Giving Compass' Take:

• Below is an excerpt from Leading from Within: Conscious Social Change and Mindfulness for Social Innovation by Gretchen Ki Steidle. She touches on how mindfulness can help social change leaders work through fundraising issues. 

• What is the intersection between mindfulness and social change?

• Read about the other benefits of mindfulness in other industries. 

I have always had great difficulty asking for money — which is unfortunate for the founder and director of a nonprofit organization that depends on the donations of others to do its work. I felt great discomfort especially asking people that I knew for contributions to Global Grassroots, as if I were begging. I had a sense of shame around this.

When I meditated on the discomfort, I recognized that I preferred to be self-sufficient and earn my resources. This felt like a more fair and just way of operating. But I knew I needed to go even deeper.

So I did a breathwork session on my fear of asking for help. Breathwork is one mind-body modality that uses a particular deep breath practice to help shift stuck emotion ...

I am still working on this, but I have released a lot of my challenges around fundraising. I know our work is worth a gift. I know that if someone says no, it is not because they don’t like me or don’t care about my cause. I know that if I ask for help and they say yes, it does not mean I am not self-sufficient. This has made fundraising so much easier, and my ability to ask for and receive support in all other areas of my life so much less charged.

Our limiting beliefs might be about money, self-worth, image, success, or something else. None of us have grown to maturity without inheriting some form of a hang-up, so rest assured there are traps, both subtle and obvious, somewhere in every single consciousness. The best that a mindful change agent can do is expose, understand, and release these emotional obstacles as a means to see more clearly as well as move more freely. True needs are intelligence that will lead us to our unique path of meaning.

Read the full article about mindfulness in giving by Gretchen Ki Steidle at Stanford Social Innovation Review.