It can be hard, when times are tough. But givers always gain.
I have a friend who is an artist.
She was going through a bad patch, commercially, and had sold no work for a couple of months. Which was tough, because her art is how she pays the bills and feeds her family.
So when she was approached to donate one of her works to an auction raising money for a charity she liked, her first response was, “No, I can’t afford it right now.”
Sitting in her studio looking at her unsold work, however, she realised that she could afford to be more generous. Sure, there was an investment on her part. The canvas, the paint, and especially the framing — it all costs money. Then there was the rent on the studio, and her time.
But that was all spent, whether she donated or not. So she called the fund-raiser, and invited her to come to the studio and choose a piece for the auction.
The painting went for quite a sum on the night.
Almost double her normal price, which was a real boost at a time when she’d been feeling low. Then she got a call from the bidder who had been runner-up. He still wanted one of her paintings, so he bought it directly from her.
A few weeks later, the fund-raiser also called. She’d been thinking about a much larger canvas she’d seen on the wall of the studio, which would be perfect for her own home. Was it still available? It was.
“I gave one painting, and sold two more as a direct result,” my friend said. “But that wasn’t the main thing.”
She had been feeling needy, she realised. Focussing on the income she was lacking, she’d been hustling studio visitors to buy instead of simply enthusiastically explaining her work to them as she usually does.
Giving away a painting instantly made her feel more open, generous and expansive again, to see abundance where she’d only seen scarcity before. She could give away work because she was full of ideas, and could always make more. And as her attitude shifted, so did her art. People magically started buying again.