DailyJim: It can feel good to provide for someone

Hello everyone, welcome to another Daily Gym. Today is Thursday, January 9th, 2024, and I want to talk about how it can feel good to provide for someone.

So yesterday I talked about money can't buy love, but it can give love, and the concept today is related. Often, a lot of us can feel really good when we are the provider, when we are taking care of things, when we are supporting and lifting somebody else up.

And often, one aspect of providing is financially.

Paying for things, so going out for a meal and maybe paying for someone for the meal, paying for their schooling, whether it's a child of ours or maybe sometimes we even adopt people kind of informally and pay for their schooling, especially in other countries where public schools are not free, as they are in the U.S. And maybe some other countries where they are.

But in many romantic relationships, in many family relationships, and sometimes community relationships as well, we provide for others. And again, provide can be wide-ranging. You'd be giving a lot of gifts and support and help and support in different ways. But a main one, I think often when we hear the word provide, especially in a romantic context, is this person's a provider. Someone who is a provider often is someone who is giving financial support.

And it can feel good. Honestly, I think sometimes we as humans prefer to be the one providing rather than the one being provided for. In other words, we prefer to give rather than to receive.

Maybe that's because when we're receiving, the person who is giving is watching us to see our reaction and there's a lot of pressure for us to enjoy. Here's a gift. you don't like the gift then it kind of ruins the whole interaction it can sour the occasion but um yeah maybe that's why we don't like to receive because there's a lot of pressure but i think a lot of us prefer to give because when we give something we can see the reaction that the other person has and again ideally it's a what we'd say you know a reaction that we want, and then we feel the way that we want to feel and um hell i think sometimes we even do this when we're seeking vengeance. I don't know if you could say giving a gift is kind of, or vengeance is giving a gift, but there is that desire to cause a certain emotion in the other person and then to feel a certain emotion as a result, I would say. And yeah, so I think a lot of times I've been reflecting on this idea of like asking people to give me money as a person, but asking people to give me money as a leader. And in both, kind of worried that people won't want to, or if they do, they're doing it just because they feel bad and they want to kind of relieve their guilt and they hope that they can stop giving in the future. And I went through a thought experiment yesterday. Maybe I talked about it on the show. I can't remember. I was so late. But this idea of somebody giving a certain amount of money per month, financially supporting, providing and then hoping that somebody else will come in and provide you know somebody else will come in and support.

Instead of realizing how much fun it can be to support, to provide, if somebody wants to, if somebody's able to. Now, if you're making $10,000 a year and you're providing $10,000 to somebody else, well, it may not be as fun.

But if you're making $10,000 a year and you're providing $10 to somebody else, it can be really fun. Um um so a lot of it is on whether we want to do the giving and just maybe recognizing that sometimes the giving feels really good so when we give to a non-profit we give to a gift during the holidays to somebody else when we give to a stranger on the streets or when we give to a stranger even, not on the streets, but maybe you're in the store and somebody drops something and you go help them pick it up. Or maybe you're in the store and, I mean, this happened to me in Nairobi once where I was in the bar and there was a guy next to me and he was paying for his drinks and his card was rejected. Once, twice, thrice. I turned to the guy, I was impatient. I wanted my drinks. I turned to the guy, I said, hey, can I just pay for your drinks? Just tell me how much it is. He said, what? I said, yeah, man, let me just pay for a drink. So what? So he told me, I don't know, it was like $10 or something. I said, fine, here, let me just pay. He says, no, man, like, can I pay you back? Like, do you have M-Pesa? Can I send you? I said, if you want to, you can send the money tomorrow. But like, man, let's just have fun. And then I got my drinks, and the next day he texted me. He sent me money through M-Pesa, which is mobile money, and then invited me out, and I went and hung with his friends. He was originally from India, but he had been in Kenya for maybe, I don't know, 10 years or something. He was like, dude, that doesn't happen in Nairobi.

It doesn't happen in Nairobi.

Some people will be like, oh, man, you're so generous. You're so kind. Yeah, I mean, yeah, I was trying to help him out, But I was also being selfish because I think a lot of times in giving to other people, maybe always, in giving to others, there is the benefit that we get, the emotional benefit. One, I was grateful to help him relieve some of his stress and his anxiety. And two, I was grateful to get my own drinks.

I wanted to go back and dance. I didn't want to stand there all night waiting for his card to work. And so sometimes giving to others can feel really good. And I mean, maybe it doesn't always have that kind of direct, I want to go get my drinks selfishness in it. But even sometimes when somebody is really struggling or somebody is really excited, kind of the opposite end of the spectrum, and we give them, we provide for them, not just non-cash things, but cash things as well, it can feel really good knowing that what I did contributed to this person getting to that point. Even if the person doesn't necessarily realize it, or even if sometimes they're not grateful.

Like, knowing this kid is now going to school because of me. Knowing that I gave this money to a friend and he used it to pay for food for his kids.

Knowing that I gave money to a cleaning lady once because her sister was in the hospital and she was able to go visit her in the hospital.

It can feel really good to help people out, especially financially. But we just don't talk about the sign much. So we're always like, why are people donating? Sometimes they talk about the warm glow of donation.

So I think it's something I want to remember that it can feel really good to give, and sometimes it can feel really good to give money to somebody else, to an organization, but also to individuals. And uh yeah what if we started giving more to people we see as leaders individuals who we think have the current ability and the future ability to uh influence society and change society in the direction we want to go so i will talk more about that probably tomorrow but i'm going to end right now so it's not too long hey eight minutes we're getting better all right talk to you all oh not tomorrow maybe tomorrow maybe i'll do a special friday edition, gotta figure out this website stuff alright, take care y'all.