The Importance of Giving

Transcript

I was thinking about the importance of giving.

I was reading The Art of Loving by Eric Fromm and he talks about how a lot of people hear that phrase that it’s better to give than receive.

If they don’t fully understand the concept of giving they might perceive this as it’s better to sacrifice oneself to not enjoy, to suffer through giving than to receive.

This is a kind of Elsworth Toohey way of giving where you are so altruistic that it takes something out of you that you must suffer to be a good person.

Fromm points out it’s not actually like that, when you know how to give in the right way from the heart it is so much more satisfying than receiving because you have that special opportunity to help someone especially if they are really in need and you know something you have done has helped someone in a significant way.

That’s a special kind of delight.

I was thinking “when did I give more in my life”? This is an auto-exigent thought. Not a bad question but it is quite demanding of myself. What am I already giving?

Im putting out this podcast for free, my music for free so people can enjoy it. Videos I’ve put out over the years or essays I’ve written. A lot of them just so other people can enjoy them or get something out of them. Photographs I take of other people that I publish so others can see them.

There’s some selfish element to it like trying to promote myself, but that’s fine as well.

There’s a giving, hopefully mutually beneficial which is even better. I can give and also receive through it which is great.

I was thinking there must be so many people among my listeners or in the world that might not even realize how much they are giving.

If you work in customer service, you probably familiar with the fact that solutions for the customers do not come easy. And maybe you could get by just doing the bare minimum. You might not get noticed, you might not get fired and you could just chug along like that.

But in a lot of cases you don’t do that, you don’t just do the bare minimum.

You say “let me think about that and check with someone and see what kind of solution we can find for you so you can find some good to come out of this, get a better result. And maybe even…not that I am advocating this, a lot of times you might spend unpaid overtimes and it can verge into that territory where you sacrifice yourself.

Or you might spend a few minutes on your break helping a colleague because you like that colleague or want the team to do well and you’re proud of the brand you work for or whatever. Not necessarily sacrificing yourself but sometimes we do give a bit extra and these are the reasons that people end up getting promotions.

They end up going above and beyond to find ways to do things.

And a lot of you are out there working for yourselves in some form or another having your own business. Like Robert Kiyosaki would ask people “what is your business?”

And they’d tell him “I work in a bank”

“No, what is your business? What are you working on that is actually going to create wealth for yourself because as we all know it’s pretty nice to have money.”

So of course when you are an entrepreneur you probably go the extra mile for your customer because you want to establish a reputation and because you want to see the customer do well. You want to see a smile on their face or hear their words of gratitude knowing you really helped them out.

There must be so many situations, probably many you can think of that don’t even occur to me where you are giving more perhaps with just making dinner for your family.

I know when I was a child, a teenager, I never had fed someone I suppose. Never made food for someone other than baking cookies so I didn’t fully understand how much love is put in when someone cooks for you. Of course now when someone cooks for me I do my best to express my gratitude for that because it is a special thing.

People might not notice the contribution but hopefully giving the contribution people notice your contribution and if they say thanks you do take it seriously because you are contributing in all these ways living in life bringing a smile to a stranger, a hug to a friend in times of need.

You might not think of it as giving but you are giving and hopefully in a way that is beneficial, mutually beneficial and good for your soul. Not sacrificing yourself but in a way that is lovely and loving and helping yourself love others.

Thank you so much, have a great day.