When I graduated from college about ten years ago, I got a job in my specialty. They paid a little, but I did not want much. Of course, on the one hand I wanted. On the other hand, something held me back. I felt an inexplicable shame at the thought of asking for a pay raise. It seemed to me that the very expression of the desire to receive more was already casting a dark spot on me, which then could not be washed away. That this demonstrates to others my unclean thoughts. And I also thought that there was some kindness in the work for a small salary.
Years later, of course, I overcame this prejudice. This belief is extremely destructive to the financial situation of my family.
But I constantly see that many people around still believe in some kind of small earnings. Basically, these are young people, yesterday's graduates, but it happens in different ways.
The initial premise of books on motivation and business is that each person a priori wants to earn a lot. Many speak about the fear of poverty, but few speak about the fear of decent wages.
In the hearts of many people reigns diabolical split: on the one hand, they want to get decent compensation for their work, on the other hand, they are ashamed to achieve it.
And it is this, and not at all the lack of ability, talent and luck that very often hinders the financial development of a person.
In this article I will tell:
- Why are we afraid to earn a lot?
- Why in the work for a little money there is nothing noble?
- Why not wait for success to come to you?
- And why do we no longer need to choose between working for the good of the idea and working for money?
I will help you overcome this fear and start doing what you love, get a decent monetary return.
In the service of "Mammon"
I remember one of my first job interviews. My potential future boss at one of the stages asked me a question:
"And what do you want from life?"
I didn’t have the experience of interviewing then, so I hesitated and answered something unintelligible.
She answered for me:
"Well, probably, you want to earn more," serve mammon "
The general tone of this phrase, as well as a reference to the biblical derogatory attitude towards wealth (“serving mammon” means experiencing an unhealthy attachment to wealth) gave such contempt that I was confused again.
And instead of answering: “I’m settling in the office, where people earn money and build a career, not in a monastery, actually,” I again muttered something unintelligible.
Then I did not have that arrogance and self-confidence, which drowned me on some interviews, but they helped out on others.
Then they called me from this company. I still had an interview. But I was offered such a ridiculous salary that even I, a yesterday's student with small requests, without thinking twice, refused.
Thus, he must have upset his boss by the fact that even if an inexperienced but not stupid graduate of a good university is sent to "serve mammon," instead of serving ...
To whom? Or what?
In the circle of hypocrisy
And this is a really important question, friends, which exposes all the contradictions and all the hypocrisy of such a hypocritical and contemptuous attitude towards money.
After all, it is not built on the choice between the pious life in a monastery with the rejection of all material wealth and vicious bathing in luxury.
One way or another, a person will have to travel to work every day as well as everyone. Tired out as well as everyone. Participate in corporate feuds and intrigues as well as everyone.
Only he will do it for less money.
He is to provide and feed his family as well as everyone. Think about the future of their children as well as everyone.
Only the possibilities he has for this will be less.
And what is so noble about it? After all, a person is already somehow spinning in this system, no matter how he himself opposes it to her. He is not Neo, who broke free from the networks of the consumer society. He flounders in the same society, just below the "food chain" and explains this position with noble aspirations.
I was very close to a vivid manifestation of this duality when I was in India, in Goa and in other states, where whole masses of my compatriots are fleeing away from the voracious and cynical corporate culture, from obsession with material success and “consumption”.
Many of them are really good. But others are splitting their foreheads about those things that they ran from! And sometimes these things get a more cynical and pitiful manifestation than at home.
I have seen how much people want to stay in India and how they are looking for any ways to make money. I repeat that now I am not talking about everyone: someone is doing really useful work.
But there are people who start selling drugs.
There are those who rent houses for pennies from local residents, and then, secretly from the owners, gives Russian tourists three times as much.
There are those who open "yoga schools" or all sorts of dubious enlightenment centers (for example, all sorts of sex practices from pseudo-gurus) without paying their employees any salary, offering them to work for housing and food.
And in this society there are constantly frauds, "dynamo" and "kidalovo", which you can constantly find out on thematic forums.
This is not an ethical socially oriented business. But such a state of affairs does not at all prevent the organizers of these projects from folding their hands in a “namaste”, to smile sweetly all over their face, to wear beads and long hair, and to talk about good and “light energies”.
I just want to say that the desire to break free from the shackles of a money machine can sometimes lead to the fact that a person is even more deeply stuck in the gears of this hateful mechanism.
But why do many people think that there is something noble in this? How do we let ourselves be fooled?
How do we let ourselves be fooled?
What was the reason for my shame when I, at the beginning of my career, was afraid to ask for an increase in salary or to demand a more decent salary at the interview?
It seemed to me that if I voiced my immediate needs, which I had to satisfy, I would automatically discredit the purity of my motivation, demonstrating that I was not interested in anything but money.
I was really interested in working. I was genuinely interested in the success of the company in which I am working. It was important for me to see the result of my work in general.
But I was afraid that these "pure thoughts" of mine would not be seen if I started talking about money. Decide that I came to "serve the mammon" with my own tangible material interest, and not work for the sake of my own development and the development of the company.
(And then I did not have my own home, despite the fact that I was born and raised in Moscow, I had to pay for a rented apartment.)
And what is the catch here? What kind of trick did I get along with many other modern workers?
Imaginary antagonism
I call this trick "illusory antagonism" or "imaginary opposition." The trick is that two things that do not exclude each other, and one does not contradict one another, are shown as contradictory and mutually exclusive things.
For example, "work for an idea" and "work for money."
These things do not necessarily exclude each other initially. But many of us believe that if we work in pursuit of a monetary interest, this automatically makes us morally disinterested in our work.
Or, for example, oppose such concepts: "creative work" and "high-paying work."
Recently, a person close to me attended a training session for which the employer sent him. At the training, they said something like: "here [in this industry] you do not earn much, here people are engaged in creative work, and if you want to earn a lot, then graduate from the Higher School of Economics [good metropolitan university] and work in finance."
I can not say that this statement is devoid of truth. But what I don’t like about him is the imaginary opposition of a creative person and a successful person.
You can paraphrase it like this: “You want to earn a lot - learn a boring, uninteresting specialty, wear a tight starched collar and go to work in the bank from bell to bell. Well, here you’re real work [too, really, from bell to bell], not like have these in the bank! "
And what if I tell you that it is not necessary to choose?
For me it is clear that you can engage in creative and interesting work and have a decent income. One another does not necessarily exclude.
All antagonism, all contradictions are simply imposed on us. Moreover, they are imposed by those who have everything in order with money. The owners of companies that develop the strategy of the company, the personnel department that forms the system of motivation, the board of directors. Sometimes this is done directly. Sometimes indirectly. Sometimes we just need to push in this direction, and we ourselves will deduce for ourselves this illusion of contradiction between interesting and well-paid work.
Why is that? Because a person is most susceptible to precisely “black and white” ideas and attitudes. “My religion is true, everyone else is wrong,” “Sex is bad,” “Linux is super, Winda sucks,” and so on.
Because such ideas are assimilated more easily, and in them the consciousness finds coarse, but instant support. It is much easier than keeping in mind some ambiguous and multi-faceted idea, for example, the consciousness that you can work both for money and for an idea while observing a wise balance between financial well-being and the satisfaction of spiritual and moral needs.
And it turns out that despite the fact that many of us would like to live better, on the one hand, we often face our own fear of earning more.
We are trying to prove to others and not only others, but also ourselves, that we are not interested, that the idea is important to us.
But we often suffer fiasco here, because in such a desire it is difficult to maintain honesty with ourselves. Because, nevertheless, almost all of us are interested in money. And we want a better life for ourselves and our family. But we are trying to show the opposite for fear that we will be condemned for it.
Is it noble to earn enough?
And in order to maintain this fragile contradiction, dissonance, we have to invent many tricks, self-justification.
"I'm fine as it is!"
"I have enough of this"
And such a philosophy seems very noble to us. We are proud of our position. With their modest demands, pure thoughts (which are not so clean).
But is it noble? Is it noble to earn enough? Let's try to figure it out.
It may seem to someone that having a modest income, small ambitions is such a great virtue.
But it seems to me that sometimes the wording "this is enough for me" conceals just as short-sighted egoism as in the phrase "for our age will suffice" or "after me even the flood."
In general, I noticed that young people, my peers and younger, sometimes have some kind of irrepressible and excessive optimism.
They think that much more time. That all life is ahead. That the future holds many great prospects: you just have to wait and they themselves will open before you.
It seems to them that if everything is fine now, if at the moment everything is going along predictable life rails, then it will always be like this.
“And that's enough for me,” they say.
Call me paranoid, but I see that life is an unpredictable thing. And anything can happen.
What if you get sick and need treatment?
What if you can't work?
What if your specialty is unclaimed due to structural changes in the economy?
Okay, maybe you are so "noble" that you don't even think about yourself. But what if something happens to your friend? With your loved ones? With your parents? What happens if someone needs expensive treatment?
Do you want parents to have a decent old age? Or that they live on a penny pension and that they still have to work? And if they can not work because of health? Do you want your children to have enough life? To have their own housing?
Is it noble not to be able to provide for your loved ones?
What happened when you were 20?
And if even now it seems to you that there is still a lot of time, that you will be in time. But if you are now in the region of 30, like me, then remember the time when you were twenty. Whatever your age, just wind your life mentally 10 years ago.
Now tell me, was it so long ago? Was there so much time left for your feelings? I think everything flew like a bullet.
And the farther you live, the faster the time will flow. You will not have time to look back, as you are already 40, and you still live in the apartment of your parents or just got into a mortgage, and there are still children who need to be fed, elderly parents who also need care.
What will be the price of your "nobility" and modest requests?
And again, in order to avoid misunderstanding, I want to clarify my position and designate its boundaries. I do not think that every person who has modest wealth is an egoist. The circumstances are very different. I also do not want to say that everyone who earns a lot, at least take care of others. Everything happens differently.
Here I am only exposing the installation of the "nobility of work for the idea" to critical analysis. I propose to test this idea for strength.
Are we condemned for taking care of ourselves?
Many people cut their ambitions, avoid asking for a higher salary, are ashamed to demand a fair payment for their services, because they are afraid that others will decide that only money is important to them. Although there are other reasons.
But let's try to figure out whether this is justified fear? Are people really starting to see us as cynical careerists if we express our material needs more explicitly?
There is bad and good news.
The bad news is you can't please everyone
Indeed, some people will start thinking this way. Even possible customers.
This is especially familiar to all sorts of coaches, various private professionals, people of creative professions, musicians.
This is very familiar to me. From the very moment I began to monetize my website, I started receiving comments of the following kind from time to time: "If you want to help people, then why don't you do it for free?", "You say you want to help people like that, but ask yourself for that money is a contradiction! "
And here there is a temptation to start trying to adapt to such a consumer, trying to prove to him and himself that money is not important to you.
But it plunges you into the vicious circle of hypocrisy. Anyone who does not want to pay for your work and sees something perverse in your concern for the welfare of your own family is probably not quite honest with himself.
After all, such a person probably does not live on donations himself, but earns money, or it is provided by someone who does not consider money to be vicious.
And to appease someone else's hypocrisy, you yourself will have to lie to yourself. You will show that you allegedly do not need money, although in fact you need it, you will not live without it.
I remembered very well the advice of Steve Peacocks, who read a long time ago when I first started creating my website. His logic sounded like this:
“It’s not necessary to pretend that you are not interested in selling a product, to write your offer in the bins of your website in small print. Feel free to voice this offer in your videos.
If you decide to sell something on the site, so sell! Write about this in big letters. Let everyone see it. But if you do not want to sell, then just do not sell. "
This is the question of hypocrisy.
The good news is to please everyone and not
That was bad news. The good news is that all those who will condemn you are most likely not your customers and partners at all. Most likely - these are people with whom you are not at all on the way. Why?
- They are not interested in your prosperity. They generally do not think much about you. They think mostly about their own consumption. It’s more comfortable for them to consume your products for free. And that behind these products is a living person with their needs, they have little concern. (For example, you can often hear arrogant attacks on musicians: "Yes, he went into commerce, he opopsel." And in response to this, you always want to ask: "And what did you do to prevent this from happening? How are you supported his favorite artist, so that his whole life business helped him feed himself and “not go into commerce?” Most likely, the indignant did not do anything for it: they downloaded pirated Internet records. The result is that some musicians either disappear altogether and go to more lucrative job because not in with Silts to feed themselves with creativity, or begin to engage in this form of creativity, in which they can provide themselves.
- Скорее всего, этим людям вы не сможете помочь даже бесплатно.
И почему я так считаю? У меня есть на это основания, я не хочу раскрывать всю свою внутреннюю кухню, но кое-чем поделюсь. Скажем так, мне довольно часто приходят письма с просьбами предоставить какой-то из своих курсов бесплатно. Я пробовал поступать по-разному.
Сначала я просто предоставлял бесплатный продукт, но не обнаруживал никакой особенной активности со стороны льготного клиента по пользованию этим продуктом в дальнейшем. Как будто его это особо не интересовало.
Потом я, прежде чем дать бесплатный доступ, просил льготного клиента на протяжении двух недель выполнять пару несложных техник из курса и по результатам написать мне пару предложений с впечатлениями. Это я делал для того, чтобы отсеять всех тех, кто особо не хочет работать по курсу.
Или же я просил внести символическую сумму. Сколько по силам.
В результате последних двух просьб, без преувеличения, 95% людей отсеивалось. Я от них не получал никакой обратной связи. Они просто пропадали. Хотя писали, что им мой продукт очень нужен.
Я сделал вывод, что в 95% процентов случаев, когда человек пишет "почему не бесплатно?", "хочу бесплатно" (особенно, когда это пишет тот, кто пришел с сайта, на котором бесплатных материалов хватит на несколько томов) под этим имеется в виду нечто более широкое, чем "не хочу тратить деньги". Под этим очень часто подразумевается: "Не хочу тратить любые ресурсы".
То есть, время, силы, энергию. Прилагать любые усилия: будь то разобраться в электронном платеже и выслать маленькую сумму или поделать несколько простых техник, которые все равно практиковать придется
То есть вывод такой, что таким людям вы все равно вряд ли поможете. Потому что они просто ничего не хотят делать. Возможно, это даже как-то коррелирует с тем, что они не уважают и ваш труд: ведь им самим, вероятно, никогда не приходилось по-настоящему трудиться. Они просто не знают, что это такое и как это тяжело.
И это не ваши клиенты.
Не ваши партнеры.
Не ваша целевая аудитория.
Они проносятся по касательной на самой периферии вашей деятельности, даже не особенно взаимодействуя с ней, не желают ничего отдавать (не только деньги, но и время) и ничего не получают.
Ориентироваться на такого "потребителя" в выстраивании этической основы своего бизнеса - это неправильно, нечестно и как-то даже неэтично.
А ваши настоящие клиенты, если они получают пользу от вашей работы, ценят и уважают ваш труд, более того, сопереживают вашему успеху и поддерживают вас.
И я очень благодарен всем своим клиентам за такую поддержку, без которой мне бы было очень тяжело заниматься тем, чем я занимаюсь. И это не только вопрос денег. Видеть, что твой труд ценят и любят, что люди готовы что-то отдавать взамен - это огромная моральная поддержка.
Вам больше не нужно выбирать
В заключение я бы хотел очертить границы рассуждений этой статьи. Я считаю, это важно.
В этой статье я не пытался сказать, что счастье в деньгах. Более того, во многих своих статьях я пишу, что счастье как раз не в этом. Я постоянно говорю о том, как сильно можно "сгореть", разочароваться, прикладывая к своей жизни стереотип о том, что успех равно счастье.
С другой стороны, я понимаю, что как раз-таки сам факт материального благосостояния сильно дискредитирован и обесценен в глазах мыслящих и морально чувствительных людей из-за этих самых стереотипов об успехе, которые нам навязываются и вызывают рефлекторную тошноту.
Короче, чрезмерное навязывание нам одних стереотипов ("каждый должен стремиться к успеху", "деньги - это счастье и каждый их желает") формирует парадоксальным образом другие стереотипы ("успех - это плохо", "деньги приносят несчастье", "быть необеспеченным и работать за идею - это хорошо").
Я знаю, что счастье не в деньгах (как говорил мой друг: "но и этого счастья у нас нет" ), счастье внутри, в нашем сознании. Если наше сознание не развито, то никакие деньги не принесут нам длящегося счастья. Это первично.
Но при других обстоятельствах материальный успех является одним из справедливых аспектов вашей жизни. В нем нет ничего плохого. Напротив, он может стать очень приятным бонусом для вашей деятельности.
К тому же, деньги это не только источник удовлетворения суетных желаний и нужд. Это материальный оплот для вашей семьи. Это средство помощи. Это моральная поддержка и источник уверенности.
Вам вовсе не обязательно выбирать между работой за деньги и работой за идею. В своей жизни вы можете реализовывать свои самые благородные устремления за достойную компенсацию, и при этом не чувствовать стыд и недовольство собой.
