Valuable Exchanges

‘What you think you see in someone else’s eyes, an expression, and emotion, an action or an intent, is merely a reflection of your own innermost desires, issues, intentions and actions. Therefore examine what you are projecting in order to change or enhance what you are seeing’. Tegwyn Fietze

Valuable Exchanges

I was asked the question in various ways by different people and I even asked it of myself this week: Why am I not getting the respect, value or exchange of energy from those around me? Why am I feeling like there is a payoff involved in every interaction? The feeling that I am either selling my work short and by extension myself (not only me but the people who have expressed this too), or the sense that I am somehow bound by someone else’s expectations of what I should ‘do’ for them because they have done something for me.

I must be honest because I battle with this my natural tendency is to want to give, my energy, my knowledge, my time etc. Then I discover I am caught out by emotions of somehow being short-changed in some way by not having received the energy back and I’m not talking about monetary energy in this case. I am talking about having my time respected in some way. Or I experience the lack of gratitude for something I have done for someone else, which either goes unnoticed or is disrespected in some way. I find then too, that I’m not liking these emotions in myself because I find I then think I’m being selfish or petulant at the expectation that someone ‘reimburses’ the emotional and energy exchange.

So what is the answer then? I don’t want to go through life either being bound by someone else’s expectations or by my own expectations of someone else. Yet there has to be a balance in this. It always comes down to that word balance.

One of the things that helped me to understand this issue came to me when talking to a relative stranger recently. She was explaining that she’d done some work for friends of her boyfriend. She is a professional at what she does, but in order to by liked accepted and welcomed into this group of people, she charged them not much more than the cost of the job. In return, they arrived late, messed her around, and have been harassing her and basically making the whole experience very unpleasant. She said to me ‘I know that this is my fault because something in me has drawn this energy/lack of respect and dismissive behaviour from these people’. She then answered her own question as to why they were treating her this way by saying ‘I should have charged my full professional fee, and not undervalued my work just to be liked and accepted by them. The end result is that I feel undervalued – I now understand why, because I undervalued what I do, to satisfy an ego longing in myself’.

There is that reflection. When we undervalue ourselves in any way, so does everyone else. While we don’t want to go around being selfish and never doing anything, nice kind or giving to others, we need to examine our motives when we do. If we are giving out of the goodness of our hearts, truly giving and not counting the cost of that giving, to the needy to the helpless, the sick and the aged, as well as friends truly in need, then we will never feel depleted.

However, it’s when we have a ‘hidden’ payoff or agenda in our giving ‘then they will like me, then they will respect me, then I will have their love, then I will be in control in some way,’ trying to manipulate a circumstance of now ‘you owe me’. This is when we set ourselves up to be upset. Getting upset is a setup. When we end up feeling undervalued and we become oversensitive to ‘how much’ we are getting in return, we then need to go back to finding the balance. Always examine the motive behind why and what you give and how much, so that you will have an accurate reflection of your own inner agenda needs and desires.

Please visit my website www.shoowah.com for more information about me and the therapies I offer as a Tarot, Rune, Hand Reading (Chirology), Spiritual Counsellor and Massage Therapist (including sensual massage, you can visit my sister site www.feralgrace.co.za for this) from Buccleuch Sandton and one day a week in Randburg. You can contact me on 072 298 7628 or by email info@shoowah.co.za