Trading Time, Skill, and Kindness: Life Beyond Money

We busy ourselves so much and somehow expect that we’ll just magically have the energy to manage it all. We hope and pray that we’ll get through, but often we end up tired, stressed, and disconnected. I’ve written before about how important it is to be proactive with your energy—managing it like you would a schedule. It’s not only about carving out space for responsibilities, but also making room for the things that replenish and even expand your energy. Joyful, passionate projects are like life force storage—they don’t just refill you, they amplify you. Whether you call it energy, life force, or chi, it’s the fuel that carries you forward. And one of the most beautiful ways to both preserve energy and strengthen community is through kindness.

Slowing Down to See the Opportunities

If you want to see change, you have to be the change. The universe is constantly offering opportunities, but we can only notice them if we slow down. Physically, most of us are at the “bottom” of the hierarchy of influence. Energetically, though, we sit at the top. That’s an incredibly powerful position. We may not run governments, but the collective choices we make ripple outward into everything. Slowing down makes us calmer, more present, and more able to see the blessings and miracles around us. It’s as simple as stepping away from your phone, closing the laptop, taking a walk at lunch, or pausing to breathe and look around you. When you slow down, you make space for kindness—and space for change.

Everyday Kindness in Action

Kindness doesn’t have to be grand gestures—it’s about connecting with the people around you and making space for them in small, meaningful ways. It could be as simple as noticing a friend seems down from a text message, and carving out time for a phone call, or inviting them over for tea. Sometimes, it’s just letting them feel supported and loved, whether they share what’s going on or not.

It can also be about your neighbours. Many elderly or physically limited people have ongoing maintenance or gardening tasks that rarely get done. If you’re trimming branches in your own yard, you could spend a little time helping them with theirs. If they have odd jobs around the house, you might offer a couple of hours to help out. These acts don’t take much time, but they create a sense of community and support that’s often missing. You don’t have to become anyone’s full-time carer—small, thoughtful acts are enough to help people feel valued, seen, and supported.

For example, my son is now bigger and stronger than me, and he helps more around the house than ever before. I’ve asked him to take over tasks that used to be mine, and I’ve offered that when he next trims branches across our fence, he will also help our elderly neighbour with hers, whose overhanging branches block sunlight for both of our properties. This is something we plan to do together when the timing works.

We’ve also created opportunities where she can participate if she wants—like paying my son a small fee to do exterior painting on her property if she likes what she sees. Acts like these show that kindness isn’t just about what you can physically do yourself—it’s about what your family or household unit can contribute collectively.

Being fully able-bodied is a privilege, and it comes with the opportunity to share your energy and strength in small, intentional ways. Even if everyone is busy, making space for these acts of kindness helps weave the fabric of a connected, supportive community.

Kindness doesn’t have to be grand gestures. It can look like:

🌱 Helping a neighbour with their garden while you’re tending your own.
🛒 Asking if they need anything when you head to the shops.
⏳ Building acts of kindness into your schedule as if they were part of your own to-do list.

This is how kindness becomes part of the rhythm of your life—not something extra you squeeze in when you have time, but something you naturally make time for.

Bartering: An Alternative Currency

Sometimes people resist help because they don’t want to feel like it’s charity. This is where bartering can be so powerful. It allows support to flow in a way that maintains dignity and creates reciprocity. For example, someone might offer you lemons from their tree, a basket of eggs, or a homecooked meal in exchange for your help with a task. The exchange doesn’t need to involve money—it’s about sharing what each person has to offer, and often that includes the skills, energy, or time of your whole family. Perhaps you can’t do the physical work yourself, but your son or daughter can. Perhaps you can offer your skills in return instead of labor. Bartering is flexible and creative, and it can work in countless ways when we are willing to imagine it.

These small exchanges, repeated over time, are the kind of bottom-up changes that quietly reshape our communities. They help dismantle the systems that make us busy, stressed, and disconnected, and instead build resilience, trust, and connection. When we focus on trading skills, time, and goods instead of relying solely on money, we create a network of support that strengthens everyone involved. It’s a practical, real-world way to weave kindness into our everyday lives, while also teaching our children and those around us about the value of generosity, collaboration, and mutual care.

With the rising cost of living across the world, this approach becomes even more relevant. Everything is becoming more expensive, and that reality opens opportunities to be creative about arranging what you need with what you have to offer. Finding ways to make exchanges equal in nature is an important part of this. Bartering is just one way to approach it, and I truly believe it’s only the start. Once we open and expand ourselves limitlessly and consider how we can approach communities in new ways, you’d be surprised at how much a system like this could work. As more people accept the concept of exchange as part of everyday life, the possibilities for creative, connected, and supportive communities grow exponentially.

The Future of Exchange

We can already see glimpses of what this looks like in practice. People are swapping homes for holidays, sharing skills, trading goods, and offering services in ways that don’t involve money. As costs continue to rise and money-based exchanges become more restrictive, these alternative systems will only grow in relevance and creativity. People will start to think beyond cash, finding ways to maximize what they have—whether it’s time, skills, physical spaces, or knowledge—and how they can use that to create more abundance for themselves and others.

This concept encourages us to see communities differently. When we recognize the resources, skills, and opportunities that exist around us, our thinking shifts from scarcity to possibility. Suddenly, we start asking questions like: How can we use our spaces more intelligently? How can we share resources with those who don’t have equal access? How can we create programs or initiatives that provide value beyond monetary transactions? It’s a mindset that moves from passive observation to active engagement, from waiting for systems to provide for us, to imagining new ways of working together and creating prosperity collectively.

This is exactly where the ideas of maximizing community resources begin to flow naturally. Once we embrace the potential of alternative exchange systems, our thinking expands to the larger structures of our neighborhoods, cities, and communities. We begin to see opportunities to use physical spaces, skills, and resources in ways that benefit everyone, especially those who might otherwise be left out. From here, the concepts of rooftop gardens, shared school facilities, or community workshops become not just ideas, but practical extensions of the same principle: creating abundance, connection, and value without relying solely on money.

Maximizing Community Resources

As populations grow and climate changes, certain areas will become more comfortable and safer to live in, and we’ll see migration patterns shift accordingly. Physical resources and spaces will need to be used more intelligently, and we’ll need to get creative about maximizing what we already have. For example, some council projects in the northern suburbs of Melbourne have large apartment buildings with communal rooftop gardens, where residents can grow fruit and vegetables.

Similar community gardens exist in New York, where people contribute time and effort to tend the garden and, in return, can take what they need. This is a clever way to make the most of limited resources and avoid waste. The principle extends beyond gardens. Schools with abundant facilities often rent spaces out to other schools outside of school hours, and yoga studios, gyms, or community halls can offer their unused time to others. If these spaces were coordinated through a central database, they could be accessed by community organizations to support those who are disadvantaged, providing opportunities that would otherwise be out of reach.

Imagine free swimming lessons in a school pool, gym sessions for youth outreach programs, or skills-based workshops in cooking schools for people coming out of rehabilitation programs. These ideas allow us to use resources—spaces, skills, and time—in ways that serve the wider community. It opens the mind to new possibilities, showing how bartering and exchange extend far beyond simple trades.

By thinking creatively and taking responsibility for supporting our communities, we stop waiting for governments or councils to make decisions for us. Instead, we build our own systems, using imagination and initiative to create meaningful opportunities, strengthen connections, and share skills purposefully. When we start looking at life this way, possibilities expand exponentially, and communities become more resilient, connected, and abundant.

Maximizing Personal and Shared Spaces

There are opportunities right in our own homes and neighborhoods to create meaningful exchange and connection. For example, imagine an elderly couple on a huge property with so much unused space. They could open up their garden to surrounding neighbors who don’t have access to their own outdoor spaces. People could come and help tend the garden—watering, fertilizing, planting, and maintaining it—and in return, they could take produce for themselves. The couple gets their overwhelming property maintained, and the space transforms into a beautiful community resource. It becomes a co-op of sorts, a place where people come together to contribute and benefit mutually.

Similarly, people in large houses often have spaces like garages or rooms that sit idle. A family living in a small apartment, for example, could use that extra storage or space in exchange for a skill or service. There are countless ways to start seeing personal spaces differently and offering them to those around us. The illusion that these spaces “belong” only to us fades when we recognize that everything is ultimately Mother Earth’s. We share this planet with other humans, animals, birds, and insects, and it’s time to start seeing space as a shared resource. What can you offer others in your home or garden?

We also have opportunities to rethink how we manage possessions. If your garage or home is full of items you’re not using, don’t let them sit idle. Place them outside for others to take, without expectations, attachments, or judgment. I do this regularly before annual hard rubbish days. People come and take what they need, and it’s a way for them to access resources without discomfort. Nothing should sit unused if someone else could benefit from it.

The rising cost of living presents a unique opportunity for creativity and collaboration. It encourages us to question traditional systems, to experiment with sharing, bartering, and exchanging resources in ways that don’t rely on money. By opening ourselves to these possibilities, we discover countless ways to support each other, maximize our spaces, and cultivate abundance in practical, tangible ways. This is a pathway to creating community, prosperity, and connection—beyond money, beyond conventional systems, and entirely within our own control.

My Own Journey with Bartering

About a year and a half ago, I started offering swaps with healers around the world. That way, they could experience Umana and I could experience their gifts in return. I did this quite regularly, and it was an incredibly beautiful exchange. Along the way I met a woman running “Heal the Healers” retreats in the US (and beginning in Europe), where practitioners were hosted in stunning low or no-cost accommodation and simply received—rested, replenished, restored. That experience, together with my own global swapping journey, inspired me to create an online Facebook group where professional healers and practitioners could swap modalities with each other (although it didn't really take off).

About a year later, I saw someone offering a “Healing for Healers” day in her studio in Mornington. I actually attended one of these days, and it was absolutely beautiful. There’s something so special about this container and this way of being—the incredible generosity, the intention, and the beauty of her studio. Her studio was so spectacular and special that I’m actually doing a Umana Technique practitioner training there on Sunday, and Jo, the owner, is just one of the most gorgeous, generous, and radiant women you’ll ever meet. If you happen to be in Victoria and are interested in exploring her beautiful Heal the Healers days, here’s the link. What strikes me is that there isn’t a direct line of inspiration between the two events I’ve experienced—yet the same themes keep surfacing. That’s the beauty of the collective: ideas move through the field and pop up in individual expression all over the world.

Then I began seeing more people doing the same—personal posts like, “I need a massage, is anyone open to a swap?” And I felt so excited. Not because I thought I had started it (I don’t believe any of us own these ideas), but because it showed me how these seeds in our collective consciousness begin to sprout. We are all connected to the same vast web of collective energy. Ideas often rise in many places at once. It’s like we are all tuning into the same frequency, receiving the same inspiration, and responding to it in our own ways.  It feels like we are collectively planting seeds of a new way of sharing, and those seeds are beginning to sprout in many different forms.

Expanding Beyond the Healing Community

So far, much of this movement is happening within the healing industry. But it doesn’t need to stay there. Imagine if this way of living; trading skills, time, food, and help, spread into every community. Not everything has to be money. People grow food, raise chickens, bake bread, design websites, build fences, or sew clothes. Every one of us has something to offer, and every one of us has needs that others can meet. This is not idealistic, it’s very real, very possible, and already happening. It only requires us to connect with those around us, to ask and to offer, and to recognize the abundance already available in our communities.