This post is about me and my journey to making my living doing what I love and the part that I hope blogging is playing in this. I occasionally do one of these posts to let readers know what is happening with me. We will resume normal service (providing useful information about self-development) with the next post.
My quest for the last couple of decades has been to make my living doing what I love. For me this quest is a spiritual one – it involves meaning and the meaning of my life; which is what I think spirituality is about. There have been many twists and turns on the journey – involving massage, acupuncture, psychotherapy and, finally, blogging.
Blogging suits me because (the way I do it anyway) it is about providing information in a way that is accessible and on a topic that is useful to people – that can potentially change their lives for the better. If I can earn my income by improving people’s lives – and in the area that I care about – this is a good recipe for happiness for me.
The latest twist in the path came over the weekend when I listened to a podcast by Suzanne Falter-Barns and Jeffrey van Dyk, part of their Spiritual Marketing Telesummit. To explain what this meant to me I need to give a little background.
Twenty-five years ago I discovered Perls, Hefferline and Goodman’s Gestalt Therapy. I read it and worked through the exercises and it changed my life. The basic framework has stayed with me since – though I have added and modified it, if anything it has become a bigger part of me over the years. One of the remarkable insights of gestalt therapy into psychotherapy is ‘to go with the resistance’: instead of fighting it, embrace the part of you that is resisting something. The resistance is where the energy is – tap into that energy and change is happening.
On the podcast Jeffrey van Dyk was talking about resistance and the role it plays in developing a business. He was talking about embracing the resistance. His way of putting it went straight to my heart, “Every part of you is wanting to serve you.” He also was talking about, which is also an insight from psychotherapy, that the resistance is a way of guarding ourselves. His way of putting it was, “What is the core wound?” For me it is around acceptance – my early life decision was, “I am unacceptable because I’m incompetent”.
So my resistance(s) serve to guard my acceptance of myself. I need to be authentic to be acceptable to myself. My resistances to various kinds of marketing are about being acceptable as an honest and non-manipulative person who wants to be considerate of others. (Having pop-ups that dominate the screen as soon as someone lands on my blog are NOT considerate of my readers in my opinion.)
All of which was, in one sense, no news. I knew gestalt theory, I knew about going with the resistance, I knew that marketing and dealing with the external world were part of my self-development, part of my spiritual journey. And yet it was news to me – it went straight to my heart. As a wise man once said,
D’Oh! – Homer Simpson.
This is the reason for me writing this post now. And it has lead me to thinking about what I am doing with this blog. I am very happy with the basic direction and ideas but a few things have clarified.
Pricing
My value is not for sale (and neither is yours). If people need to make a lot of money to improve their self-esteem then I hope they make lots – but money just doesn’t do that for me. My self-esteem is affected by other things.
I think charging what the market will bear is a way to bring about poverty, so I don’t want to do things that way. My pricing will be what I’m comfortable with rather than set by the market or ‘competitors’.
Health for wealth is immoral and I need to make an income. For those with little money I provide free stuff on this blog and in my newsletter. I want to have a number of worthwhile products covering different price points. I hope soon to have a very simple product that will be very low priced (perhaps under $5.00). This will be mostly a way for people to check me out and a marketing piece. I want to then produce stuff at various prices from there.
Form
I’m a word person. When I understand something, the understanding comes as a phrase. I think my products will mostly be reports and ebooks. I will provide audio’s of them, as I get used to the technology, for those who prefer that way of learning. I don’t like video much – it is harder to scan, more time consuming and chews through bandwidth at an extraordinary rate (in Australia, where I am our internet accounts usually have limited bandwidth). I don’t think I have ever seen a video that couldn’t have been put into text, and been more accessible. For now I am sticking with text.
I want to provide for each product a ‘sample’ where people can do one of the exercises or in some other way get a taste of the product they would be buying.
Topics Coming Up
I think I am nearly at the end of my Rough Guide to Self-Development (though I may get another idea or two). I have two ideas for future topics – the relationship of authenticity to various systems of self-development and authenticity in little things – the details of daily life.
If you have ideas on what topics you would like to see on this blog, or want to say anything else about this post, please let me know in the comments.
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Good stuff, Evan… I wish you well on your journey. The resistance can be difficult to deal with. For me, it has always come up because I don’t want to be like “them” – the unscrupulous charlatans out there who prey on peoples hopes and fears in order to make a buck.
But I’m not like them, and neither are you. We have value to offer, and there’s nothing wrong with asking for value in return.
Thanks Lyman wishing you well on your journey too.
Hi Evan — I liked what you said about blogging and marketing being an integral part of your journey — I definitely feel the same way about what I’ve been up to. It’s been wonderful to let go of the notion that I need to “have it all figured out” or finish my journey before I put out something for public consumption. The journey is not finishable at any rate.
Hi Chris – are you an introvert too? For me business is very starkly about dealing with the external world and my presence in it. Like you I have found it liberating to put stuff out knowing that I don’t have to have it all figured out – that we can be in dialogue and learn as we go. Thanks for your comment, I’ll be interested to watch for the next step on your journey.