Giving Away Your Best: How to Make Sure Good Things Come Your Way

When you have a great idea for something you can create, what are some of the first few questions you ask yourself?  How much money can I make with this?  How many people will buy it?  How many people can I positively impact with this?  And then your mind starts to figure out how to package it and get it out there to be sold.

What if you packaged up your best ideas and gave them away?  The voice in your head (your monkey mind) might go a bit crazy and start asking things like:  What???  Are you crazy?  Just give them away?  My creations have real value!  What about licensing?  What about copyrights?  What if somebody steals my idea and makes more money than me?

My answer to all that would be:  So what?  In the grand scheme of things (and especially in the world of personal development), there haven’t been too many truly original ideas in a couple thousand years.  Most of what is out there is just different people’s versions of the same things.

What is ownership?

Society has programmed us that the only way to be successful is to legally “own” ideas so others can’t “steal” them.  When you think about it, that’s a pretty crazy concept.  Like Nike owning “Just do it.”  Everyone uses the phrase, whether they know that Nike owns it or not.  And technically, Nike could somehow make you pay for saying or writing it.  Crazy.

Well, the times they are a-changin’.  Collaboration is replacing competition.  Sharing is replacing strict ownership.  It’s becoming quite evident that the parts of the whole do much better by working together instead of competing against each other.

In our society, so much time, energy, money and emotion are wasted on “protecting our own.”  This way of thinking is predicated on there only being a limited amount of whatever it is, like money.  A scarcity mentality.  In truth, there’s an unlimited supply of almost everything.  For example, while there’s definitely a limited supply of oil, there’s an unlimited supply of energy in a variety of other forms.  You just have to think about it a little differently.

So, back to giving your stuff away.

The benefits of giving

What if you created something awesome and just gave it away to as many people as possible?  You would certainly impact many more people than you could if you sold it.  The people who really liked it could come back to you for more and you could charge for the more (hey, we all have to eat, don’t we?).

What comes up inside you when you even think about giving away your best ideas?  For me, it’s feelings of scarcity, fear, need to protect and hoard.  Thoughts like:  “Wait!  I should charge for that!”  But when I think about the good that sharing those ideas can create, I want to give them away.  As soon as I look past myself, I start to ask, “Why not give them away?”

I’m making it a practice to overcome those feelings of scarcity and giving anyway.  It’s definitely not always easy but the more I do it, the better I feel.

A simple challenge

I challenge you this week to give away something special to you.  Whether it’s a thing or an idea, it has to be something meaningful to you.  If it’s an idea, tell your friends or others in your networking groups.  Post it on your blog or someone else’s.  Put it on your Facebook page or tweet about it.  Post a video of it on YouTube.  If it’s a thing, give it to a friend or loved one.  Donate it to Goodwill.  List it on Freecycle.org.  Just give.

If you can make this a regular practice, you’ll start to understand the magic it can create in your life.  I have a reminder on my calendar to “Give something away” every month.  Some months it’s something small.  Other months it’s a couple carloads of things.  Each week I hope I give something of value on my blog.

Yes, I could sell all of these things but I choose not to.  I feel better when I give it away.  While it’s certainly not the reason I do it, I know that what goes around comes around.  You get what you give.

Get past the feelings of scarcity and know that there is always plenty.  Pay it forward.

What will you give away this week?