Tag: Gratitude

The only thing to say when you receive a gift…

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One way to give someone else a gift, is to let them give a gift to you.

Don’t let that be the only way that you give other people a gift, because that would mean you are a taker, possibly a bit of a jerk, but accepting a gift well is an underrated skill.

How do you respond when someone gives you a gift?

“You shouldn’t have”

“You spent too much”

“That wasn’t necessary”

“But I didn’t get you anything”

Here’s a reminder: You are allowed to be on the receiving end of an act of generosity. It’s okay if someone gives you something nice. Some people are wired to express their love and gratitude more through giving gifts.

If you refuse it, you are getting in the way of someone else having the joy of giving. If you don’t receive it well then it can tarnish the whole experience for everyone.

The only thing to say when you receive a gift is “thank you”.

If you must, you can add “you are very kind”, or “I love it”. That’s it.

By just accepting it graciously, you are ensuring that generosity is going both ways.

I must add that the above does not apply if someone is trying to manipulate or coerce you through giving gifts. That’s downright shady behaviour and you have every right to refuse that. Forcefully if necessary.

A gift for you

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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.

Good Things

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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:

  1. 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.

People Aren’t Dumb

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“People aren’t dumb. The world is hard.” Richard Thaler

Managing your finances is hard. Planning for retirement is hard. Holding down a job is hard. Balancing priorities between family and work is hard.

It’s easy to think that people who struggle in one or more areas of life are dumb, but there is so much assumed knowledge as you become an adult. If someone doesn’t take you aside and teach you about everyday things like Medicare, private health insurance, car insurance, the importance of superannuation, then it’s possible you may never know how to manage them.

Add to that, sometimes, just getting through the day is a challenge, let alone trying to keep it all together, feeding all the people in the house, paying all the bills and planning ahead. It takes a lot to be a person.

What if we thought the best of each other. What if we put judgement aside and gave the people in our lives some slack. They aren’t dumb, they aren’t awful, the world is hard and they are just different from us.

It’s that sort of generous outlook as we think about other people that gives us the space to accept people for who they are, and where they are right now. We all want everyone to try and get better as a person (I know I want that for me and those around me), but some people wont change. Who they are today is who they will be. That’s okay.

We all manage the tension of loving people for who they are and at the same time hoping for something more for them. But the world is hard. Let’s love people (and ourselves) in this moment and let tomorrow take care of tomorrow.

Lagging

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“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.

Generous Identity

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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.

Choose gratitude and generosity.

Put off until tomorrow…

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“What if this is as good as it gets?” Melvin Udall (Jack Nicholson, As Good as it Gets)

Well, it is if you want it to be. Because there is always more to learn, something else to try, another place to visit, a different version to read.

If this is where you want your life to stop and stay, then don’t do anything new. This will be your peak.

Unfortunately, it is unlikely that you will be able to maintain the status quo for long, because things change. Sometimes things change slowly, sometimes they change quickly.

When asked how he went bankrupt, Mike, a character from Ernest Hemingway’s “The Sun Also Rises”, said that it happened “Gradually and then suddenly.” Often that’s how things go, change happens slowly, almost unnoticeably slow, then it happens all of a sudden and at that point there is nothing you can do about it, except for hold on for the ride.

Regardless, change comes to us all.

If you put off until tomorrow the work of becoming the kind of person you want to be, who you are today is the person you will be. And then I can guarantee that this is as good as it gets for you.

Success Will Follow

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Give first and success will follow.

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.

So, give first and then see what comes.

To those who are still giving…

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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.

To those who are still giving, we thank you.

What are the chances?

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Out of every person that was born when I was born, what are the chances that I was born in Australia?

In the year I was born (which you can guess at), there were 124,287,658 other babies born in the world. In Australia there were 223,034 other babies born in that same year.

That means that I had a 1 in 557 chance of being born in Australia.

At the same time there were approximately 65,000,000 children born in Asia, most of which, at that time, were born into poverty. So, going on the numbers, in the year that I was born, there was approximately a 1 in 2 chance of being born in Asia, most likely into poverty. That doesn’t take into account the African continent at all. The numbers get pretty intense at that point.

Suffice to say, the chances of me being born into a country that wasn’t experiencing debilitating poverty were slim at best. But here I am, lucky I guess.

So, what’s the point?

The concept of the ‘self-made man’ or ‘self-made woman’ start to lose meaning for me at this juncture. I find it a little amusing when people start talking about how they pulled themselves up by their own bootstraps to get to where they are, or that it was only through their hard work and skill that they have succeeded in life.

More and more I strongly doubt those assertions. Hard work is definitely necessary in life, but looking at the odds laid out above (and this is just location of birth), I think it is more to do with luck than anything else. Where you were born, your gender, your race, your family of origin, all of these have a huge effect on your life before you even get the chance to start working hard.