: You seem to operate from the sandlot-consciousness that you often mention. Maybe you are coming from GIVING consciousness. And this kind of thinking creates greater possibility of the money coming by. 

A: As you said further below, "Sometimes I feel like giving them for free and receiving whatever I am given with love. Sometimes I just turn it on its head and ask a fair price..." Exactly, I follow my gut level feeling. No rule book. No better or worse way to go. However, I have absolutely no clue what the term 'fair price' means. Between a $4 dollar burger at McDonald's and a $60 dollar burger at the 'Wynn' in Las Vegas, the fair price would be how much? If you find a buyer who happily pays the price you negotiate, it is fair, non? 

Outside of negotiations, you and what you really want will never be considered 'fair'. Public opinion will always take the position of you wanting too much.

Since you brought up my affinity to sandlots: fairness may have its place in the sandlot. The concept of fairness helps when you explain things to 4-year old kids. In the adult world, you better be aware that fairness and freedom exclude each other. Arbitrary ideas of fairness suppress freedom. Fairness is a fairy tale. Life is not fair and neither is freedom. People shy away from intensity. They will agree that freedom is a nice concept but the practice of freedom is unpleasant business for most and they'll walk away from it with their tails tucked between their hind legs.

What you really want will always be considered to be impertinent by somebody. Get used to it or, if you prefer to succumb to a life of self-castration in fairness, there will be nothing left to negotiate about. 

For me, temptation is life and

I have a gargantuan appetite for everything. 

Felix Dennis

Q: When you mentioned a particular concept, you suggested that should I choose to share it with somebody, I should get him to pay a hefty price. Aren't these approaches kind of contradictory?

A: What I say is meaningless. What people choose to do with it, matters. I said it that way to single out a particular thought as a "product." Had I not pointed it out, the reader would have rushed past it as if it were just another thought. This product contains one of THE keys to guilt-free wealth. You could sell it for a hundred bucks, for $1,000 dollars, or for a nickel. You are free to give this idea away as a gift. If it has no value whatsoever, like another dime-a-dozen thought in this inflationary 'information age', you cannot even use it as a gift because it's worthless. No contradiction here.

Q: I often get confused while pricing my products. Sometimes I feel like giving them away for free and receiving whatever I am given with love. Sometimes I just turn it on its head and ask a fair price in accordance with the prosperity rules. What's a better way to go about it?

A: Do what pleases you. Do it this way and then, try another way. Sooner or later, you'll know what you don't enjoy at all and what you prefer (without any guarantee to always get it).

Q: How to interpret the rule of accepting what one is ABLE & WILLING TO PAY? I guess it comes from EMPATHY (which itself is out of sync with the prosperity rules). From the context that you are telling, maybe everybody is able to pay. There is hardly any need to offer discounts. In regard to willingness, maybe the front line salesperson requires to educate every prospect about the value for money aspect to increase their willingness. 

A: I'd assume you know the most powerful trump during any negotiation? Of course, it is the freedom "to walk away" from the table at any given time or at any milestone of a particular negotiation. Walking away without anger or regret is a demonstration of freedom from "need" and an expression of your prosperity. You are independent from the outcome of this negotiation.

Perhaps the other party will come running after you, eager to get you back to the table, to offer concessions etc. When you give up interest in the outcome--other than that all parties win with grace and joy--you gain first of all attention and possibly a greater power over a favorable outcome for both or all negotiating parties.

"From the context that you are telling, maybe everybody is able to pay. There is hardly any need to offer discounts." Absolutely. When you give your clients the freedom to pay according to their ability and willingness to pay, you are gaining power in two ways: a) you are walking away from their negotiation games and their 'pain myth' collapses like a house of cards and b) you are also "walking away" from your own emotional attachments to the outcome of this particular transaction.

This strategy frees you instantly for all that is truly important to you. Otherwise you'd keep yourself engaged in a wasteful energetic struggle over peanuts and nobody has a remote chance of winning that. Even if you would eventually win the dollar amount you originally wanted, you'd have wasted energy and life.

'Ability and Willingness to Pay' is a concept with multiple layers of reality. It does not always mean the same and it is your job, as the money receiving party, to come up with an exegesis. The gentle implementation of your interpretation ought to be satisfactory for your client as well as for yourself. Listening to your client is one thing, reading your client is quite another. 

Sometimes when multiple individual negotiation partners are present in the same room, I may choose to spend 90% of my time with one person only because everybody else's guards are down when I do not address them directly and I reach them easier and faster by NOT negotiating with them openly. They may "buy me" and convince themselves because I seemingly walked away from their fears, worries, and resistances before they had a chance to activate them. Last but not least, they may learn more about themselves by observing another person interacting with me than if I confronted them directly.

No rules. Rules are for the dead and oppressed. It's a dance. When you dance with a woman you love, the importance of any outcome disappears, time disappears, the meaning of numbers disappears, you disappear, and only the movement matters. 

Frustrations and insecurities don't fare well with a beautiful woman in your arms on the dance floor. Negotiating begs to be discovered as a joyful dance of giving and receiving, as a fun way of being with people, rather than as drudgery or as part of the four-letter-word 'work'.

Dance cannot be won. Negotiation can be danced.

Egbert


P.S.: Cetero censeo, hourly wages ought to be eliminated. The crude practice of time based compensation insults human intelligence and is embarrassing for a society that considers itself civilized. Check out EndWages.com and on Amazon.com you'll find Paperback and Kindle editions of my book How to Better Hate Your Job. Of course it's also available for the Nook and on iTunes.

For seminars and speaking engagements, please contact me via email.

The next book title on the workbench, Paid to Die: The Linear Cynicism of Time-Based Pay will be available in a couple of months, hopefully. You can pre-order your copy through EndWages.com.

In suggesting gifts: Money is appropriate, and one size fits all.

William Randolph Hearst

Instant Gratification

Pain is the effort required to cling to a negative thought.

Leonard Orr

Instant Gratification is dangerously underrated. 

Most problems in the world arise because people deny themselves instant bliss and joy. The dissatisfied aim to make the world a better place, while turning it into a greater mess in the process. If people bothered to breathe consciously and connected instead of choking themselves into permanent depression, they would be jumping up and down all day happy to be alive and grateful to experience each other's presence. I am exaggerating? Not much.

Without your explicit permission I don't intend to deprive you of your best friend. A dog is not man's best friend. Pain is. Individuals jealously guard their pain as their most prized possession. Their pain is more precious to them than spouse and children. Familiar pain can be people's first love and may even become their identity. What they claim to hate intensely may be the disguise of militant love. Touch and soothe other people's pain at your own peril. 

Two measly paragraphs into this newsletter I am already lost, it seems. Greed School is about money and money psychology, isn't it?

Does your money prosper other people? Of course not, it can't. In the extreme, giving other people money may keep them poor or make them poor. Your prosperity consciousness, on the other hand, gives other people the opportunity to discover their own prosperity consciousness. 

What I am going to say may have never been spelled out in detail. Occasionally I have mentioned parts of it in seminars. This may be more important than a bunch of other things you know about money, especially if you intend to pull all emotional stops that prevent unlimited, guilt-free income.

Before you explain this material to anybody else, please make them pay dearly for exposing them to this thought process or it is likely that they cannot swallow and digest the full extent of its value. The idea is simple but it can turn common beliefs about money upside down and peeps don't necessarily appreciate when someone negates the foundation of their past behavior. Here goes:

My prosperity prospers others not when I give them money but I may invite them to expand their awareness of prosperity when I receive their money with the conviction that I am doing them a favor by accepting as large an amount of their money as I possibly can with their agreement and their joy.

The majority of people believes that giving money is an unpleasant act or even painful and receiving money is pleasant or fun. "What's the damage?" is a typical question in America about the cost of something, like a cab fare or a bar tab. "How much will that set me back?" is another expression of pain linked to the spending of money.

Now, if spending of money is painful, I am causing others pain when I ask them for and accept their money. A good person naturally recoils from becoming the cause or trigger of another individual's pain. Each one of us has a different level of pain that we are willing to induce in other people by asking them for money. At least, that's what people often believe they do while asking for payment, sending an invoice, or when they're negotiating a price. 

A widespread belief is that evoking 'need' justifies and neutralizes the pain caused within the giver by the receiving party. As long as one needs to make the next mortgage payment in time, needs a larger flat screen TV, and needs a vacation it is perfectly kosher to disregard the payers' pains. As if the hypothetical pain that the receiving person may have to endure without this particular transaction--if s/he doesn't get what s/he needs--would create a 'Balance of Pain' between payer and payee. 

Such tacit societal agreements are artificial and nonsensical because no human being truly "needs" a flat screen TV, a Starbucks account, or even a single pair of shoes to live. Both the 'Theory of Need' and the 'Balance of Pain' collapse when an individual's claim of need reaches levels of extravagance in the perception of others. She will then be accused of being greedy and the assumed displeasure of paying will be expressed belligerently. 

The fact that a lot of people tend to sell products or services to friends for a lower price or at wholesale cost while charging strangers a higher price with a greater profit margin, is evidence of the 'payers' pain' theory. People aren't willing to "hurt" friends and relatives but they don't mind causing strangers pain by asking them for the sticker price.

This phenomenon is as common as it is counterproductive. People treat strangers like second class citizens. Yet if you desire friendship, romantic love, children, and a limitless income, strangers are the target audience that exclusively has the means to provide you with life's greatest pleasures. 

You can only expect to receive the best things in life from yourself or from the people you are most paranoid about. Incest, rape, and theft are some of the results when people are afraid of open communication with strangers. "Don't take candy from strangers?" While that's healthy advice for 4-year old children, once you are an adult the only real candy is dispensed by strangers. Strangers aren't dangerous, being frightened of strangers sure is. Perhaps you should treat strangers as if they were Queens and Kings while relentlessly kicking the shins of your family for the morose and stingy dirt bags they are...

Oops, perhaps I shouldn't extrapolate from my own hunchbacked family: dear reader, I was joking! Please don't take what I say too seriously.

In the doomed context of 'paying is pain' and getting money must be fun, a person's income is determined by her willingness to cause another person pain. "No pain, no gain," is a common phrase and an unquestioned belief. For those who think that giving money is predominantly a negative experience and getting money is a positive event, balanced sadomasochism or 'Cubicle S/M', as I refer to it in my book 'How To Better Hate Your Job', becomes a means of making money.

Such individuals cause other people pain by taking their money and they cause themselves pain by working hard on a job they despise, as a justification for the pain they dish out and in exchange for the money they take. People perform a balancing act to level the pain they "give" others and themselves. No wonder there is a limit to that game of equalizing displeasure, no matter how far you are willing to expand this escalation of pain in exchange for money. 

"Sado-Rich and Maso-Poor" was the title that I originally contemplated for this newsletter issue. For all you good saints who would have instantly tossed me into spammer's hell for not being boring enough, I opted for a word combination of less ballistic potency. 

If giving sucks and paying money is painful, the rich must be sadists, no? Public opinion has managed to portray people with abundant incomes and assets as perverts. Those who feel better about themselves for not wanting to join the wrong minority, for badmouthing and persecuting the rich, apparently derive pleasure from perversion too. Poor masochists and rich sadists are flip sides of the same coin, of the same fallacious thought model that money and pain are inseparable twins.

It's time I accuse you of something:

In case you decide to cling to the 'giving money is pain' theory after reading to the bitter end of this letter, I'm afraid you are indeed a pervert because at that point you'll be consciously choosing pain for the fun of it. There'll be no need to continue engaging in a single painful monetary transaction, if you aren't inclined to do so freely. No worries, I'll still love you. What would the world come to without the reliable entertainment through decent vices and perversions?

If you don't enjoy the self-sabotaging connection between money and pain, however, within minutes you will have the freedom to renounce the pain factor and hold onto your fun with money. Sounds too good to be true? Stick around and find out for yourself.

If giving is perceived as a cause of pain, ALL monetary transactions turn into painful events, including the receiving of money because receiving cannot occur as an isolated event.

From the bizarre perspective that parting with money is synonymous with pain, it is indeed understandable why the rich and wealthy are perceived as "evil," because they appear to have no hesitation to cause unimaginable pain levels to anybody and everybody. Except, this thought model is based on the limping IQ of common nonsense.

The majority of the population associates negative thoughts and emotions with money. If a person harbors more negative beliefs about money than positive thoughts, trying to escape that negativity by earning more money is as nutty an attempt as it is futile. Zeroes don't magically turn an awful thing into a source of joy. 

Increasing your income is a fool's errand unless you bring yourself to enjoy money whether it appears in tiny amounts or in huge sums, no matter whether it seems to flow toward you or "away" at a given time. You'd do well to even find pleasure in observing the flow of funds between other people. Those who hate the rich, cut themselves off from the enjoyment of wealth and from seeing it pop up as money and as innocent fun with the material world. "Money stranglers" impoverish the world in multiple ways.

The New Testament's "It is more blessed to give than to receive" (Acts 20:35) holds the key to boundless and more importantly, delectable, wealth. When you discover how to give money with joy, you become aware of the feeling that you induce in the giver when you ask for and then receive her money. Your request for money is an opportunity for the potential giver to experience prosperity and to expand her consciousness toward even greater prosperity. 

When somebody asks you for more money than you currently have or are able and willing to give, they see a greater earning potential in you than you can see yourself. Those who want money from you, are increasing your prosperity consciousness if you are ready for it and if you can listen to that offer without flying off the handle.

Here is the real exchange. Money changes hands in exchange for an increased awareness of earning potential. The average person believes that money changes hands in exchange for products, services, or ideas. That portion is the limited, visible, tip-of-the-iceberg percentage of the equation and of marginal importance. Products and services or even more absurd, hours, are mere excuses for people to ask for money.

Freely accepting other people's money proliferates prosperity and happiness in the world. Do you earnestly believe that the iPhone would have enjoyed such fast and vast success had it been given away for free instead of being first introduced as an $800 item, costing over $300 each month to operate? 'Free' is synonymous with worthless for many people, 'expensive' equals value and is immediately more attractive.

You value potential clients and customers when you ask for high prices. You open doors for them to perceive themselves as more potent than they have considered themselves until you saw, and reminded them of, their greater potential. 

What if giving other people new options to discover their prosperity every time you ask for money were the superior motivation over your desire of receiving money?

Attach meaning to money and it will be more difficult to come by. Hopes, worries, fears, sadness, expectations of happiness, and a host of other meaningful add-ons burden every single financial transaction. Whether such emotional or intellectual projection is of positive or negative nature is irrelevant. Emotion, attached to money, works against the ease of its exchange and acquisition.

I wager, the average person projects significantly more meaning into a $100 bill than Warren Buffett or Mark Zuckerberg. The next $100 million dollars will not alter Richard Branson's (Sir Dick's) life stile by one iota. On some trading days Oracle's Larry Ellison "wins" or "loses" 1-2 billion dollars in the stock market. You think it means much to him and he's losing a minute of sleep over a billion more or less? If Mr. Ellison attached anxiety or the slightest emotional meaning to the sum of $100,000,000 he could neither sleep nor could he concentrate on whatever he desires to do on any given day.

A dollar bill is not money per se. It's more like a representative of money. Just as pixels on your computer screen that show your bank balance "are" not money. Pixels and dollar bills function more or less like name tags. People who see more than ink on paper when they look at a dollar bill, ought to seek professional help and see a doctor but they won't find out how crazy they are until their income level reaches certain dimensions. That's when their old thought models seize to work, when motivation through money and commonly attached expectations make no sense anymore, and when rational thoughts of the 'why' and 'how' begin to look awfully silly. Common sense has no contingency for wealth.

True success is anarchy. Both success and anarchy are equally frightening to most people. 

The occurrence of oodles of money renders rule books useless. For instance, Jeff Bezos did not learn how to be a good book dealer before the success of Amazon.com disrupted, destroyed, and revolutionized an industry within a decade and a half that had steadily developed for over five and a half centuries, since Johannes Gutenberg (1398-1468) invented the printing press, which was a revolutionary act in and of itself.

Between the experience of "rich" and the phenomenon of "wealth," there is an intellectual gap. For those who can understand what it means to get rich, becoming wealthy may appear to be founded on the dispensation of the very causality that is evoked as basis for moderate success. Often individuals do not become wealthy the same way one may get rich. From a certain point on, the trajectories differ and may even look as if they depended on opposing states of consciousness. 

As long as one is stuck in the idea that money has to mean something, one judges others who obviously have moved their income level beyond sums that "make sense." Am I alone with this strange idea? Not at all:

After a certain point, money is meaningless.

It ceases to be the goal. The game is what counts.

Aristotle Onassis (1906-1975)

Here is an exercise that may change your world. Once a day, give a single dollar bill to a person you have never met, to a stranger. 

Requirements: the receiving person must be beyond need in your perspective. If you think s/he may need the money, do NOT give him/her the bill. Give this money exclusively to people who absolutely do not need it. Also, do NOT give this dedicated dollar bill to waiters, for instance, to a valet, or to anybody who is used to receiving tips.

Make sure you do this in safe environments, so you don't get hurt!

Why this exercise? Giving a dollar to a person who does not need it initiates the flow of money outside the ritual of exchange. There is...

a) no apparent reason for this transaction to occur
b) no expectation of receiving value "back" (on the giver's side)
c) no expectation of money (receiving party's side)
d) completely arbitrary timing
e) no obligation to give (exchange of goods, birthday gift, invitation)
f) no obligation to receive (out of politeness, exchange of goods, etc.)
g) a vacuum of behavior patterns and corresponding emotions
h) room for all kinds of surprises on both sides
i) the act of giving and the act of receiving isolated from most complications

Unless people discover the unadulterated joy of giving money to a stranger without hesitation and devoid of the slightest motive of exchange ("What's in it for me?"), they will hardly be able to receive money from strangers free of emotional complications. Don't even expect to hear a 'thank you', a friendly smile, or a nod. 

Give a dollar, expect nothing, and you will discover that the act of giving becomes a reward in pure form.

Sooner or later, you will discover the true nature of giving. It may be accompanied by physical sensations, like goose bumps. You may get a 'high' from doing it and feel elated. Well, some grouchy non-takers may treat you as if you were a thief, even though you were trying to do the opposite by trying to give them money. That, too, is important to observe. 

Those who scream for money the loudest aren't necessarily willing to gracefully receive it when it's offered to them on a silver platter. Their suspicious minds search for the catch while the opportunity evaporates. 

People blabber on about unconditional love all the time. This exercise introduces the experience of unconditional giving and receiving.

If you currently work relatively hard for your money and you desire to triple your income, tripling your efforts to achieve that objective would belong to the realm of self-sabotage. That linear strategy increases the probability of your destruction in the process. Cardiac arrest and well-to-do widows are frequent results of that strategy.

Instead, think about halving your efforts while doubling your and your clientele's fun in order to double your income. 

It's heresy, I know. 

When you give money to a stranger who doesn't need more money, you are creating the situation you are eager to experience in reverse order. Each time you give a dollar to somebody who needs nothing, you are experiencing what other people feel when they give you more money without you being in need. You are training yourself in experiencing the pleasure of giving outside the pitfalls of reason. 

Belief is only marginally superior to disbelief. Please do not believe a word I say or write. My intention is to introduce you first to the experience and then to the confidence that there is unparalleled enjoyment in the act of giving. Get that message into your bones because as an intellectual consideration it's worthless. Only when you physically do it again and again, will you have a chance to discover what I am talking about. Otherwise you'll think I am a nut. In that case, please be aware that you think of Jesus as a nutcase also ("It is more blessed to give than to receive"). Of course you are free to think of me as you wish. Jesus is used to being blamed for everything that goes wrong, anyway.

If and when you allow your giving of money to become a "blessed state," blissful even, and you notice physical and emotional expressions of joy and satisfaction, you won't need any further extrinsic motivation to continue the practice of giving. It'll be too much fun to quit. Further, you'll then know precisely how someone thinks and feels who freely and happily gives you money that you don't need. You will be able to gracefully accept that money because it will be given to you without intensifying another person's pain and without increasing your guilt. On the contrary, by giving an individual a new opportunity to hand you money, you are offering others a chance to experience additional joy.

Why would you be so cruel and limit other people's enjoyment of giving you money?

Your training will sensitize you, so you'll know exactly when any of the crucial ingredients are out of balance or missing. If someone gets upset with you, you know you may have lost touch with your joy of giving that ought to be the foundation of this interesting game. Or, you haven't clarified what this is all about. What's that? What is this about? Fun, yours and theirs. Money and this exercise, all exists for your pleasure.

Glossy magazines continue to regurgitate the age old question whether money makes people happy or not. They refer to the 'getting' of money, naturally. Psychological studies receive grants to find out the truth but actually, it is of no consequence. The conversation is obsolete because you can discover more bliss and happiness in the giving of money, services, ideas, and goods to your fellow human beings than while you concentrate on the acquisition of things. 

Give people anything and you'll experience instant satisfaction. Instant gratification is underrated. Why wait before you give others attention, smiles, warmth, laughter, service, love, kindness, patience, a listening ear, joy, your authentic presence, and yes, a handful of nasty filthy old cash? Just being with an individual can be the most precious gift you could possibly give, especially when that person experiences challenging times. Nothing you need to do, nothing you need to say, if you can just BE there it may very well be the best you have to give in your repertoire.

Frequently, people underestimate their own value and overestimate what they do or their products. If you aren't worth much in your perspective, why would your service be any better? The truth is, some people's self-confidence is so messed up and their value system is so confused that they think the shitty job they deliver (because they hate it) is worth more money than they are worth themselves. Then they wonder why they're being paid poorly. Too bad, schools teach what to think but not how to think.

If you have to keep your giving within reasonable parameters, your income may grow but, as I mentioned, perhaps in moderate ways only. Generosity is always beyond reason. You will never be a generous giver unless and until you are willing to gracefully receive money in amounts that are beyond rational understanding for onlookers. I am quite confident you will be accused of greed if you care to be truly generous, and you'll hardly be loved or win friends by exercising generosity. 

For the purpose of causing exponential growth, I suggest you leave the realm of reason behind: start giving for no reason. Giving what? Your enjoyment, for instance. What exactly do you do when you and everybody around you knows "you are in your element?" Your spouse and your in-laws may react annoyed as hell when you are in 'the zone' and your kids ran out of the room half an hour ago because they saw the tsunami building up. However, the same character trait or even flaw that bores your husband to tears could be an untapped goldmine if it is permitted to see the light of day. Strangers may pay you for odd things you enjoy doing, for abilities, and skills that your so-called loved ones seek to smother in you. 

Now, you don't have to wrap bottles in roadkill and fill them with beer that contains 55% alcohol, so you have an outrageously unique product to offer. You think I am off the rocker? See for yourself at brewdog.com 

If you feel the need to fit in nicely, please pee in a cup, get a job, and do what you despise doing. Since you are receiving this newsletter though, I assume you have opted otherwise. We are swiftly moving into the territory of future issues of the Greed School newsletter but I shall give you a glimpse of it anyway:

Employee consciousness and entrepreneurial consciousness differ. "What do I have to do, so I get paid?" is a typical state of mind for employees. It works, poorly, but the same approach taken by a self-employed person can be devastating. As a temporary fix to bridge financial difficulties, this thought can be helpful and bring relief relatively fast. Sell a couple of items that you no longer need on eBay, for instance, and you'll have some extra money within a week or ten days. The same route pursued long term as a business model is fraught with similar challenges as you'll find on jobs.  

The average self-employed person makes less money than the average employee. The average self-employed individual is still happier than the average employee but nevertheless, it's a myth that self-employment is a guarantee for a lavish income. The potential for self-determined income improvement is inherent but "mo' money" is absolutely not an automatic result of switching from employment to self-employment. 

"What would I have to do, so I make money?" is a losing business proposition because it's focused on getting money and pushing you or your employees toward another threshold of pain. Money-motivated activities may bring in some money while depriving you of everything else you desire. It can be a disastrously limiting approach and the money you may be making this way is bound to slip through your fingers and evaporate like water. 

For example, ask yourself: "What thoroughly enjoyable activity of mine has the potential to make other people's lives easier, richer, deeper, more fun, or more colorful? You may discover a personal asset of yours that can easily be converted to cash in the entire spectrum between weird and wacky on one end and breathtakingly dull and ordinary on the other.

What matters is that both "being" authentically you and "doing" merge, so it's nearly effortless and you lose your sense of time. When what you do is "so you" that you do it anyway whether you get paid or not, you may have a winner. 

Why?

Instant gratification! That's why. You may have to have a little patience to collect money but you will have all the fun you could possibly have from the first minute and you will not stop Friday afternoon at 5 pm. This utilizes the joy of giving as your sheer limitless intrinsic motivational resource. Inventing new products, services, or ideas you can introduce to potential buyers has nothing to do with effort in this case. You'll do it naturally for your own pleasure and entertainment.

The receiving of money becomes the aftermath of your joyful, blessed, giving. The exchange of money is now the icing on top instead of the initial reason to do business or to work.

Money needs to be stripped of meaning, and so do giving and receiving. When you conduct your business affairs playfully--think of a sandlot, of marbles, toys, and friends--there is no room for pain, emotional threats, and exhaustion. 

Connect giving and receiving with effort, and you'll limit what you are willing to give and what you can receive. On the other hand, when giving other people money turns into fun for you, why would you want to limit your income or somebody else's fun? 

"How do I make more money?" is an outdated question. "How do I start a revolution by Saturday?" is a different approach of what you may enjoy to give.

The question, "What do I need to do in order to generate money?" means that the way you live right now is a constant and remarkably successful effort to prevent people from giving you money. Suppression of one's individuality, the belief that a person's variance equals worthlessness, spineless addiction to other people's approval, desire to belong no matter what, obsession of self-punishment and unconscious self-sabotage.....the laundry list of money repelling behavior has no limits, just as its elimination can lead to income without limitations.

Your pleasure does not need to be financed. Instead, your pleasures ought to become resources of your financial success, giving you money on top of the pleasure you've had already. 

Then why ask for money at all?

Why have sex if you don't intend to make babies?

When the 'why' is out the window, your last hesitation of receiving money will be gone and you will be able to take it without connecting it to any reason, emotion, or event. Trust me, you will take it. You will not let it rot or allow for it to collect dust. When its last idea of meaning has dissipated, you will be able to give and take money from a state of utmost innocence and purity. 

Money becomes most precious when its meaning disappeares. A paradox? On first sight perhaps. Think about it for a day, and you'll see different layers of seemingly opposing ideas. When you leave the "meaning of money within your thoughts" behind, you will be able to discover the vast and precious nature of money that exists exclusively in the "space between your thoughts." When "oneness speaks," money is perhaps its easiest language to comprehend. Arguing and fighting over it would be puerile, non?

Indeed, you could be playing other games than the money game. It is at this junction that asking for money becomes a choice and is based on freedom. When money is no longer a necessity, asking for it will no longer be perceived as a threat by the individual you ask for money and the immanent potential of emotional blackmail is eliminated from your negotiations. Extract the meaning, and you diminish perception of potential danger or emotional displeasure that other people connect with your interest in their money. They, too, see that you "could be playing other games" but you are doing it for the fun of it and for them because you chose to play with them. 

Freedom has become the foundation of the game, replacing need and desperation, or the raw violence of ambition.

Egbert

P.S.: Cetero censeo, hourly wages ought to be eliminated. The crude practice of time based compensation insults human intelligence and is embarrassing for a society that considers itself civilized. Check out EndWages.com and on Amazon.com you'll find Paperback and Kindle editions of my book How to Better Hate Your Job. Of course it's also available for the Nook and on iTunes.

For seminars and speaking engagements, please contact me via email.

The next book title on the workbench, Paid to Die: The Linear Cynicism of Time-Based Pay will be available in a couple of months, hopefully. You can pre-order your copy through EndWages.com.

I enjoy stand-up because it has the biggest reward: instant gratification. You can hear the people laughing.

Wanda Sykes

Instant gratification is not soon enough.

Meryl Streep

Instant gratification takes too long. 

Carrie Fisher

I need instant gratification.

Barbra Streisand

Solution Pollution

What a distressing contrast there is between the radiant intelligence
of the child and the feeble mentality of the average adult.

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) 

Hourly wages are obsolete.

Stupefied blank stares are the immediate result when I blurt out this seemingly preposterous idea. People's eyes glaze over and they start yawning feverishly as if their lives depended on it. Others attack me like cornered rats before I can finish another sentence. 

That's all? It's either apathy or the absurd defense of a wretched status quo?

Traditionally, employees hate their jobs--if they didn't, one would have to question their sanity or the maturity of their personal development--but they hate it even more when the proclaimed cause of their hatred gets outsourced and other, poorer, people abroad gain the privilege of hating the same jobs for less. Like a little girl who hates the dark chocolate uncle John gave her but can't bring herself to give this nasty stuff away to her siblings, the average employee craves authoritarian insults and judges everybody as selfish who threatens to deprive him of his daily dosage of self-loathing.

Apparently, American tinkerers and freedom fighters of yore have become tired of freedom, too bored and annoyed to care for their own curiosity and creativity, or they act outright frightened of themselves when freedom is evoked as a practical application and not just as a noncommittal philosophical thought.

According to the Cato Institute, the Canadian Fraser Institute, and more than 70 think tanks around the world--measuring economic freedom--America's position fell from No. 2 in 2000 to No. 19 in 2011, behind the United Arab Emirates, Mauritius, and Bahrain. Good ol' France is worse still (No. 40) and so is Mother Russia (No. 101), if that soothes your pain somewhat but if you think none of this has any influence on your life, think again:

"Interestingly, the average income of the poorest 10% in the most economically free nations is more than twice the overall income in the least free nations. Life expectancy is 79.5 years in the top quartile compared to 61.6 years in the bottom quartile, and political and civil liberties are considerably higher in economically free nations than in unfree nations." (source: http://www.cato.org/economic-freedom-world)

In case you don't care about society's economic freedom, it means that the fate of the poor is not much of an issue for you either, or life itself. People's lives in unfree countries are on average nearly 18 years shorter, over 22%, than in places that consider economic freedom a value worth pursuing. 

Unless they can live and thrive in freedom, people rather die.

Political representatives and the media, neutered and spayed as they present themselves, have distracted us with artificial excitement about the minimum wage debate ad nauseam. People enjoy being agitated over the potential difference of a dollar or two, even though it affects only half a percent of the population. Half the U.S. workforce depends directly on time-based pay. More or less indirectly, society as a whole has to live with the consequences. But that's worth a mere yawn.

Hourly wages are equally pesky for employers and employees. Methods of time-based pay haven't been seriously questioned in the last 100 years. Ben Franklin's famous quote "Time is Money" has survived over 200 years now. Are these ideas still true? Are we stuck in false reverence toward worn-out cliches that prove inadequate for our times? If you desire a prosperous economy, should you waste your life waiting until the last politician, not capable of unearthing a single original thought, evolves past the parroting of "jobs, jobs, jobs?"

Wage jobs are the dumbest possible answer for questions people are too lethargic to ask: 

What's the easiest way for society to thrive, economically and otherwise? How could the greatest number of people raise their quality of life? Can we discover methods that foster productivity and increase incomes/profits for both employees and employers? Last but not least, what would it take to make a flourishing economy more enjoyable--dare I say 'fun'?--for all its living parts? 

Do you personally believe it is high time to grow out of this senile, dimly ailing vegetable of a dreckonomy with joy and enthusiasm?

"What is your business in this?" you ask me? What am I peddling? What are my answers that I'd part with for a small LARGE fee? I categorically refuse to give you any answers. I hardly know what's good for me. Who am I to tell you what's best for you?

I am initiating a hopefully growing debate between you and the people you talk with. I am here to instigate a revolution that spreads the taste of entrepreneurial freedom throughout society. You see, employees spend their money in a so-called capitalist environment. But they earn their money in authoritarian environments. What if we could "corrupt" all employees into becoming capitalists too? Would half the country still despise the idea of profits as much as they pretend to do now? Could anybody afford to hate the rich while aspiring to become one of them?

I know, the term 'capitalism' is utterly outmoded and the generation of millennials and Bitcoin miners is bypassing crotchety old capitalists in the fast lane. Perhaps it is appropriate to toss the entire lot of these musty cold war terms into the dusty coffers of history. It doesn't take capital per se to succeed in non-linear monetary environments. A 17-year old kid can write code for a new smartphone app and strike it rich overnight. Getting paid for time? Good Lord! That idea is so 20th century and truly belongs in Grandma's attic! 

If I had perfect answers I would ask you to pay me royally, so I don't reveal them to you. 

I am serious. One of the problems we are facing is that the best looking answers turn out to be the worst foundations for the development of individual creativity. Solution Pollution is how I call that. The addiction to other people's answers suppresses what society is most deprived of: decentralized, individual answers. Jobs are coffins of individuality. The mind numbing drudgery of hated, poorly paid jobs prevents roughly 150 - 200 million people from inventing their own individual, productive, and profitable answers every day anew.

The greatest enemy of freedom is a perfect world. Your freedom of expressing yourself beats any seemingly perfect solution out there. What do you want to do? Where do you want to go? How could anybody besides you come up with remotely tolerable answers?!

It's a paradox: there are too many answers out there, and yet not nearly enough as long as yours are missing. In upcoming newsletter issues I shall continue to ask questions, preferably uncomfortable ones of course.

Time-based pay compensates people for increments of elapsed time. Unless an employee is immortal, she receives dollars as indemnification for inching an hour closer to her death. Does the amount matter? What's the last hour preceding a heart attack worth: $8.25, $10.10, $19.50, minimum wage?

Relate money to life time and all numbers are grave insults.

My idea of abolishing hourly wage jobs is weird? No other human being in the history of the world before you or in the future can possibly have the same thumb prints as you but when it comes to sophisticated matters as a person's life, any cookie cutter solution is good enough to rid ourselves of the least desirable group of people: the unemployed. What moron would believe that jobs are ideal, healthy, and productive environments for tens of millions of individuals? The idea that intelligent people will be satisfied if you give them money in exchange for the most precious commodity they have, time, is idiotic.

Time-based pay requires authoritarian regimes. Hourly employees are monitored by their employers. They are told what to do, what to say, what to wear, how to groom themselves, and what not to say or do. Somebody looks over their shoulders, supervises their computer use, and controls the clock. Naturally, updating your Facebook page is frowned upon during paid work hours. That is considered time theft.

25 years ago, the same employers cheered when authoritarian regimes around the late Soviet Union crumbled. Can capitalism (or what's left of it) and free markets (I'm afraid we'll never see them) live and unfold freely without authoritarian rule and suppression? Do you not think it is odd and absurd that we seem to base freedom and economic success on authoritarian practices?

Supervising--or should I say 'policing'?--employees is costly for employers, and the supervisors need supervision as well. Authoritarianism is a vicious cycle, a dear old circulus vitiosos, an expensive escalation of undesirable causes and effects. Freedom? Not a trace.

If a 10-year old girl can open a lemonade stand in her parents' driveway and make money 10 minutes later, what would stop adult employees from having one or more income sources supplementing their jobs? I assure you it would make society more playful and interesting. Nevertheless, let's assume not a single employee is willing or able to engage in such an endeavor.

What would happen if employers paid their workers for the wholesale market value of their productive output? Why would they care what their employees do on their computers? Would there really be a problem if your employee talked to her boyfriend on the phone for two hours each day, yet her sufficiency surpasses anybody's who mopes around for eight hours? Why would employers care if employees even show up? As long as employees are productive, as long as they deliver agreed upon quantity and quality, why waste time and money on a corporate police state? And if your employee goofs off for a day but no deadline needs to be met, what business of yours would that be as an employer?

When I first introduce the idea of abolishing wages, employers are usually afraid I may be an evil Marxist promoting new bloodletting of the poor rich. Employees are jealously defending their misery, as if I planned to deprive them of their most sacred possession, a life spent in pain and despondency. Well, I do but employees will retain their freedom of choice. They will always be free to be as unfree as they desire. It's crazy, the more dysfunctional things are, the more people flock to them. Like family.

Professional work might morph into something terribly relaxing. People may actually enjoy themselves, each other, and God forbid, lose interest in biting the hands that feed them.

Not all answers will be found immediately and easily. So what? Trial, error, and mistakes are wonderful gifts as we have discovered meanwhile. Perhaps it will be more rewarding not to know every pertinent detail at once. "When the Gods wish to punish us, they answer our prayers," said Oscar Wilde.

Please join me for this adventure.

In future issues, we'll dig deeper into the roots of the status quo: why do people choose employment, a career, while others would not never consider working for somebody else? What determines an individual's choices and when? Why freedom can never be liked or trusted. What corporate cannibalism is all about, or the arrogance of meaning, and ritual murder of the individual. Why is our love of freedom marred? What could be greater than the Greater Good? If it is possible to end exchange and the causal model...

The string of questions that evolves from here is sheer endless and so is the fun that can be had for you and me while introducing this admittedly dicey subject to the public.

A grand day to you,

Egbert

P.S.: Meanwhile, check out EndWages.com and on Amazon.com you'll find Paperback and Kindle editions of my book How to Better Hate Your Job. Of course it's also available for the Nook and on iTunes.

The next book title on the workbench, Paid to Die: The Linear Cynicism of Time-Based Pay will be available in a couple of months, hopefully. You can pre-order your copy on EndWages.com.

The liberty of the individual is no gift of civilization.
It was greatest before there was any civilization.

Sigmund Freud

I am aware that Dr. Freud was most likely Mr. Fraud to a considerable degree. His questionable character traits and practices, however, do not render all of his thoughts and ideas worthless. As a German proverb says, "Even a blind chicken finds a kernel of corn once in a while." Austrian psychiatrists aren't exempt from eternal truths.