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How do you set the price of your product or program? Or help. Or work. That was the question yesterday in my coaching program.
I know you are probably not a product creator, or a coach. But yet you do have a product or a program… if you work for a salary, if you have friends, a spouse, children.
No matter where you are in life, no matter what you do, money comes to you from other people… or love… or support.
The question here is: what are they paying for? What are they reciprocating?
Depending on your about-me score, you’ll have a different answer…
…and depending on your answer is your happiness.
Really.
The about-me score measures to what degree you, your interest, your ego, your pride, your self-protection occupies your cone of vision when you go about doing your thing in the world.
If it is high, you will see everything as personal… and of course you can’t be happy… because nothing really is about you, nothing is really personal.
Even if I came around and told you what I think about you, it would be more about me than about you… after all I can only see me, my reflection in everything… just like you.
To the degree I can see you, is the same number as what MY about-me allows me to see.
That unfortunately high about-me score won’t allow me to see the world, see beauty, even learn the lesson, or even feel attraction, a future… I’ll just see me… everywhere.
I have a few examples of high about-me score ‘horror stories’, and one where the about-me score dropped, and a miracle took over.
Let’s go:
I was on a group coaching call where I am a client.
The dude has one hour every Thursday, and it is clear that he considers his job talking. The crowd, seventy odd people in the coaching group, listens attentively, takes notes, and does absolutely nothing with all that teaching.
Yesterday I raised my hand and asked a question, which he didn’t answer, didn’t even listen to the whole question.
He said something about pricing, and that people pay for his value.
I dared to differ. I suggested that people pay for their own results that become possible, not for his value, not even the value of the information he gives.
He, the coach, lives a misguided life. His about-me score is 70%, and that barely allows him a glimpse to see that there are people in this group, and they are doing literally nothing with what he says, other than listen to it. No value gets created. No value unless someone uses what the dude says and does something good with it… (I did, by the way. I created an entire coaching program of my own from it… but it is a value due to what i did with what he said)
If you live like what people pay reflects your value, and people don’t buy… you set yourself up for misery. You won’t look if the ‘client’, friend, spouse can even use what you do or say… Or like another example…
… the guy who can’t get started.
This client has something valuable to offer, and there are plenty of potential clients. He can teach them how to be colorful, engaging, entertaining, and fun, even if today they are wooden in front of the camera, overly serious, and sound like one of those drones… colorless, hard to pay attention to, hard to appreciate what they say.
Lots of people have good knowledge, but no personality… would you agree?
So this client of mine could shoot fish in a barrel and make out like a bandit.
But he isn’t even willing to start. Why? Because it is all about him. His about-me score is also 70%. He is overly concerned with what he has to do, instead of being generous and be concerned what help people need so they could have their dream with his help.
Ugh.
And the third example is something out of a dream.
This client used to have her about-me score alternate between 70% and 91%.
She was trying to please everyone while she trusted no one. Not me either…
Then something clicked, and she asked for her predatory genes to be adjusted.
Her about-me score dropped to 10%. She became available to pursue her new business… if fact she is experiencing an attraction: she is pulled to do what there is to do.
She experiences learning now as blissful, even if it comes as the result of a mistake she made.
I haven’t asked permission to share her email… she expresses it better than my clumsy words… Quite poetic.
So the question comes up: why the predatory genes kept her being concerned with herself, against herself?
It’s very interesting, isn’t it?
It is the same for everyone…
The predatory genes, as a construct, create a triangle that sits on its side… solid, and unmovable. The higher the number the more unmovable the forceful, insistent, self-concern of the triangle.
You can call it ego if you want… I have come to call it self-concern. I measure if you can let go of it, let go of your self-concern… meaning: can a better future, happiness, fulfillment be strong enough to move that triangle off dead center?
Can you become more interested in letting the human spirit fly than protecting yourself?
For the guy who could teach others to be entertaining, the main self-protecting rule is: I don’t want to do what I have to do to get what I want… and of course he won’t.
For the woman in the last example the original self-protecting rule was: I need to protect myself…
And protecting herself was a full-time job… didn’t leave any time or attention for fun, love, growth…
But now that the triangle is not as heavy, given that the predatory genes got adjusted, she can still protect herself… but can move, have fun, learn… her life can start moving.
She can take her attention off herself, and can design a life for herself that is worth living.
And that is what we are going to do tomorrow on the Saturday webinar workshop.
Design a life that is worth living. A life that is enough.
A new context inside which you can have your cake and eat it: you can protect yourself, and still have energy to go full out to carve out a life that is worth living… for you.
The workshop is $40. It’s at 2 pm New York time. It’s online (of course). And it is all about you, what you are going to do with it: no teaching, just formulating… the value is not what I say, the value is what you create.
It can be worth $40, or $400,000… $4,000,000
My hunch is it will be worth that big number for the woman who came alive and now is able to move her life.
The value is really what you are able to make of it.
The dude who could teach you to be entertaining could make that be worth that much too… The question is: will he be able to get of dead center… ever?
Unless you want to live FOR something other than self-protection, your life is flat… like coke that was left open. Ugh. No bubbles.
Get help to create your purposeWhen that breath-stopping self-concern lets go, you have what you need, you may even have more to give to what you want, to even share with others.
And that is the soul correction of the 2.
PPS: Listen to this expression, this phrase: ‘choosing what’s mine to do each moment.‘ Do you see how much clarity it gives you… provided that you don’t see ONLY concerning yourself with yourself as what is yours to do… 🙁
PPPS: the full text of the mother/daughter story:
I overheard a mother and daughter in their last moments together. They had announced her plane’s departure and standing near the door, she said to her daughter, ‘I love you, I wish you enough.’
She said, ‘Mom, our life together has been more than enough. Your love is all I ever needed. I wish you enough, too, Mom.’
They kissed good-bye and she left.
She walked over toward the window where I was seated. Standing there I could see she wanted and needed to cry. I tried not to intrude on his privacy, but she welcomed me in by asking, ‘Did you ever say good-bye to someone knowing it would be forever?’ ‘
Yes, I have,’ I replied. ‘Forgive me for asking, but why is this a forever good-bye?’ I asked.
‘I am old and she lives much too far away. I have challenges ahead and the reality is, her next trip back will be for my funeral, ‘ she said.
‘When you were saying good-bye I heard you say, ‘I wish you enough.’ May I ask what that means?’ She began to smile. ‘That’s a wish that has been handed down from other generations. My parents used to say it to everyone.’
She paused for a moment and looking up as if trying to remember it in detail, she smiled even more. ‘When we said ‘I wish you enough,’ we were wanting the other person to have a life filled with enough good things to sustain them,’ she continued and then turning toward me she shared the following as if she were reciting it from memory.
I wish you enough sun to keep your attitude bright.
I wish you enough rain to appreciate the sun more.
I wish you enough happiness to keep your spirit alive.
I wish you enough pain so that the smallest joys in life appear much bigger.
I wish you enough gain to satisfy your wanting.
I wish you enough loss to appreciate all that you possess.
I wish enough Hellos to get you through the final ‘Good-bye’
