What do you want to pay for, in time and money?
And what don’t you want to pay for, in time and money?
What do you think the others around you value, what do they want to spend their time and money doing?
If there was ever a call for transparency, it is for this. What would happen if we knew how those around us really wanted to spend their time and money (not just what they say they do to get by in the world)?
This is not so we could “customize our offer” (*blech*) but so we could find the people we want to work with, who want to build the same things as us in the world.
We all have limited time and money and we want to support what we want to support.
What if we could make that easier? For everyone.
I remember reading (horrified) when The Circle by Dave Eggers came out in 2013. That was just over 10 years ago. I’m not sure we’ve learned anything since. I’m still horrified about what, how and why things about me are shared between platforms, companies etc. though I do my best to limit my sharing.
I don’t think THAT sort of transparency is necessary or helpful. I want to build and connect with a world that is focused on the things that matter, not if we both like the same band or the same type of apple. I don’t need to know all the things about a person. And I don’t want us to be manipulating others into doing things they may not want to do (which is what I feel that is what we are all “supposed to do” anymore.)
I want to know what you (and others) stand for, so we can truly work together.
There are millions of different people out there with millions of ideas & values.
How often have you gone along, befriended, started working with a person, only to find out that you missed a very critical piece of information somewhere along the way? A piece of information that if you knew, would have changed your relationship with the person if you had one at all?
Hopefully, it wasn’t purposefully hidden (though anyone who has been through a bad personal or business breakup might tell you otherwise). And hopefully, we can let people make mistakes, grow and change. That’s not what I’m talking about here. One wrong move, one stupid decision (or even 100) doesn’t have to end things.
It is what the person does after the bad decision that tells me who they are and what they stand for, that’s what I want to know.
Understandably, we don’t go around sharing our biggest failures with anyone. (Even if it’s supposedly a “good marketing tactic.” And PS: internet we can tell when you are using it for that and it feels gross!) And for anyone who has ever been punished for being honest (so everyone) it can seem safer to hide, not just our failures, but ourselves, our ideas, our likes and dislikes, our dreams. There is a reason people fear retaliation, ostracizations, cancel culture etc. when they share themselves.
So it is more important than ever, to find a way to share our values (what you want to spend time and money on), calling it out, even ever so subtly in business, in romance, in friendship. I find that subtle call outs work magic. Those who understand will heed it and those who aren’t in the know will drop away.
There are ways to do it. There are ways to say, this is who I am, this is what I stand for (see the post from last Month link) so you can save yourself and anyone else the time and money that you want to be spending on other things.
It is getting harder to see what really matters, to see the essential things in this world. It is up to us to call them out for ourselves and help those around us do the same.
We could all already know how we want to spend our money and time. Usually aligning with who we want to be, who we want to be with and how we want the world to be.
How can we take the steps to share ours with the world so they can share theirs?
We can build together what we might not have had the foresight or vision to do as individuals.
