Dr. John A. King argues that "give till it hurts" is unsustainable and that generosity should be reciprocal. He frames giving as an exchange of time, talent, or treasure, and warns that relationships without return risk emotional and financial bankruptcy. Most of your network should be peers, not people you give to endlessly.
So I started to think this morning about this concept of giving till it hurts. I don't know why, it was just a random series of thought, and part of it is a reflection that a lot of us have trained or give ourselves self-talk that we, we are not of value enough to stop giving and we should give till it hurts. We hear that phrase. We also hear the other phrase, generous to a fault. And I started to think about giving. Where does giving start? It starts when we're kids and we're taught to share and we When we share, we do share because we give something and in return people give us things. So we share our toys or we give something and we share and people want to be our friends, so we get friendship in return. So there's this whole quid pro quo thing that goes on. But then I thought later down in life we go on and some of us get into this mentality or this mindset of continually giving and we give till it hurts. We give to our detriment. And I think in families and with children and husbands and wives, I think we should always be trying to outserve each other and outgive each other. Okay, so we got that. But when it comes to other aspects of our lives, say non-primary friendships, you know, outside of the circle of intimate or the next level, in business or in other aspects, it is an exchange. It's a trade. And you're generous. You can be generous with 3 things: your time, your talent, or your treasure. And I think a way to protect ourselves from getting into this mindset where it's constantly outgoing and we find ourselves depleted emotionally, financially, in a whole range of different things, is to see giving and sharing as a trade. If I give something to you and I get something in return— time, talent, or treasure— something that enriches me, then this becomes a very productive relationship. Excuse me. But if I give something to you and I never get something back in return, in a sense, I'm bankrupting myself. So why would I continue to engage in that sort of behavior? It's detrimental to me. It shows that this really isn't a good relationship, and long-term, it's not sustainable. So I want to give you permission to reassess some of those relationships that you're giving to. And there is— if there isn't a sense of balance, if there isn't a sense of coming back, Then I want to give you permission to think it through and ask why. Now, I think there should always be 3 levels of relationships. There should be people that are giving into you, there are people that you are giving to, and then there's people on a horizontal level that are your peers. We should always try and have mentors, and we should always have people that we give selflessly to, but the majority of our relationships need to be on a peer level. There you go. Thoughts for today.
