So many things are outside of our control. The world is a big place and things happen quickly. What can one person do to stem the tide of poverty, or racism, or sexism, or any other -ism you can think of?
Why bother, right?
If Frozen 2 has taught us anything, (aside from the fact that sequels can be better than the original and water has memory) it’s that sometimes all we can do is ‘the next right thing’. Sure, it’s an animated kids movie, but this is a healthy philosophy that I would love my kids to encapsulate as they grow up in this world. Heck, I would be proud to be able to say that this is how I live my life.
When faced with seemingly insurmountable challenges and overwhelming odds, (be they wind, fire, water or earth spirits…look, just watch the movie), you can still do something. The next thing. The next right thing. Over time, the amount of ‘right things’ you do adds up and begins to make a huge difference.
The challenge in these moments is to figure out what the next right thing is. Let me help you with this – I can guarantee that it has something to do with generosity.
“What is the use of living, if it be not to strive for noble causes and to make this muddled world a better place for those who will live in it after we are gone?” – Winston Churchill
I agree with Winston. What else is there to do?
That leaves just two questions:
What are noble causes?
What is worth spending time, money and effort to achieve? What are the things that you are willing to sacrifice for? To be able to put other things on hold for. What is it in our world that is worth prioritising and saying ‘no’ to other things because of it. Once you have an idea of that, then I think you have a noble cause on your hands.
What is the striving?
What is required of us to achieve the goal of fulfilling these noble causes? If the cause is truly noble, then any amount of effort is justified. How we do the striving is more complex. The way that we behave is just as important as the outcomes we achieve.
How are we doing the work?
I believe the noble causes begin with other people. Anything that helps people, without damaging other people in the process, is a noble cause.
How we strive is just as important as the noble causes we strive for.
I think we all have an innate sense to hold on to what we have. Loss Aversion is a strong cognitive bias which suggests the pain of losing something is twice as bad as the pleasure of gaining something. So, we hold on.
As you could imagine, this bias makes it very difficult to be generous. Giving something away is at odds with Loss Aversion. It goes against everything that we feel is right.
The result of this, if left unchecked, is that we can become stuck in a place where we don’t want to give anything up, which could be holding us back from taking the next step, from growing. Specifically, when it comes to money, loss aversion can create stinginess, keeping us in a small, dark place where the accumulation of money is the only focus.
To overcome the obstacle of Loss Aversion, it is best to give some money away. When you do that two things happen:
Something shifts within you.
The psychological impact of giving money away allows you to see the world differently. What you thought would be a loss, turns out to be something different. Not only does it feel good to do good, but giving money away shows you that you don’t need as much as you think and it lessens the burden of seeking to accumulate.
2. Something shifts in the world.
Both in the way you see the world and the actual world. All of a sudden, the world appears to you as a place that is redeemable. A place that you can make a difference to and one that is filled with good people trying to do good things.
The world will also be a better place because you have put some money in the hands of those good people trying to do good things.
Overcome loss aversion. Give some money away and see the difference it makes to you and the world.
It had been something that I had wanted for decades but was too afraid of the permanent reality of it. What would it look like when I was 80?
After realising that 80 is never a guarantee for anyone, I thought I would make the most of my life now and get inked.
But how does one go from being someone who has no tattoos (a clean skin) to someone who does? It may not be a big thing for some, but for me it was massive. It was a change in identity and a change in how I would think about myself. I had to become the type of person who had a tattoo.
So, I decided to take it one step at a time.
First I decided where on my body to get it.
Then I chose what the tattoo would be.
Then I chose a tattoo artist.
Then I reached out to the artist.
Then I met with the artist to talk about the tattoo.
Then I booked my first appointment.
Then I went to the first appointment.
All of these things are something that a person who had a tattoo would do, but to this point I didn’t have one yet. I could still choose not to do it and it would be a more educated choice than if I had sat on my hands and let my fear make the decision for me.
I ended up choosing to go ahead, and I am really thankful that I did. I am really pleased with the outcome and the meaning behind what I have chosen.
Now, for you, you may not be interested in getting a tattoo, but it is likely there is something that fear is keeping you from. Possibly something that you want to do, or think you want to do, and fear is making the decision for you. What small steps can you take that will help you become the type of person who does the thing that you want to do? There are a steps you can take even before you commit to doing it – maybe it’s a job that you want to go for but you’re afraid that it’s not the right one, or that you won’t know how to do it. Maybe there’s something in your life that you would like to change, but it seems like it’s too big to do anything about. Maybe your finances are in a bit of a mess.
As always, I will bring it back to generosity as well – maybe you would like to become more generous.
Think about what someone would do if they were the type of person who had that job, or made that change, or managed their finances well, or were incredibly generous. Then take some small steps towards that.
Beginning that journey will help you in your process, I guarantee it.
“3 Years from now you will be 3 years older.” James Clear
Time will always do what it does. It rolls on regardless of how you think about it, or how you feel, or how you spend it. You can’t stop it but you can choose what you do with it.
So, in 3 years would you like to be more generous? Start now. Start small. Create a daily , weekly or monthly generosity action.
Maybe give $5 a month to a charity. In three years that will be $180 and then you will be the type of person that gives regularly to charity.
Maybe $5 isn’t enough, maybe $50 is more your style, that would take it $1,800.
Maybe it’s $500 a month making it $18,000.
The amount doesn’t really matter.
It’s the flywheel effect. Small things begin to build momentum and over time it creates so much that things seem to be moving all by themselves. But you can track it back to a single choice and a small action that was repeated again and again.
From little things, big things grow.
What can you do in the next week to create a more generous ‘you’ in 3 years?
My kids sleep with, what seems to be, hundreds of toys in their bed. There are stuffed toys, toy cars, small animals, lego men and piles of books. I’m not even sure that any part of their body touches the mattress there is so much junk.
I honestly don’t know how it came to this – I am reasonably ordered in life. The bed is for sleeping. The toys and books go in the playroom. But, apparently, my children have a more fluid understanding of how things work in our home.
The books, whilst super annoying when they fall under the bed and cause a frantic search when it’s library day at school, I am more okay with because books are important. It is important to read to your child. I think every parent knows that, and there are studies that have found that young children whose parents read to them daily have better school experiences. There are other studies that have shown that homes which have books in them are more likely to have better educational outcomes, even if they aren’t read.
So, my kids, by sleeping on books, should end up being geniuses. That’s my working theory.
Education is important, and we all want the best for our kids.
Whenever I meet the women that Opportunity International Australia work with, their motivation for using a small loan to build a business and work their way out of poverty is so that they can give their children a better life. They, first and foremost, want their children to go to school and get an education, because they know that this will be a huge benefit for the kids in the future. Even if they haven’t been able to go to school themselves.
For women like Bhikhiben in India, who desperately wanted to go to school when she was younger, but had to make an impossible and devastating choice after her mother died. As the oldest of five siblings, she quit school to help raise them.
No child should have to choose between going to school or looking after their family. But that was the reality for Bhikhiben.
Even though she only has a few years of education, she has taken a small loan to build her own business to create an income which has allowed her kids can go to school, get enough food to eat, to pay the loan back as they work their way out of poverty.
Once the loan is repaid, it gets recycled on to the next mother, so she can do the same thing. With 98% off all loans repaid and recycled, that is a lot of families that are putting their kids in school.
Bhikhiben was robbed of her chance to get an education, but that has fuelled her desire to make sure her children get one. This is how generational change is created.
You can donate here to help women like Bhikhiben lift their families out of poverty.
Again, we find ourselves in a crisis (there’s always a crisis). Sure, inflation seems to be slowing down, but talk of the cost-of-living crisis is strong in the community and there is no doubt that some are really struggling to make ends meet each week.
Here’s what I know, more people are giving less, and less people are giving more. Some are giving to charities at their normal levels, and more on top of that because they are able to, and some are giving less than they normally would as they juggle financial priorities. But those who are still giving have made it a habit, one which they don’t say goodbye to when finances get tight. They still give but give less because it’s easier to increase and continue than it is to start something that you have stopped.
So, no matter how tough things are for you right now, make sure you find a way to maintain your generosity to those around you. It will make you feel better about yourself and it will make a huge difference to the organisation that you are giving to.
I valued the honesty, but it certainly wasn’t the response that I was expecting.
I had arranged one of our team to participate in a call with a supporter to help them feel connected to what they were giving to. I was on leave at the time and afterwards, I called up to see how it went and the above response is the exact quote that I received in reply.
It was rough.
After a moment I said, “tell me many things about that.”
He shared openly about the experience and it turns out there were a couple of unmet expectations on behalf of all parties involved.
I was shattered. I realised that I didn’t communicate clearly enough with the people and essentially set the meeting up for failure. I had had missed the mark.
Fortunately the supporter was incredibly gracious and understood the challenges, and was generous enough to be open and honest about their experience. I appreciated that greatly and it helped me see that sometimes things are not as easy as we think they will be. I thought I could just connect people via a calendar invite and it will all just work out. Apparently not.
Mostly though, what it taught me is that critical feedback is not fatal, in fact it can be a great source of learning and growth if we let it.
Christmas is upon us. It’s nearly here. It’s happening.
As you go about your preparation for this season and think about the people you will buy presents for, think about what they would really like. I’ve noted before that this is not my strong suit, but I am not the only one.
I recently found out that Australian’s will spend $921 million on presents for people this year that are unwanted. That’s right, almost one billion dollars on gifts that people will throw out. $35 for every man, woman and child will be chucked out. Creating 275,000 tonnes of landfill, about a kilogram for each person.
So, in order to save yourself some time and landfill, reach into your wallet or purse, grab $35 and throw it in the bin.
Or, buy something that will do some good, ensure that your money gets used, recycled and used again, and see to it that your gift is recyclable, by purchasing a Gift of Opportunity. These gifts, like chicks, or ducks, or seeds, or old tyres (yep you read that right), represent things that women living in poverty in India and Indonesia use to create their own business from a small loan. Through that business they make an income, put food on the table, send their kids to school, pay the loan back and work their way out of poverty. Your Christmas gift this year is you providing that loan on behalf of someone you care about and letting them know about it. It’s feel good, do good, save the planet gift giving.
I was literally doing this as a teenager as Crowded House filled my mind with their music genius. Little did I know how important weather would become in my life. For years I would talk about it when I worked in radio. I was fascinated by the way the weather changed, how it could be so different in places that were so close together, and by how it made me feel.
I can take on almost anything if the sun is out and the sky is blue. It makes such a difference to how I feel and my optimism level.
Alternatively, pack the skies with clouds and rain and the cold, then no amount of coffee can perk me up.
I am working on this, and looking to make winter into a time of strength, but to date, the weather I am experiencing strongly influences my quality of life.
The good news is that if you change the weather, you change the experience.
Actual weather aside, there are times when life is filled with challenges and no amount of coffee (or whatever your poison is) can perk you up. So, change the weather/influence, change the experience.
One of the greatest methods of changing your mental health weather is through generosity. By acting generously to someone else, even when you don’t feel like it, it will shift your mood. It changes how you see the world, how you see other people and how you see yourself. Sometimes only by a little bit, but that is still a positive step.
It requires no set up, just find a person/organisation/group in your life that you can give something to, be it money, time, expertise etc. and then do it. The positive impacts will be numerous, for you and the people you are generous to, and so everywhere you go you can always take the weather with you.
The Generosity Guy 