Matthew Hussey suggests picking one person each week from a list of up to 52 and sending them something small: flowers, a card, a call. He says spreading gestures throughout the year instead of bunching them at holidays makes each one feel more meaningful and makes people want to reciprocate.
Matthew Hussey here with Love Life. I wanted to give you something quick today, a quick little tip that you can apply every week of your year, this year, that by the end of the year will mean that your friends, your family, your contacts, your colleagues will feel closer to you, more connected to you, and have a greater sense of reciprocity towards you. In other words, that feeling that they want to give back in their relationship with you than ever before. So how do you do this? This is going to be very, very simple. I recently heard that one of my staff was moving, and one of my other staff, one of my kind, caring employees, came to me and said, you know, since this staff member is moving, perhaps we should send her something. So we ended up sending her a little basket of flowers to go on her kitchen shelf when she moved. And it arrived. And I had actually, by the time it arrived, I'd forgotten all about it. And then on our team meeting, we heard from this staff member, and she said, I just. I'm so grateful that you guys send it. I told my boyfriend that I work with the coolest people in the world and that I love. I have the best job ever. I love my job. She said, you guys are so amazing. Thank you so much. And it meant the world to her. This. This gesture meant so much to this person. Although a simple thing, it reminded me of just how important it is to take that time to implement small gestures with the people that matter. And one of the mistakes we make is we wait until an event like the holidays, we wait until a birthday, or we wait until some special occasion to show them that we care. And the danger of that is that, let's say, at Christmas, if you want to show a gesture to someone on Christmas, firstly, you're trying to figure out 50 gestures all at the same time for people that you care about, which becomes overwhelming for you and ends up with that focus being diluted on any one person's gesture. And if it's their birthday, they're receiving 10, 20, 30 gestures from people. Gifts, thank you, cards, you name it, from all different people on this same day. Which means that your gesture gets diluted by the fact that their focus is diversified over all of those different parties. Here's the beauty of doing something for someone out of the blue. You're not distracted by having to do 50 other things for people at once, and they're not distracted by having 50 different things done for them on the same day. So both get to be more special. So my challenge to you is this. I want you Today to make a list of the people that matter that by the end of the year, you want to have shown you matter to me. Make that list. It may be 10 people, it may be 50 people, but right now, I certainly don't want it to be more than 50 people. In fact, to be more specific, it can be 52. Each week from now on, I want you to perform one small gesture for someone that matters to you. It might be sending them flowers. It might be simply sending them a card, telling them what you think. It may even be a phone call. It doesn't always have to be a gift. It might be, you know, the gift of just spending time with someone on the phone for 10, 20 minutes. It might be inviting someone somewhere. Whatever it is, I want you to perform a gesture for one person each week that matters to you, because the people that are important to you will feel so loved and thought of by you in a way that they never have before because you've actually systematically structured those moments of thoughtfulness for them. And you've also made sure to make a list so that every single person gets that air time in your thoughts. So this is really important. It will make a huge difference to your life. It's simple to perform because it's only one gesture a week, right? I could have said three or four a week. I even toyed with that in the beginning. And then I was thinking, no, let's make this as simple as possible. One is enough. By the end of a year, you've got 52 people in. That's incredible that most of us don't show that thought for more than five people in a year. And you're doing it for 52. All right, one gesture per week. This is going to make a big difference. Thank you for listening, guys. I will see you soon. By the way, join me on facebook.com coach Matthew Hussey if you're not there already. I'm constantly posting new advice, new articles from my brother, new videos, new radio shows. Make sure you come and join me on there for the discussion, and I'll see you in the next episode of Love Life. Sa.
