Intelligence is the ultimate source of wealth. You can provide tremendous value to others by cultivating your own creative self-expression, thereby generating all the income you desire. Instead of trying to get money, focus your efforts on creating and delivering value to others, and plenty of resources will flow back to you in return. True wealth comes from within.
By making intelligent choices, you should be able to increase your capacity to provide social value, thereby increasing your income. This requires that you optimize for long-term value creation instead of short-term profit. Bypass the low-hanging fruit and go after the big opportunities, the ones that inspire and challenge you to grow.
If you feel that you must behave inauthentically in order to earn income, you’re getting off track. Don’t dehumanize yourself and others by pretending to be something you’re not. If you express yourself creatively and genuinely, you’ll be able to provide value for others and meet your needs at the same time.
Every week I (Steve Pavlina) receive offers (usually from other entrepreneurs) that could potentially make me a lot of money, but that would require me to do something that isn’t aligned with truth, love, and power. For example, I could boost my monthly income by thousands of extra dollars if I recommended products that I know deep down won’t help anyone. The product promoters even provide their own endorsement letters, so all I have to do is slap my name on them and send them off. I always decline such offers without a second thought. Unfortunately, there are many people in the business world who assume that the whole point of being in business is to make as much money as possible. That’s a very misguided philosophy. The point of business is to create and deliver value for the benefit of all, not to extract it at someone else’s expense.
What about tithing? Is it wise to donate a percentage of your income to charity? I’ve been making monthly charitable contributions for years, but it isn’t a significant portion of my income, and I don’t consider it a big deal. If there was a charity doing something I thought was so important that I should donate a substantial amount of my own money to it, I’d be doing that work myself. Right now, I can see that my best outlet for contribution is through my own business as opposed to paying a charity to perform such work on my behalf. But I still donate some money where I feel it can be put to good use in a way that’s different from what I’m already doing.
When you get your financial house in good order, you’ll have excess capacity to take on projects that aren’t motivated by profit. My Website hosts popular discussion forums that attract thousands of participants from around the world. I charge nothing to access them, even though it costs me time and money to maintain them. From a purely financial standpoint, the forums are a flop; however, they provide a valuable public service, and participants often tell me how much the forums have helped them. I’m happy to continue providing this service, and even though it isn’t much of an income generator, I consider it a success because it contributes to the business purpose of helping people grow.
If you give more value than you receive while ensuring you’re being treated fairly and not falling into a pattern of self-sacrifice, the excess value you provide will overflow into public goodwill. Superior service gets noticed because it’s so rare. People will gladly recommend you to their family, friends, and co-workers, thereby bringing you a steady stream of new opportunities. This is true whether you’re self-employed or you work for someone else.
It’s intelligent to give more than you receive, since this is precisely what generates growth. This is how I built up my Website traffic from scratch. I produced and gave away the equivalent of 20 books worth of original content without charging a dime for it. All of that value generated massive referrals. The content was certainly good enough that I could have charged money for it, but I deliberately decided to overload the goodwill side in order to maximize the growth rate. There’s no reason you can’t use a similar strategy yourself. Push harder on the service side, and you’ll soon find people lining up to pay you.
* Source: Personal Development for Smart People by Steve Pavlina