I remember receiving my very first fan letter from a listener named Fran. She’d been with the show since episode one, quietly supporting from the sidelines.
Her email said my podcast was the most meaningful one she’d ever found, that it made common sense to her in a way other shows didn’t.
I honestly thought it was a scam at first. I’d never received a fan letter before and didn’t know how to react.
But Fran didn’t want anything from me. She just wanted to say thank you.
Later, she went even further. She tracked down my mailing address from one of my email newsletters and sent me an actual letter through the postal service. Inside it was a check.
She wrote that she wanted to show her appreciation for the work I do, that she doesn’t buy much anymore and wanted to support the show the way she supports NPR.
I was floored. Someone went above and beyond just to acknowledge me, to show she’s out there listening and appreciating what I do.
This kind of acknowledgment creates a shift. It validates you and gives meaning and purpose to what you’re doing. When you acknowledge someone, you affect both them and yourself. It’s almost selfish how easy it is to be compassionate and get so much from giving to others.
About ten years ago, I sent a letter to my high school creative writing teacher, Mrs. Mills. She let me be as creative as I wanted in her class. Almost nothing was off limits. I remember how free I felt and how supported.
She let me express without judgment, even when what I was doing might have been considered offensive. I wrote her three pages telling her how she helped shape me, how her contribution is still felt today. Her response was so appreciative and heartwarming. She asked if she could share my letter with her class.
My step-uncle had no kids, so when he died, he willed his money and possessions to all his brother’s kids. I got a letter stating I had money coming from someone I hardly knew, someone I’m not even blood related to. He did the next best thing. I still tear up thinking how generous and selfless that was. His legacy will always be with me, and by talking about him now, I’m honoring him.
Who can you acknowledge today?
Who has affected your life that you haven’t thought about in a while?
When you acknowledge someone, you create a positive shift in both of you. It’s like buying the meal for the person behind you in the drive-thru. You feel good because they feel good.
The Difference Between Giving and Depleting
There’s a critical distinction that determines whether your generosity energizes or exhausts you. I learned to become a different person around dangerous people when I was young. It was a survival technique, something many children of alcoholics do to live through dysfunctional family life. By watching my stepfather’s behavior and acting certain ways around him, I learned what set him off and what wouldn’t. I became what people called a chameleon.
The problem was I took this adaptive behavior into all my relationships. I became the person I believed others wanted me to be. For friendships, this worked great for my friends because they got the perfect friend. In romantic relationships, it was great for the first few years until they realized I didn’t have my own personality. Something felt off for them, and they slowly distanced themselves. I couldn’t be authentic because the only way I knew to be was the person I believed they wanted.
I was giving all I could in the only way I knew how, and every relationship would end. I felt depleted. It wasn’t until I got married that I figured out giving more of myself without regard for myself was causing most of the stress and negativity in all my relationships.
Giving comes from two places: compassion and ego. When you give solely from compassion, you’ll always have the same amount, if not more, good feelings than when you started. When you give solely from ego, expecting something in return, it’s depleting. It’s that attempt at a quick high over a selfless offer. The result may be a burst of good feelings or a setup for disappointment. Either way, it’s depleting because of your expectations.
Giving from compassion means wanting the experience to be all about the other person. Giving from ego means wanting the experience to be about you. The other person may still benefit, but your ego wants to be acknowledged and maybe even paid back. There’s nothing wrong with either approach, but you need to understand the difference.
Giving from compassion is like leaving chocolates on your coworker’s desk without telling them who did it. It’s making an anonymous donation. Now, if you wanted them to acknowledge you for that gift, that’s involving your ego. But is wanting acknowledgment necessarily bad? It depends on your intentions and the outcome you’re trying to achieve.
If the outcome you want is a smiling face or a happy person, then either way you give is fine. Even if you like having your ego stroked a little, you still want good to come to the other person. But if the outcome you want is for them to eventually do something for you, then you’re trying to influence them in a deceptive way. This is purely ego-driven and will probably create future disappointment.
The ego is also where fear, worry, and obligation rise up from. When you give because you feel obligated or fearful of the repercussions of not giving, that’s your ego making you feel guilty or fearful or some other negative emotion that causes you to violate your own personal boundaries.
What Your Intentions Reveal About Your Giving
Intentions pave the way to every future decision and all future behavior. What you intend when you give is directly related to how you feel both short-term and long-term. If your intention is to see someone smile and get that good feeling when they receive, the beauty is that once you do it, your part is done. You can feel good knowing they feel good. It comes back to you right away.
One of the best things that happens when I go out to eat is getting a grumpy server. I love this because it’s an opportunity to brighten someone’s day. They come over clearly jaded and grumpy. One of the first things I say is something like, “How’s the crowd tonight? Are they giving you a hard time?” Almost always, their body language relaxes a little, as if they found someone who understands. All servers get a hard time from one or more people on every shift. When a customer connects with them in their world, they feel understood and acknowledged. It’s amazing to see the transformation.
You can do this with anyone who looks frustrated or stressed. Try to think about what they’d be stressed about and express that thought for them. This is especially effective in service industries where people aren’t allowed to complain. I love doing this with customer service reps who have to follow a script and deal with angry callers all day. One of the first things I say is, “So you get a lot of angry callers throughout the day?” Almost always, they’ll laugh. It makes the conversation go so much smoother.
Now, I may actually get better service, but if my sole intention was to manipulate them so they’d give me better service without caring whether they felt better, things like that seem to backfire eventually. When you set an intention, it’s compared to your morals, ethics, and values. This happens in milliseconds, but if there’s any conflict, it becomes a negative emotion that gets swallowed. If your intentions aren’t in alignment with those three things, you plant a seed of future unhappiness.
Think about if your intention was to steal someone’s wallet. Unless you’re psychopathic, there’s a part of you that knows it’s wrong. Because you know it’s wrong, that negative emotion is formed and gets stored in the body. All negative emotions are felt in the body somewhere. When you have an intention behind your action that isn’t in alignment with your morals, ethics, or values, you create conflict in your mind and body.
Giving with good intentions always leads to good results, even when it appears the results weren’t so good. The reason is you’re coming from a genuine place. Your heart was in the right place and you created good feelings. Both negative and positive emotions are felt in the body. When you build the body with good emotions by giving with only the best intentions, you’ll stay happy and healthy longer.
Acting As If You’ve Already Been Paid Back
If you have trouble giving from a compassionate place, there’s a powerful shift you can make. Act as if the person you’re giving to has already paid you back. If they’ve already done something for you, it’s even easier. It’s giving with no expectations, as if they’ve earned it. Whether it’s true or not, this is a wonderful way to feel good about giving, and it doesn’t obligate you to wait for something in return.
Whenever I lend money nowadays, the very first thing I do in my head is call it a gift. I lend with the intention of never getting it back. I tell the person I do expect it back, but I know it’s likely I’ll never see it again. This allows me to let it go and move on. Lending money can be one of the fastest ways to lose someone as a friend or relative. If they find you wearing new shoes or planning your next vacation but you still owe them money, expect dirty looks and hard feelings.
When you lend or give, act as if they’ve already paid you back. As if they just worked forty hours and you were handing them a paycheck for a job well done. You can let it go. If they pay you back, great. If not, well, you never expected them to. If you absolutely cannot give acting as if the debt is already forgiven, then maybe you shouldn’t be giving. If you can’t afford to give because you’ll get upset if you don’t get it back, then don’t give. If there’s a possibility the friendship will be destroyed, it’s better to say no now than to ask about the debt later.
Years ago, I had a girlfriend who was wearing jewelry she thought would look better on someone else she saw on the beach. She approached the woman and said, “I can see you in this more than I can see myself in it.” She gave her that jewelry and the woman was glowing, shocked and thrilled. This kind of gift you know won’t come back to you, at least not from that person, because you’ll never see them again. It’s a warm feeling to give without expecting anything in return. It closes the loop so lingering thoughts don’t linger. You can’t get upset at someone if they owe you nothing.
Giving when you expect something in return is like being addicted to a drug. You set yourself up for a reward every time you give. When you get that reward, that reciprocation, it gives you a quick high. When you don’t get it, it gives you a quick low. It’s variety and uncertainty at its finest, but without ever knowing what will happen, it can be no fun always waiting for something that may never take place.
Honoring Your Personal Boundaries While Giving
I’ve seen people with hearts so big they forget about themselves in the process. This sounds noble and compassionate, but it can sometimes exhaust and deplete all their inner resources. I’m talking about people who say yes to everything, whether out of fear, guilt, or because they believe it’s the right thing to do.
Most of the time when you give too much, it’s out of fear. Too much in the sense that it starts to deplete your energy, where it drains you and you become more submissive than compassionate. This is a big danger zone because of one very important detail you must keep in mind whenever you give.
The quality and compassion of your gift is only as genuine as your level of compassion towards yourself.
When you give out of compassion, does it drain you or energize you? That’s how you can measure that statement. When you feel at all drained or depleted or feel negativity in any way when giving, you’re not truly giving. You’re submitting. You’re submitting to fear or worry or any number of negative thoughts or feelings because of what might happen if you don’t give. When you give from this place, a place of lack or submission, you’re actually taking away from yourself.
Giving from a non-genuine place is like chipping away at your soul. It removes the purpose and meaning behind giving in the first place. Any person or cause that expects you to feel depleted when giving is probably not someone or something you need to associate with anyway. The typical problem is when the person or cause you’re giving to doesn’t know you’re depleting yourself. They just see the end result and think everything is great.
To make sure you don’t give beyond your own personal boundaries and limitations, you need to monitor yourself with a simple question. The next time you give, ask yourself: Is this good for both me and for them?
I remember doing a project with a good friend who was totally into it and loving where we were going. But every time I contributed, I felt like it was taking something away from me. Not only the time I could have spent on other things, but my thoughts and ideas were all being forced to think about things I didn’t want to think about. I had little passion for what we were doing, but because I felt obligated now that someone else was really excited, I kept trudging forward. It got to the point where I didn’t even want him to mention the project.
I was giving out of obligation because I committed to it, and out of fear and worry that I’d lose a friendship if I backed out. But I wasn’t taking into account compassion towards myself. I asked myself: If I am truly compassionate towards myself first and foremost, what would I do? What I came up with was apologizing to my friend, telling him I was wrong for committing, and dropping the project completely. As soon as I came to terms with that realization, I felt clarity. I felt peace come over me.
I called him and said, “I’m so sorry about this, but I have to back out of this project. I made a commitment, I know how much time and effort you put into this, but I’m getting drained thinking about it. I simply don’t have the time or energy to put into it. I don’t want to be the reason it fails.”
He responded with the sweetest words I could ever hear: “Of course. Take care of yourself first and foremost.” I nearly teared up. I expected him to be angry and dump our friendship, but our true characters are always revealed during the most challenging moments. He wasn’t angry. He was compassionate towards me, not the project. We canned the project and remain friends to this day.
My personal boundaries had been compromised, but I was continuing to move forward. I had reached my limitations and no longer felt good about it. When I did some introspection, I realized I wasn’t being compassionate towards myself. When I did that, everything fell into place. The bonus was that my friend’s priority was me, not the project. This revealed his true character. When you honor yourself, you may get people mad at you. They may not be happy, or maybe they feel like you led them on. But if they honor you, they’ll honor where you need to be.
If you’re giving and find yourself depleting in energy and passion, it’s time to stop and think about what you need to do to be compassionate towards yourself. When you lose compassion for yourself, you can’t give from the same place anymore. Compassionate giving comes from a compassionate place. Gifts of obligation come from a more forced place.
There are times where you just have to give no matter what. If you’re sick and tired of your screaming kids, you may feel like your personal boundaries are being crossed. Kids are one of the few things you kind of have to care for no matter what because you made them. The choice to exist wasn’t theirs.
When you can’t find the compassion but have chosen to take on the responsibility of having children, then you must come to an acceptance of what is. It’s the absolute acceptance that it will be this way, and you can either stay conflicted and upset or give in and accept. Acceptance removes resistance, allowing positive emotions to rise up and through you.
One last thing on this. We often think we’re the only person in the world who can give a particular set of skills or money or time or whatever. We can believe no one else could do what we do, so we might stay committed to things way beyond the time we should.
If you find yourself in that situation, just remember that giving comes from the heart, not the body. When you stay energized and passionate, you can give from that place that is healthy and long-lasting. When you give and it starts to wear down your mind and body, even though your heart may still be in it, that is unhealthy and short-lived.
If you really want to change the world or even a single person, then you must last long enough to do so. You do that by honoring yourself, knowing when you’ve given more than your heart can handle. Once the body and mind become tired, the heart usually follows. At that point, there’s no compassion left, only obligation. Soon you have nothing left to give.
Giving comes from the heart, not the body. When you feel the body start to feel the effects of giving, you’ve probably passed the point of compassion. Giving from the heart keeps you energized, but when the body and mind start getting worn down, you get tired and ultimately have nothing left to give.
After I got married, my wife taught me something extremely valuable. She taught me how to honor my personal boundaries. She did this by honoring her own and letting me know when I wasn’t honoring mine. She spoke up when I offended her and would use I statements like, “I was offended by what you just said. I feel bad when you say things like that.” Comments like this really brought it home for me. To think I was causing the person I married to feel bad made me feel bad.
She could have pointed the finger at me and said, “How dare you say that! I can’t believe you would be so insensitive!” But she didn’t. She looked inward and asked herself how my behavior made her feel. Then she expressed how she felt to me, in turn giving me a chance to respond from a place of empowerment, not defensiveness. I got the chance to respond, and most of the time it was a moment to reflect about what I said or did and understand exactly what my intentions were.
This kind of communication is key in any relationship. It’s a place of giving and receiving. She gave to me out of compassion in the sense that she spoke what was true for her deep down inside. She honored herself first, expressing what was going on inside of her, then gave me the opportunity to honor myself too so I could express what was going on inside of me.
She gave me the gift of compassion by allowing me to be myself. The more I practiced that, the more compassion I felt. The more compassion you grow towards yourself, the more compassionate you can be towards others.
When you’re compassionate, giving is easy, but it starts inside you. If you don’t have the energy to give to others, then you aren’t being compassionate towards yourself. This is where to begin.
 | Paul Colaianni Paul Colaianni is an Emotional Abuse Expert and Behavior and Relationship Specialist who has been analyzing complex relationship dynamics since 2010. As the creator of the Healed Being program and host of the top-rated Love and Abuse and The Overwhelmed Brain podcasts, with over 21 million downloads worldwide, he specializes in helping people recognize hidden manipulation, navigate emotionally abusive relationships, and empower themselves to make informed decisions. |
Thank you for this amaizing text 🙂
You are welcome! 😉