Create Deep Connections & Meaningful Moments

Being able to be giving and have a giving presence with others means first and foremost being there in the moment. But also being generous with your attention, generous with your validation and seeing, hearing and being there with another. Generous in offering assistance. Help. Praise the giving. Presence. You know, there's two parts to this. One is giving and the other part is presence. So let's just start with presence. The second part, because most people struggle with this part alone. Being present with other people where they feel your heart, your soul, your spirit, your attention, truly open and in the moment with them, Open in the moment with them, open in the moment with them. That's how you know when you're really being present. Because if you're closed down, that means you're trapped in your own thoughts or the way that you think things need to go. In the moment means you're not thinking about yesterday or the future. And with them has a sense of camaraderie or collaboration, a beingness together that makes this time of year so magical in the first place. Giving, presence. Presence means not being distracted, having your phone, looking at that, thinking about other things. It means the ability to truly feel the moment and the energy of another person, or just to life, universe, or God itself. It's about being here so fully that you're not attached to thoughts about the future or thoughts about the past, but you're just here, experiencing, breathing, feeling, sensing here. I always tell people around the holidays that people don't really want your presence, they want your presence. The first is about the idea of gifts and material items, and the second is about the idea of you and spirit. And I think that's what people really want. We're so good at, you know, thinking about materialism today. We're very rarely thinking about the essence, the beingness, the spirit of being around one another and being in the moment. Give yourself that gift and give others that gift that leads to that first part here of giving. Being able to be giving and have a giving presence with others means first and foremost being there in the moment. But also being generous with your attention, generous with your validation and seeing, hearing and being there with another, generous in offering assistance, help, praise. Whether it's just energetically being there or giving material items or sharing with others. That idea of being generous this time of year I hope is resonating in your heart. We unfortunately just experienced a long period of what I think we can safely call cultural selfishness. Other psychologists or sociologists would call it like group narcissism, where we tend to think we're all great but at the same time we've been so isolated that we tend to focus on survival and only ourselves. And in that process we, we have forgotten that so much of the spirit of the season and the magic of these times is all about generosity, openness, understanding, collaboration, service to others. You know, when you're in that survival mode, you hoard things. When you're in generous mode, you share things and build things with others. This time of year, how could you have a little bit more of a giving presence? What would it take? It doesn't mean that it's easy because of course you do have needs, you do struggle, you do like all of us have big goals and dreams and you're just trying to survive and not burn out sometimes and trying to achieve great things. And not everyone agrees and not everyone supports you and not everyone is as high performing perhaps as you are. And yet isn't it a good thing to realize that even if people are more advanced or less skilled, even if they are more capable or less present, that no matter what, we could all also have that generous spirit that recognizes and respects other people with a non judgmental attitude? I think that's really so much of the giving presence is to be there with a non judgmental attitude. That's what I meant by openness earlier. You know, my hope for this time of year, my hope for you and your family and definitely for our entire growth day community, is that we learn to bring a vital presence back into our lives. So many people lack aliveness because they're so selfish. And that when we are so trapped in our own little world and we can't see outside of it and everybody outside of it in our mind is, you know, dumb or incapable or evil or wrong or on that side of the aisle when they are they and they are externalized from the human story that is us. And we, we cannot be our full selves. We cannot be our true humanity that is giving, our true humanity that is present with one another, our true humanity that is trusting and faithful in one another. And I know you can say, oh, that sounds so, you know, airy fairy Brandon, good for you. You must have a privileged life. It's like actually the reality is there is a oneness that unites all of us. There's so much of our psychology that is so incredibly similar, our human biology is similar as well as our experience and ultimately our plight on this planet. There's so much more that unites us than that which divides us. And being generous is willing to recognize that other people have different perspectives and that that's okay. Being generous and present is about realizing that we can sit with others even if we don't agree with them. That we can hear and acknowledge and validate others, even if it's not our lifestyle or our choice or our will. I believe that in this time a sense of understanding is needed. A sense of compassion and empathy and non judgmental ways of interacting that will bring back that sense of humanity. And that's where the aliveness comes from. From when we are detached from humanity or pretending that everyone else is evil. That puts us into a negative mood. It makes us feel unhappy, unsafe. It makes us feel just in constant conflict, in vitriol. That's not what we're after this time of year. And I don't think that's what we're after in the human story. So in this ideal of giving presence, what does it mean to you? Maybe you could go write in your journal just a couple sentences. What does giving mean to you at this stage of your life? What does presence mean to you? Who's someone in your life that could use a little more giving presence? Who's someone in your life you'd like to request it from? What would the holidays be like if this was the time of year that you found a greater presence? I wish for you and your family love and health and joy and abundance this time of year. I'm grateful for every single one of you. I'm so blessed that so many of you come to listen to this every single day. Just to maybe find one little inspiration point, one little self awareness point. I love doing this work with you because you and I both know that every day truly is a great day to grow. Thank you for being here. I appreciate you all during this holiday season. If you'd like to give the gift of personal development to others and spread the giving presence around in our world, please go to growthday.com gift that's growthday.com gift and you can now buy an annual subscription to Growth Day for any of your family, your friends, your loved ones and your team. Because when you empower them with more personal development tools and coaching and community, I believe that you don't just change their lives, you change the world. So go to growthday.com gift I appreciate all of you for making personal development a way of life. Let's make self improvement a way of life for other people too. Go to growthday.com gift appreciation here's what I don't want your life to be like. You wake up, you grab a bunch of coffee. You try to handle the life or the kids. And before you take care of your body, your mind, your health, you just open up the inbox and start replying to everybody else's agendas. No, you're going to set an intention. You're going to move your body a little bit, you're going to get yourself in a good place. And the first thing you're going to do is not answer a bunch of emails. The first thing you're not going to do is do social media. The first thing you're going to do is going to start your day once you've planned it out with appreciation. Now, I've shared to this community a long time that the first activities that I like to do once it's time to finally work is to send five audios via my phone to family, friends, teammates, people in my businesses, my brands and my network and just cheering them on. That's the first task. It's not email or social media, it's cheering on real people who I know sending them an audio. No, not a. Not an email, not a quick text, not a dm, an actual audio so they can hear my voice giving appreciation and encouragement to them to have an awesome week or to have a great day. And yeah, every day I try to send out five of those. I don't always get it done. It's true. Sometimes it might be one or two, but on the average I'm pretty dang good about it. Why people want to hear your voice They've been lonely these last 18 months. 2. It's uncommon. Most people don't think about the actual relationships in their life until nighttime because at work it's all about tasks, projects, emails, not you. You remember as a leader that it's all about relationships. You remember as a person trying to be of that quality of role model that people look up to you, that they're impacted by your good energy and you're going to send some appreciation out. I know you will remember to do that. This morning will have sent out session or audios about encouragement with a friend who recently lost a baby. I will have sent out an audio cheering someone on who I know has a very, very big interview this week. I will send out an audio to somebody who I know is struggling in their marriage and I will have sent out one to a partner of mine who runs another part of the business who is just an absolute rock star and inspires me. Just notes of appreciation, acknowledgement, encouragement, cheering on. Because you know and I know the world is full of a lot of negative people. There's a lot of anger and hurt and judgment and intolerance in this world right now. And sometimes you need that supportive community. And being that person for others, I think is powerful.