Financial & Non-financial Features of Terms of Services
(You need not pay money for my service.  You need only pay attention and make good use of my services.  If at any time in your life (now or later), you want to donate money or in-kind services to help me share with others, feel free to do so.  If you ever feel motivated to pass along to others what you discover while relating to me, that’s your privilege.  It is also your privilege to refer others to talk with me on the chance they will find our talks beneficial.)  

Just as my approach to helping you acquire knowledge, insights, understanding and wisdom about life is unconventional, my approach to payment for my services is also unconventional.  I am committed to making my services available on a fair and just basis so that anyone who earnestly wants to receive my help can afford to do so.  That’s why they are free to anyone who demonstrates his or her earnest desire to join with me in our shared quest for truth.

I believe that my services have a high value but I do not measure value solely in terms of money.  As much as I want to earn a living by serving others, it is at least as important to me to know that my services are helping others find greater satisfaction from how they live their lives.  Mutual respect and appreciation are forms of compensation.

Non-financial Features of Terms of Services

If my services are going to be of value to you, we need to work together as a mutually respectful team.  For me, respect includes keeping appointments (or rescheduling them in advance), taking our efforts to improve your school and/or work performance (as well as personal life, if you want) seriously and investing yourself in exploring options I may suggest for you to explore.  I am not interested in taking over responsibility for your life or telling you what to do.  I expect you to exercise responsibility for your own life.  At the same time, I expect you to listen to my ideas as attentively as I listen to yours and to ask questions when you want clarification, just as I ask questions of you when I want clarification.  If you don’t feel comfortable with an idea I suggest or don’t understand why I suggest it, please simply tell me.  Your feedback about how you feel, what you think and how you experience your life will make all the difference to our success as a team.

The terms of services I expect involve mutual trust, honesty and commitment to shared goals and priorities as well as to valuing each other as human beings.  I’m willing to make your achievement of your goals and your personal satisfaction and happiness high priorities to me.  Yet, I cannot make them your high priority to you.  That’s for you to cause to happen.  If you discover that you don’t want to continue working with me — or want to modify how we work together or the timing or terms of how we work together — just let me know up front.  If you fail to communicate with me, I won’t know why.  I’m not a mind reader and don’t expect you to be one either.  Let’s communicate and see how well we can team up to cause your studies, your work experiences and your whole life in general to improve on terms that matter to you.

Non-financial terms of service include as a high priority your contributing input to defining the services you want and the pace at which you want to make progress.  I encourage you to be bold about your investment in our teamwork and not shortchange yourself.  I extend to you a golden opportunity to challenge yourself to make progress — even if you’ve not seen satisfying progress in the past — and to achieve your dreams beyond your wildest imagination.

When you team up with the right person or persons, you experience a lift or boost that cannot be experienced alone.  That’s the uplifting power of synergy at work.  Once you’re on the rise, even the sky is no limit.  If you don’t experience working with me as personally uplifting to you, let’s find someone with whom you do experience that lift and connect you with him or her instead of me.  I’m not the only person from whom you can obtain the helpful boost you seek.  Even if you feel a boost in working with me, I’m still going to encourage you to branch out to find others with whom to rise together. I refer to that rising group of people as our village of mutual boosters.  To thrive, we all need such an empowering village within which to belong and find ourselves free to continuously develop the “more” that’s not yet come forth from within us before.  Each of our upward flows of creativity and self-actualization is endless — much like the misty rainbowed fountain in the photograph at the top of this page.

© Art Nicol 2021