Give Yourself This Gift

 I hope your holiday season is full of love, fun, and deliciousness. And that you didn’t exhaust yourself, physically and financially, with gift-giving.

As we head into a new year, where hope and resolutions are front and center, I want to ask you to give yourself a gift.

The gift of true generosity.

Oh, I know you are a great giver: you give gifts, you give time, you give your all to your family, a job, your community.

I am talking about gifting true generosity.

For any gift to be grounded in true generosity it must be as generous to the giver as much as the recipient.

And I ask you, the giver of so much, whether your acts of giving are generous to you.

Do you give money to others when it means depleting your savings?

Do you support adult children when it means you are falling behind on your retirement savings?

Do you give so much of your time that it saps you of energy to the point you are so exhausted you are on edge and stressed out?

Do you give so much time to work that you don’t have the time to show up for the people you love most to the extent you wish you could?

It is easy to tell ourselves that all giving is good because it is for the benefit of someone else. But that’s only half the story. True generosity means that giving must not drain you in the process.

This is not about becoming selfish. It is about caring about yourself as much as you care about others. Not less.

And when you commit to practicing true generosity it has a sneaky way of making you a happier, stronger, and more confident you. That’s what you deserve! And for the record, a happier, stronger, and more confident you are going to be in better shape to help all those in your life—personal and professional.

Saying no out of love rather than saying yes out of fear is how you focus on building your emergency savings and retirement accounts. Giving a little bit less time to others to have a little bit more time for you is vital self-care.

Now that we are turning the page on the 2024 holiday season, I hope you will consider making 2025 the year you focus on being truly generous.