DailyJim: When givers have to become matchers

Hello everyone, welcome to another Daily Gym. Today is Tuesday, October 8th, 2024. And today I want to talk about when givers have to become matchers.

So, I was thinking about how, I don't know if it was a month ago or so, I asked people on Facebook if they were excited and willing to give me money to do the work that I was doing. I also asked for other help if they were willing to give that to me. I think a lot of people may, at least the ones who responded, got stuck on me asking for people to give me money. And I've been thinking about it so much. And I started thinking, you know, these people who got really angry often are some of the most generous giving people in my life. Some of them are some of the highest tippers when they go to restaurants. They give so much help. They will give so much help.

One of them spent hours with me on the phone the other day talking to me about work and business models and this and that. And another, I came up, okay, I said, okay, maybe the giving model is too. So let me, instead of, let me call it crowd employing, which is more, you know, less giving giving oriented. And my friend said, yeah, it seems a bit more transactional. I said, oh man, maybe I shouldn't make it so transactional. Then I find out he actually wanted me to make it more transactional. And I'm confused because this guy is so generous.

And I was thinking about myself as well. What happens when I'm desperate need for money and the money is low? Often I have gone on Facebook or some other platform and said, hey, I'm going to run a class. The class is 40 or $50 here. Here's the class. So I go into this kind of transactional mindset. And today I started thinking about it. There's a book that came out many years ago called Give and Take by Adam Grant. And I think he's a professor at Wharton Business School or was. And what he talks about in the book is actually this idea of exchange orientation and communal orientation I've talked about before, but I think he gives much easier to to understand names. So he talks about what he calls givers, matchers, and takers.

And so he says what a giver is, again, now this doesn't mean the person is permanently in this state. It's just kind of a state of being or state of interacting. A giver is someone who gives and doesn't expect anything in return, especially doesn't expect anything direct in return.

Maybe emotional gratitude, gratification, something along those lines. But basically giving to give. And then you have matchers who give and try to give the exact amount that they were given and almost immediately. So if you give me a beer, I'll give you $5 just so that we're even so that it cancels out and can feel very uncomfortable if things don't match quickly. And then he says there's another group or another behavioral type called takers. or takers. And these are the ones who just take and don't give. Just take, take, take, and don't give. So you have the ones who give, and I would say don't receive much. The ones who give and receive try to make it absolutely equal in the same way. And then the last ones, the ones who only receive or actually take because it's not even asking to receive and don't give much. Now, the caveat is that he says the givers in an organization end up being at the bottom of the organization because they give, give, give, and they don't have as much to give anymore, and they run out of resources, they run out of energy, they burn out. But he says, unexpectedly, the givers also end up being at the top of the organization because they give, give, give, and so many people can kind of give to them and they're able to rise up. And he says the main difference, I think, the way that he framed it, the main difference is that the people, the givers who are successful are the ones who know when to give and when not to give. So in other words, I'd say are able to say no to other people or yes to themselves. But I think he's missing a key point. And maybe he's talked about this and I just haven't seen it. I think the givers who are very successful are the ones who are able to also receive. We're able to give, and then we're able to ask, we're able to receive, and we're able to ask people to give to us and receive it. So we're able to give, and we're able to ask people to give to us and let people give to us. And. And that's, when I think about it, that's what I'm trying to do more of. And I think when situations, okay, let me put it this way. When I run out of money, more than anything, when I run out of money, I tend to jump back into the matcher mindset, because that's how to get quick money. Quick money tends to be the one-off transactions with people. It doesn't need a relationship. It's, I will give you the service. You will give me this money right now. And then we'll both be on our way. I can do that. I think it feels really uncomfortable and awkward for me. And I think for a lot of other people, it feels really uncomfortable because they can tell I'm so generous and I'm such a giver. They're like why you no no like it's they're like you're doing too much you were hired to do this specific job why are you going above and beyond because i'm like oh the people need it like i want to help them like no no stop i remember when i worked in tanzania i remember my boss saying to me once he said and this is not to demean africa or east africa or tanzania in any way but i was working on this one uh design or something this report and he says jim it's good enough you have to remember this is Africa. That's good enough. And I was thinking, what? And I don't know if it was so much about this is Africa, but I think it's more of you're a perfectionistic and you're being a perfectionist. You're working so hard. You care so much about this. You don't have to give that much. You've given enough. You don't have to give even more. I'm like, no, but I need to give more. They're like, no, no, you don't have to give more. You're fine. And so I find that I I can go into that matching mode, but it really drives me nuts. And the side note, and I'll talk about another episode, is how I'm trying to create people who are giving more. I want a more generous world. That's the whole point or one of the main underlying points of why I do all this work. It's because I want to be more generous. I want to be more giving. I want other people to be more generous and more giving. To give money to somebody, not to give them a loan, like to give money and not expect that they have to pay back. Just give because you know that they need help. Or donate your time. Give time and energy and conversation and resources to people just because we know they either need them or they have a huge dream for them.

For the emotional reward and giving. And I think when I think about some of my friends and I think about me and some of the people I I care about.

A lot of us, and I'd say maybe naturally as humans, we want to give. And how many of us are forced into more of a matching mindset just so that we can pay the rent?

And maybe this is what one of my friends said, you know, we have to, I can't even remember how she phrased it, but it's almost like doing jobs we hate just so that we can pay the bills. And when I think about it, it's not even so much doing jobs that people hate, it's going into the matching mindset. It's being less of, less giving, more matching. And that, and the discomfort of that, especially for people who can be so open and loving and generous, and giving, and how we can see that this person doesn't belong doing this matching thing. They're not there. Some people you could see and go, you know what, this person's, it's core to them that they are, let's say a quote unquote matcher, not core, but they're very comfortable in that space. A lot of people, I think, are more comfortable in the giving space, but get forced down into that matching space. And so when I reflect on some of my friends who may have had the loudest responses to me asking people to give to me, I think it's often because maybe they love to give to other people and frankly are afraid to ask other people to give to them, maybe terrified to ask other people to give to them, maybe have so much animosity inside about that regardless, or don't want people to give to them because they have fear of receiving these things from others and therefore go into more of a matching mindset, even though that's not, how they like to be.

Now, I would like more people who are even the matchers to become givers. I'd like more people who are the takers to become matchers, to become givers. That's the whole goal is to help people be more giving, giving our hearts, giving our money, giving our time, giving our energy, giving our thoughts, our perspective, so much of our lives to ourselves selves and to others and asking and letting them give to us. That's what I'm trying to create. And so when I, I don't know, this gives me a little bit of solace because I think I was feeling so frustrated that some of these people were, because I care so deeply about these people and I know they care so deeply about me. And I think that's it. They care so deeply about me and they They are kind of maybe stuck having to be more of in this matching mode. And maybe there's a bit of resentment that if I were to be able to break out, maybe a jealousy that if I could figure it out, that I can be really giving and have people give to me, that they wouldn't be able to do that. They'd be stuck in the matching mode and they can't come out into the giving mode. But my hope is that it can inspire them. It can empower them to get to that giving mode, to be more giving and to let people give to them and to ask people to give to them so that they can give more.

I want to give so much and I need people to give to me so that I can give to others. I need it. Otherwise, I will burn out. I will become a matcher or I'll become worse. I'll go into the taking mode. And I really will go crazy if I go into it. I go crazy just going into the matching mode. Again, because I see the way it impacts me, but I also see the way that other people are like, what are you doing? You're not supposed to be in this mode. That's not how you should operate. You're such a giving person. Why are you all of a sudden trying to force me to match?

So man, I keep going over 10 minutes. So maybe I'll say these are now five to 15 minute longs, but I think I'll try to cut them shorter.

Anyways, that's the lesson for today. I realized that I want people to be more matching, or sorry, I want people to be more giving, less matching.

And when we, people who love to give are forced to match, be in matching mode, we can go crazy, become resentful of the people who might be able to break it out, break out of that. But we also might be inspired by these people.

So, let me keep going forward. So, if you would like to help me give to more people, I would appreciate if you give me your time, your energy, your money, your apartment that I could stay in, your couch I could crash in, your connection to a person I've never met but would be a really interesting podcast guest, or whatever. I need so much help and support so that I can help and support other people. So talk to you tomorrow.