I have been facing this point 3 times in my physical reality in the last 2 months as one of my self created limitations and it has been bothering me extensively.
The point is when I am asked to give a price to a service that I do, be it teaching or massages or applying for a job (which I have one such interview to do tomorrow as I am time looping my points closer to each other until I stand up and correct myself, good planning, you can't keep missing a point if it keeps happening with shorter and shorter space/time in between, there is just so much time one can play dumb)
So tomorrow I face, yet again , the point of having to Name My Price.
As I wrote yesterday, something has to do with the belief that Good people do things For Free, as I wrote prostitution came up as a picture, yes prostitute do not do "things" for free for example and therefore they are BAD (?), but nobody is doing anything for Free at the moment, we just can't, because our lives and survival are tied into this Enslaving Money System and not yet into an Equal Money System, so many times we are left with the choices between want to be 'Good' or want to be Alive? And how do we define 'Good' ? Free=Good ? Cheap = Good?
Another point is that I dislike asking for Money, it seems gross, Money Talk is just not elegant, when one names his/her price their 'Life is read' because I judge others by their Greed and so I am Judged by my greed, which means I always undervalue myself to not be judged as 'greedy' as I fear this judgement and the opinion of others toward me as 'that greedy woman', which could be as well why I played the 'Generous character' in opposition to my fear of my own Greed.
The downside to this Character is that due to the Fear of the Judgement of myself as greedy coupled with the desire to be 'Good", I never asked what I really want, today I got a slap in the face because of that, as my neighbors have been coming to me for massages that I gave for free (so they will see me as "Good') I had then troubles at where do I draw the line, B. Once old me to not sell myself cheap as that is Consumerism, I have sold myself cheap all my life -just to then later resent it and the ones who had not sold themselves as cheap as me-, so today I thought I gave them 5 massages, by now they can see if they benefit or not, I talked to my mum about it and justified myself by saying I have no clue about massages prices in Italy, which is not true because I went for a massage that I had no benefit from and was charged 50 euro - the Asian lady told me it was a special price as she normally charges 75 and sometimes 100-, but having lived a long time in Asia I was not impressed and my body neither, that's when I saw I had more knowledge than her and could actually give effective massages myself especially if this was the best standard available here at the moment.
So I started by giving 3 massages for free to my building caretaker and then his neck was fixed and he did not need to come anymore, I told him my price was 50 but I would do 40 for him and his friends, which again is the usual 'please like me attitude", instead of standing by my decision that what I give is of value because people do feel better than with treatments they have paid thousands of euro for. So he sent me a friend that became a regular, until I told him I am not looking for long term customers, I want people who have a problem get some support and then take back the responsibility of their health, and so he did, and I lost a client. I had mixed feelings about this, as on one side I felt utterly stupid, come on, look at the world system, you give them treatments that fix them, what's wrong with you, why not just do what every body does, tell them they need more, regular massages, one side of me was glad, good Ele, don't be like the world system, they are Evil, you can do better than that.
Back to my neighbours, today I finally got to the Money point, so I had to give them a long story that went 'I paid 50, I charged others 40, give me 30', my mum had called today the health services to know how much they charge, they charge 38 euro if you go to the hospital and 58 euro for private sessions, in my mind 30 was a good compromise. Again the point that I price myself by comparison to others and not by what I see is the worth of the service I give, I live by market rules, competing in my mind to be cheaper and so more convenient than others because for years I have trained myself to see Money Worth/Value get the most/best by paying the least, which made me the perfect client for Outlets.
My lady neighbor looked at me in surprise, my first thought was 'I asked too much', instead she said 'NO Ele, this doesn't seem right to me, it's too little" so I said "alright let's do 35 and if you do a series of massages I can offer 30'.
When she left I saw this point again, really what is it with me and not wanting to ask what I decide is the right compensation for the work I do that I have to be told by a retired pensioner, against her interest, that I'm off my rocker if she felt guilty about it, why do I feel the need to 'compromise' when it comes to Money, am I buying other people's opinion of me as a 'Good Person' with the Money I don't make because I don't ask for it? This pattern has moved all the way throughout my life, at my first job when I asked how much I wanted to make my boss was shocked, it took me 3 years to understand he was shocked because I asked half of what he was willing to give and to get what I should have asked when I had my interview, it took me 3 years as well to reach the max of my resentment as I seem to have delegated the responsibility of my survival to others, hoping that they will do what is best for me instead of what is best for them, even when my first boss told me this clearly, he said 'you watch out for You, I have to watch out for the company, our interests are clashing so why do you expect me to look after your interests and put them before mine?" and wasn't this a logical question? But I never stopped, I did it again and again, had a few break through in Hong Kong until I left because I was paid half of what the guy who came after me was paid, doing double the work, I left even when they told me "we'll give you double", because by that time I was too busy being uppity about it because they 'should have given me what I didn't ask as a recognition of my hard work' and not because they feared me leaving.
Is this how we women are creating the gender Wage gap as we don't want to be seen as Greedy as Men and so de facto, we walk away from our chances for an Equal retribution in shame of asking for it ? What is this shame about?
And here 5 years later back in Italy, I am at it again, back into the self defeating patterns of selling myself cheap while buying the 'I'm Good Label' for myself for Half my freaking wage? Time to STOP
Will investigate this pattern in depth tomorrow within Self Forgiveness and Self Commitments.
really cool point, fascinating to see how points are intertwined.
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