“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.
Forgiveness is a gift you give yourself. – James Clear
I have been hurt. So have you. Somewhere along the line we have all been on the receiving end of behaviour that is rude, thoughtless, violent, offensive, toxic, troublesome – you name it. And it can cut deep. It causes pain which doesn’t just disappear.
The importance of forgiveness…
But carrying hurt around, staying angry, storing the pain in a section of our mind so we can revisit it time and time again, only perpetuates the hurt. It keeps the wound from healing. The strange part about that is it has no effect on the person who hurt us in the slightest.
How to forgive…
Now I don’t pretend to be the expert of how to forgive someone, I know it has something to do with letting go of the anger and working to get to a place where we are not reliving the experience, eventually even wishing the person well in their life. There’s no three step process for this unfortunately, you can do your own research on what may work best for you, but I can tell you that once you get to the point where you can forgive, it is an amazing gift for yourself. You will feel lighter, happier, healthier and be able to live your life without the constant threat of being thrust into pain and anger.
Forgiveness doesn’t mean you let them do it again…
Just because you forgive someone for hurting you, that doesn’t mean you automatically invite them back into your life where they can do the same thing again. Forgiveness doesn’t go hand in hand with trust. I can forgive you for crashing my car, but that doesn’t mean you still get to drive my car. The damage can be fixed, but it is costly and not one that I am willing to pay twice.
So, I can forgive someone for hurting me, giving myself a gift, making my way through life lighter, happier and healthier, whilst having solid boundaries in place to protect me from future hurt.
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.
“All success is a lagging indicator” – Ryan Holiday
All good things come after the work.
If something good comes that you didn’t work for you usually waste it because you don’t fully understand how valuable it is.
So, the hard work that you are putting in right now, the discipline that no one else is seeing, the incremental progress which is almost invisible to anyone but you, that is the foundation of future success.
No one has ever won a gold medal without working for it over a long period of time. The medal is a lagging indication of how hard they have worked.
Success is a combination of that hard work, along with planning, reassessing, consistency and a whole lot of luck.
The cold hard reality is that success is never guaranteed, so you may as well find a way to enjoy the hard work that you are doing, because this could be the only reward you get from it.
Probably the most important part of this is to map out what success is for you. What are you aiming for? Is that really success? Start with that, and then do the other things. It will save you from faux success in the future, which is actually failure.
Each person, no matter who they are or what they have done, has intrinsic value, the value and beauty of life. There is something magical about it. We struggle to find the words to truly express just how amazing life is. If you are living and breathing, you are so valuable. You are a miracle.
From that foundation of value comes gratitude. As we experience this amazing life, as we get to take the next breath, as we enjoy life with other people around us, it is natural to be grateful for what we have been given. And it is absolutely something we have been given – we didn’t create ourselves, we didn’t produce the life force that flows through our bodies, we are just experiencing and benefiting from it.
This gratitude then, is the birthplace of generosity. Because we have been given so much, therefore it makes sense to give to others.
Generosity is at its strongest when it comes from a place of valuing yourself.
I have value as a person, I bring value just by existing, and out of that I can be generous to others. My value doesn’t come from what I give, but from who I am. I am confident in who I am and out of that confidence I give.
Stinginess, on the other hand, is weakness. Stinginess is the easy way out. It requires no effort, no forethought and no creativity. It is also toxic to everything it touches.
Although, it depends on what your idea of success is. If success means ending up a stingy old person, making no positive impact on the world, then giving is most definitely not for you.
But, if your idea of success is having a loving family, being a generous person, sharing your life with those that you care about, having a life of growth and learning, then that will require something of you first.
I have become more aware over the years that a generous act is the catalyst for most of the good things in life. Some of those good things are guaranteed, like the positive emotional and psychological effects that generous acts have, and some of them are not guaranteed at all.
For example, there is no guarantee that if you are a generous person that you will have a happy, loving family life. But I can guarantee you definitely won’t have a happy, loving family life if you are not generous. It’s a risk to be generous and hope that good things come, but the consequences of not being generous are heavy.
The irony is that being generous solely for the sake of reaping the benefits takes something away from the generous act, but it doesn’t completely cancel it out. So, even if you can only muster a generous act because of what good it will bring you, keep doing that. Over time, being generous will change you and you will begin to seek the rewards less and less.
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.
People are multidimensional. Some have suggested that there are many ‘selves’ which live in our brains, so who we are in any given moment is dependent on which ‘self’ is at the wheel. Try talking to a toddler when they are hungry, or tired or in desperate need of the toilet. You will get three different responses, probably three different types of anger. Same person though, but very different to the person they are when they are having a great time jumping on the trampoline.
Adults are just more complex, larger versions of toddlers.
Therefore, you can’t take a single action that someone performs and generalise who they are as a person. You might have caught them at a bad moment, a rough day, a moment of weakness, or a difficult season. Also, people can be capable of extraordinary acts of kindness and love in one moment, and then be a jerk to someone else the next. Some of the most vile people that have ever lived could still have moments when they were a loving parent.
“Stuff can be two things” Jake Peralta
We can be both loving and a jerk.
The person that you live with, or know very well, or are having a disagreement at work/on the internet with, is more than just the things that they say and do.
In saying that, Aristotle is credited with this quote, ‘You are what you repeatedly do. Excellence is not an act but a habit.’
Who we are as a person is deeper than the things that we do, but what we consistently do, shapes our person.
Excellence and love and kindness and generosity are a habit. So is being a jerk. So create the habits which will allow you to become the type of person that you want to be.
When my older children were little and I would leave them in someone else’s care, be that a grandparent, an uncle or aunty, or some other trusted person, I would give them these instructions:
Treat people nicely.
Treat things nicely.
I was really worried about how they would behave, and how that would reflect badly on me. It turns out that I needn’t have worried because they are pretty awesome human beings, and also, parenting out of fear that your kids may make you look bad is a pretty toxic place to parent from.
Regardless, the two principals remain solid instructions that I now share with my younger kids.
Treat people nicely.
Treat things nicely.
I think it encapsulates the whole realm of instructions for how to behave in the presence of other people.
I understand the complexities of it all, though. Because if someone is hurting them, or putting them in danger, I really don’t want their response to be nice. I want their response to be more like running away. That is part of a deeper lesson of protecting yourself.
But generally, the message I have for my kids is to be kind to other people and to things. It shows respect, generosity and a sense of self-worth, and it shows other people that this is how they would like to be treated in return.
“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?
The Generosity Guy 