The True Meaning of "Pay it Forward"

bystephhill

7K followers

Updated 9 years ago

Hello Everyone!

I want to discuss Wealthy Affiliate and the philosophy behind it's success - the philosophy of paying it forward. If you look up the meaning of Pay it Forward in wikipedia for instance it says, "Pay it forward is an expression for describing the beneficiary of a good deed repaying it to others instead of to the original benefactor." see wikipedia page here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pay_it_forward

What this is saying is that if someone does a good deed for you, instead of returning the favor to the original person who did the good deed, you do the same good deed to others. This chain is continued with one person doing something nice for another and then another and so it continues to be paid forward.

I bring this point up because yesterday I received a rather harsh email from another WA member who was upset with me and said I was "discourteous" because I did not leave a comment on his website after he left a comment on my website. But in order to maintain a community which embraces the philosophy of paying it forward, this is exactly what we should not be doing. If someone does a good deed by leaving a comment on your site, you should pay it forward by leaving a comment on someone else's website and not the original person. I wrote a long reply to the WA member apologizing for my part in the misunderstanding and he immediately wrote back to me apologizing for his ranting and we have since "patched" everything up and all is well between us.

My point is when I progress through the training, I follow along with how I interpret what Kyle is asking us to do in the comment area and not how many of the individuals seem to understand what is meant by the "give and take".

From what I understand, Kyle specifically asks us to first post our new post(s) or page(s) and then without checking to see who leaves a comment on our sites, to chose THREE sites to leave comments on, regardless of whether or not they left comments on our sites. That is how I understand Kyle's instructions to be. That is what I generally aim to do.

Therefore, I have left three to five times as many comments on other members websites as I have received on mine, but not too many are linked back and forth. If they are it is only due to chance mostly. That is how I interpret the "give and take" to work. I refer to it as paying it forward and that is what I believe to be the true spirit of WA. You "take" a comment from someone and "give" one to another.

This also applies to leaving feedback on someone's site. In the spirit of paying it forward, there have been NUMEROUS times I have left EXTENSIVE feedback for other members via email, the feedback area and the SiteFeedback system and have received very little, if anything, in return and it never bothered me because it was done in the spirit of paying it forward - someone helps me and I in turn help others out.

That was something else the WA member mentioned in his email to me - he gave me feedback on my sites, but I did not reply in a timely manner. I apologized for offending him and for my delayed response to his feedback and once again thanked him for his feedback, because I had already thanked him previously when he first left feedback. He mentioned in his reply email his issue with me was that I did not give him feedback as well to which I apologized and will be providing quality feedback to him in my next email.

I was in the process of my "20 day break" [see my previous blog from yesterday] to reviewing all the wonderful feedback I got on my websites and follow up with the feedback givers with any questions and my sincere gratitude. I also left this person a really nice and long comment on his website since he had left a comment on mine. But I also put my two cents in with regards to how I view our philosophy of paying it forward.

To summarize.....

If we are navigating through the WA platform always expecting something in return from someone whom we helped, then we are not embracing a paying it forward philosophy.

I do hope my post is seen in the spirit in which it was written and most certainly welcome all comments and healthy discussion on the topic.

Have a great day!!