Giving As A Way Of Life
With everything that has happened around us lately, massive fires, gun shootings, elections, along with the usual holidays around the corner, giving has become a way of life for so many and finding ways to help out and get involved has become prevalent.
As much as we give of ourselves during this time of year, especially in terms of time, money, and quite frankly, tons of stuff - let’s not forget some of the simple ways we can also give both in business and everyday life.
Three powerful ways to GIVE:
1. Start with Recognition
Everyone wants to be able to build their own self-esteem and the simplest way to do that is through recognition. Recognition is about helping another person feel important. In fact the best compliment you can pay to an individual is helping them be useful and find satisfaction in their usefulness.
When someone feels useless, they will never feel good about themselves and will never believe they can be successful. However, when you recognize someone’s accomplishments and what they’ve been able to do, they will be set up for success.
A compliment or a new connection/referral that someone can potentially be “useful” with, or simply sharing your knowledge, wisdom, information that you have with others is a form of giving that will continue to help them move forward, along with yourself.
2. Be a Resource for others
It’s impossible for everyone to know everything or for a person to be everything to everyone. It’s like saying you’re the “jack of all of trades” for everyone and how deep is this person really going to dig and try to help you with your challenges?
Each of us has a need to be filled, so let’s help one another fill that need. It’s again centered around one’s strengths and where one has strength, there is always an area of opportunity.
As one goes on their success journey - partnering and bringing along another wherein you both can help each other with areas of opportunity and be resources for one another, can be pretty powerful.
Begin by sharing some books, articles, podcasts, that have changed your life and always be on the lookout for good materials that could be of interest for others as well.
3. Create a Runway
Working with people all of my career, they want recognition to fill their buckets, resources to help them learn and develop, and most of all they need a runway to grow and catapult themselves to that next level. And what I mean by a runway is, imagine for a minute the student pilot who has gone through extensive training and is ready to take their own flight. They need that runway to get going and gain confidence for lift off.
Just like the novice pilot, we also need a runway, that will allow us to start moving, be okay with making mistakes (then turning around and starting again if need be), tweaking a few things along the way, and then finally believing and being confident that we are ready to launch.
Giving the gift of a runway, allows one the freedom to fly, take risks, and to not be afraid to fail. This also holds true in every aspect of our lives - whether its your employees at work and empowering them to be more innovative and create new ways to do things or your children and allowing them to be themselves and shine through their own individual traits and strengths.
I love this time of year because gratitude and giving are the highlights of the season and being able to give the gift of ourselves to others can really make a BIG impact, in such a simple way. Like the saying goes, some of the “best things in life come in small packages”.
HAPPY THANKSGIVING EVERYONE! And let’s connect when we’re all back from the holiday...
Henry Ford once said, “Most people think of success in terms of getting, Success, however, begins in terms of giving”