DailyJim: When givers don’t want other people to give to them

Hello everyone, welcome to another Daily Gym. This is Wednesday, October 9th, 2024. Today I'm going to talk about when givers don't want other people to give to them.

Okay, when I say them, I can include myself as well. I think maybe I talked about this a little bit yesterday, this idea of givers, matchers, and takers, or giving, matching, and taking. I think many, you know, they talked about how givers often are at the bottom of the organization and the top of the organization, depending on whether, I mean, the guy's theory is when people give only when they want to. My take on that is actually, I think it's more about whether givers like to be given things, whether they like when other people give to them without the expectation of anything immediately in return. And my gut feeling is that many people I know give freely, give very generously. But when somebody gives to them, they feel very uncomfortable and immediately turn into a matcher. So I think of a family friend of ours, you know, and often you give this person some help and they immediately return it. You're like, why? You take them out to dinner and you give them some money for dinner and they're like, no, no, I can't, I can't take any of your money. And then they try to pay for the tip or they slide some money into your pocket it or they go around to try to not only match, sometimes even give more money. It's like, well, why are you paying that much money? You're just one person. Why are you paying so much money?

But when they give, they give so generously. And if you try to reciprocate and match, they get very angry and refuse to take it. And so it's interesting. It's this idea of wanting to give and receive nothing tangible in return immediately, like feeling very offended if the other person tries to give back. And conversely, when somebody gives to them, really, really, really feeling uncomfortable if they don't pay back immediately, really not letting there be that imbalance. And I think about a lot of my friends in my life like this. I think about me. I think about a lot of people who I think can be very generous in giving, but are very stingy in letting other people give to them. And I wonder what that word could be. So stingy is more about whether people give out. It's almost like making, forcing other people to be stingy with them. I don't know. I don't know how to, how do we frame it? Forcing other people to be stingy with us or Or, yeah, in a way, I think sometimes we do a disservice by not letting other people give to us, not letting other people help us without us immediately trying to cancel out the help. And I wonder if in that book, the people who identify as givers or who he would identify as givers often have animosity towards each other, the ones who are at the bottom versus the ones who are at the top. And then the animosity is not about in the behavior that they have in terms of giving out. It's about the behavior and their attitudes about things that are given in, things that are given towards us instead of away from us and are from us, from us and towards us. And I think so many of us don't like when things are given towards us or to us. We like to give things from us. And this leads to burnout.

This leads to resentment. This leads to broken relationships. This leads to exhaustion. This leads to poverty in some ways. This leads to, yeah. And I wonder how much of kind of a lot of poverty, it's not that people aren't generous, it's that we don't let other people be generous with us. That we're a generous giver, but not a generous receiver.

And there's this almost, yeah, I feel kind of that resentment. If I ask people to give to me, if I want people to give to me or to give to what I'm working on, some other people will see it as a taker. A lot of the people who are very generous and very giving, oh, you're just a taker. You don't give back. What have you really given? How do you prove to me that you've given? It's like, you don't have to give to me. I'm not forcing you to give. But maybe that's where the idea of, in Adam Grant's book about how some of the givers at the top who are successful are the ones who who are able to only give when they want to and not compulsively give.

Are able to, again, say no to others, but really saying yes to ourselves and recognizing that if we keep giving all this, we're going to run out immediately. If we keep giving without letting other people give to us. And so one way is to become less giving, right? So if we want to maintain the balance of our well-being, whatever money who knows then we only give when other people give to us and then we maintain the stable level um it's very stable it's not kind of up and down but if we give, then we're low but if people give to us then we go up and we give we're low it's it's more of ups and downs um but if we only give then we just go low and low and low and low um so i.

Yeah, I think the worry is that a lot of people say the solution is to just stop giving so much and become much more of a matcher. Only give when people want to give to you. Maybe that's not actually the solution. Maybe that's one solution, but that solution can lead to a lot more indifference. That solution can lead to a lot more apathy, a lot more disconnection, a lot more emotional distance. More zombie-like in some ways. um the opposite can lead to so much more life if we let people give to us not just let if we want people to give to us so many of us don't want people to give us anything we don't want people to give us a massage we don't want people to pick us up when we're falling down we don't want people to um give us money oh we sure don't want people to give us money um we don't want people to help us when we need help or when we're trying to do something that's much bigger than ourselves. And again, we need help to do the big dream. And we need help. We need people to give us resources, time, energy, perspective, money, love, and care.

But so many of us, I don't need it. No, no, no. I am the person who only gives. And if I am to receive, then I must us do it through a matching scheme. Why? Why? Why? It's almost unfair that you're out there and you get to get the joys of giving to other people, but you are depriving other people from the joy of giving to you. As if giving is a gut-wrenching experience. I think it's less about, I think it's so much, I think it's less about us even paying attention to how much it might help somebody else and just our own fears of receiving love, our own fears of letting somebody love us that much. Fears of maybe getting attached to this person, fears of maybe disappointing this person, maybe fears of so many, fears of us becoming in our mind greedy, selfish, and a taker, or just the fact that we're human beings and we give and we receive, we give and we are given things. And it's okay. It's how things go around. And so for me, something I'm really reflecting on is that when I ask people to give me, if I want somebody to give something to me, again, that can be tangible, it can be intangible, but even asking or wanting this, and when some people have such a strong reaction to it, maybe it's because they really don't want people to give things to them. And they really can't control how much they give to others. But I don't even like that. Again, I don't like that so much. Now they can't control how much they give to others. It's more of, ooh.

So many of us give to others, but we don't give to ourselves. So we don't want other people to give to us, and we also don't give to ourselves much. That's maybe it. And so when somebody sees me asking for others to give to me, and when they see me giving things to myself, doing things that I want, prioritizing things that I want, saying yes to myself, I think it can make a lot of people feel resentful and jealous. this. But should I stop doing that? Or should I have the courage to keep going and the strength to keep going so that I hope one day they start to give more to themselves as well?

I didn't ask people for money. Hey, give me money and try to trick you into giving me money. It's like, if you feel excited, give me money. If they don't feel excited, I don't want their money. But some may feel compelled anyways to help. But that's the point is help me, but also help yourself. If you say no, that's okay. Because for me, that means you're saying yes to yourself. I'm actually glad. But that concept can be so foreign. A lot of us weren't taught this. A lot of us have been taught the opposite. And so for me, it's, I want to give to others and I want to give to myself and I want others to give to me as well. The more I want to give to myself, the more I think I want others to give to me, and that's okay.

Because I want others to give to me, I also want others to give to themselves.

So I hope that makes some sense. I'll talk to you all tomorrow. I'm a bit tired. And yeah, hopefully this is not too long. Almost 10 minutes. There we go, 10 minutes. All right, ciao.