Chapter 6 : Generosity, what for?

Its approaching end of the year fast and me & my friends have been reflecting what our biggest lesson has been. Mine has without a doubt been around friendship and screening people quicker. I recently started thinking about generosity. I already started an article on friendship part I( http://neiyo.com/friendship-friend-foe-part/).A friend of mine said imagine you only had 100 days left to live. 100 days.Would you still spend/invest another day on this person?I’ve realized that there are 2 qualities in a person that are most important to me:CONSISTENCY and GENEROSITY( Hmmmm both quite counter cultural where everything these days is based on YOU….how you feel, instant gratification, no commitment, cancel anytime kinda thing )What they both have in common is that they are both actions.Attitudes.Not words.Talk is cheap.Generosity has always been a quality I am really drawn and aspire to.I remember being asked “Why shout someone who has money?” I feel that generosity has little to do with how much you have or how much the receiver has. Rather it is a gesture overflowing from your heart. If someone says they will give to the poor when they get rich they will never give. Generous people never talk about it. They just DO. It is a way of showing you value the other person. Caring with no agenda or expectation. After all. Relationships are not a transaction!In a way I love generosity because it comes in a package deal with the other values I really admire such as selfless, considerate and just in general doing something that benefits the other person instead of oneself. How much does our world focus on the self?Generosity reveals so much about a person. The weird thing is, something like money can either be shared or controlled. When we keep it, it controls us and others. If we share what we have, releasing it, it changes us.I’ve been thinking about why some people are so generous and some are not and this quote by Stephen Covey author of 7 habits of highly effective people seriously gave me a light bulb moment :This world basically operates on the Scarcity Myth : They see life as having only so much, as though there were only one pie out there. And if someone were to get a big piece of the pie, it would mean less for everybody else.Think about that for a second. Do you compare? Do you feel happy for others when they succeed especially when they get what you want? Or do you feel threatened, out of time? Do you respond by being super driven to achieve more or do you even bother trying? No wonder people will not be inclined to generous if they feel like they are sharing from a limited pie! I would be very reluctant to share a donut if I thought that was the only donut Ill ever get my hands on again!The Abundance Mentality, on the other hand, flows out of a deep inner sense of personal worth and security. Imagine instead of anxiety you feel peace at heart.Wow. Doesn’t that blow your mind! That explains it all!One of the most generous people I know are my parents. They give without expecting anything in return. Without holding back. Often they give anonymously. Also they never cared for money or material things. Yet we have never needed to worry about money. Mum and Dads generosity always came back to them. And that is the ironic thing about life. The more generous we are, the more we will be blessed. It’s a cycle. I have seen it time after time.You never loose out being generous.

My close friends sometimes worry that I let people take advantage of me so I’ve been thinking about the fine line between generosity and getting used. Well is it still generosity when someone takes advantage of you? No. Its not! Because it was forced. Generosity is a choice. When someone takes advantage of you it wasn’t your choice to be generous versus when you choose to give knowing it might not be reciprocated or appreciated, so No it is not the same! Generosity does not mean you have to be a doormat and certainly requires wisdom. 

Ill leave you with this quote :“Success is determined by what we build for ourselves. Significance is determined by what we give away”