Giving and receiving are a natural part of life, just like an inhale and an exhale.  Both are an essential part of life satisfaction.  Both are also a necessary part of relationships.  But people can have a painful relationship with giving or receiving or both.  A while ago, I did a video titled: How To Receive.  If you feel you have trouble receiving, you will want to watch that video!  Today, in this article, we’re going to talk about How To Give.

To give is to present, bestow, provide, deliver, hand over, commit, entrust, or transfer the possession of something voluntarily without expectation of compensation.  There are a multitude of different reasons why someone might have resistance to giving.  A person might have an issue giving a specific thing for a specific reason.  Or they might have an issue giving in general.

Some examples of resistance to giving a specific thing are: A person might not want to give a gift because they feel like giving a gift supports consumerism and greed.  Or that it allows people to value material things over people and love.  A person may not want to give a child a special item because they feel the child cannot value it enough to take care of it.  A person may not want to give a compliment on someone’s work because they feel the compliment will cause them to stop striving for improvement and become lazy.  A person might not want to give forgiveness because they feel that doing so somehow condones the person’s actions.  A person may not want to give financial support because they fear it will inspire dependency.

Some examples of resistance to giving in general are:  We may feel like the law of the land in this world is ‘every man for himself’ and so, because we expect to receive nothing from others, we are locked in personal survival mode and don’t want to give any of our personal resources or energy away.  We may fear that if we give something, a person will now expect that from us and become entitled, in which case we start to feel like rather than choosing to give something, others are taking it from us.  We may have trauma relative to things we give being received instead of rejected and so we stopped giving and instead feel frozen at the idea of extending any part of our energy or resources to someone else.  We may have so much trauma about giving and receiving being a manipulative tool used for control and abuse that we rejected the idea of giving entirely.  We may not want to give because we feel it sets off an awkward expectation of reciprocation in others.  We may not want to give because we feel lack and starved and depleted and so we feel that only further depletion and further lack will come to us if we give. Or that we genuinely have nothing to give.

Because giving is like life’s outbreath in terms of energy, and because it is essential to life satisfaction, let’s look at How To Give.

1. The first step to giving is resolving your resistance about giving.  This is the case if you are resistant to giving a specific thing or giving in general.  You need to dive as deep as you can to gain awareness of the unique personal reasons why in order to see how your perspective might need to change or what you might need to do or to not do.  Don’t dive into this with the idea that you should give or that your mission is to get yourself to give things up.  Rather, do this with open curiosity really wanting to fully understand your reasons for not wanting to give; as well as any trauma that might have created those reasons.  You might find out that the right thing for you to do is to choose to be consciously self-centered for a while or build up your personal resources.  Two of the best methods for this are The Completion Process and Parts Work.  To learn how to do The Completion Process, you can read my book that is quite literally titled: The Completion Process.  Alternatively, you can go to www.completionprocess.com and find a practitioner to walk you through it.  If you do this, use the sensation of the trigger that arises when you think about giving whatever it is that you are resistant to giving.  To learn how to do Parts Work, you can watch my video titled: Parts Work (What Is Parts Work And How To Do It).  If you do this, talk to the part of yourself who has resistance to giving whatever it is that you have resistance to giving.  Or the part of you that hates giving or doesn’t want to give in general.  As a general rule, do not give unless you feel in alignment with giving.  This means, if you don’t feel in alignment with giving something, you have some resistance that needs to be heard out and resolved.
    
2. Change your perspective about giving.  If you are able to do this, then giving will feel good.  To help you out with some of this, I will now give to you some different perspectives.  The first is that giving is like breathing out.  You must breathe air out in order to breathe air in.  Only breathing in and holding your breath means death.  Think of giving and receiving like breathing.  Energy in this universe is means to be in this flow of in and out.  In order to receive, you must give in the same way that in order to breathe in, you must breathe out.
   The second thing is that a thing should be where it can fulfill its unique mission and purpose and reason for being.  And all things have a mission, purpose and reason for being.  The Native Americans have a giveaway ceremony called a potlatch.  It is a ritual practiced to offer or give away without attachment or regret.  In this ritual, things were not given because they were no longer needed or wanted.  Instead, it was common for a person to give away his or her most prized possession if he or she knew that the item would fulfill its purpose better elsewhere.  All things in existence were understood to play a role in creation and thus have a particular mission.  To many Native Americans, to have something sitting in a box or in the attic or closet was to deny a thing of its mission and purpose.  And also to deny other people, whose wellbeing would better be served by it.  So, the thing someone else would value or the cherished thing whose mission of service would be better completed with someone else, was given to that person.  To do otherwise was to dishonor the medicine of not only the item/tool itself but also the maker of the item, if the item did in fact have one.  Walk through your home with this in mind.
   The third thing is that if what you want is a world of generosity and abundance, you must cast your vote.  But your vote is cast in this life by where you put your attention, the things you say and do.  This is the real meaning of ‘be what you wish to see in this world’.  If you want an abundant, generous world, be generous and giving.  Create a strong enough vibration of generosity that it takes over the world, like a positive virus.  It is natural for people to give.  They only start to hold on tightly to things and become greedy and stingy when they have the perception of lack and fear.  The more generous you are with others, the less they are in that perception of lack and fear and therefore the more they in turn will also give.
   The fourth thing is that your purpose is really about what you are meant to give in this life.  You can imagine that each being that is born, is like a gift being given from the universe at large to the rest of existence.  And so, it is only through considering what we are meant to give and what we want others to take away from us that we can find our purpose in this life.
    
3. When it comes to giving, figuring out the why, what and how will change the game for you.  Why are you going to give?  What is your personal motivation?  In order to give, you must be inspired to give.  What will you give?  A lot of this is based on what you can afford to give; time, energy and resource wise.  And finally, how will you give it?  The point of this question is to figure out how to give what you want to give in a way that feels good to you.
    
4. Giving is not limited to gifts.  But gifts are a big part of giving, so hone your gift giving skills.  Gifts may seem trivial at face value, but they are anything but.  In fact, gifts is what we call a love language.  It is one of the primary ways in which human beings express and receive love around the globe.  Gifts are a visual symbol of love.  Every time that you look at a gift, it is a reminder that someone was thinking about you.  That they care about you enough to understand you.  And that they took the time and care to seek, secure and deliver an item as a demonstration of their love.  So, learn how to give gifts.  I have a full tutorial on this in my video titled: How to Express Love Through Gifts.
    
5. We may struggle when it comes to giving because we have a limited view of giving, especially when it comes to what to give.  All people find giving certain things more natural than others.  And there are so many ways to give.  We can work on our ability to give things that do not come naturally to us give, but that shouldn’t be where the majority of your focus goes.  The majority of your focus when it comes to giving should be on those things that are natural for you to give and that feel good to give.  A few examples of ways to give are:  You can give by providing.  This means you could spend money on others or give them resources or things that they want or need.  You could give your time, focus and presence.  This means you could spend time with someone giving them your undivided attention and presence.  You could volunteer.  This means you could give your energy to some cause.  You could give help.  This means you could lend your time and energy to assisting someone or something in some way.  You could give physical touch.  This means that you could use touch as a way of giving someone affection, comfort and pleasure.  You could give information, truth and awareness.  This means you could give your mental resources to someone so that they have more information, truth and awareness.  You could give kindness.  This means that you could give small acts of kindness to those around you such as opening doors, smiling at people, shoveling someone else’s driveway, bringing a friend a treat etc. You could give affirmation.  This means you could give words to others in the form of affirmations, compliments, or other positive statements.  You could give humor to others.  This means you could make them smile or laugh.  You could give yourself to others.  This means you could be open, tell people stories and information and truths about yourself.  You could give your talent.  This means you could offer your talents or skills in ways that benefit others.  For example, if your talent is photography, you could offer to take someone’s photograph.  Or if your skill is herbal remedies, you could make someone an herbal remedy.  So think about how you like to give.  What ways feel good to you to give?
    
6. When it comes to giving, you must consider the recipient.  Think about them and what they want and need and would be delighted by rather than thinking about what you think they should want or need or be delighted by.  The right thing to give can only come from understanding the person or thing that you are giving to.  And it is by understanding the recipient that you know the perfect way and the perfect thing to give them.
    
7. Get rid of your expectations.  Giving and receiving can only be pure if there are no strings attached.  To be good at giving, you’ve got to keep transactions in one box and giving and receiving in another box.  Transactions are not bad.  They are a part of life.  But they ought to be conscious and expressed and mutually agreed upon.  Giving on the other hand should never come with the expectation of getting.  Being a person who honestly does not expect something in return, because the giving in and of itself feels good, is being someone who is rehabilitating the pain people have around receiving.  To become really clear about your expectations, simply take a look at your MOTIVES for giving something.  And dare to be brutally honest with yourself, no matter how bad the answer might make you feel about yourself.  It is better to be honest about an expectation or not give something at all, than to give something that is laced with unexpressed and subconscious expectation.  That is no different than handing someone poisoned water to drink. 
    
8. Take others as a part of yourself and the impulse to give will be automatic.  To love is to take something as a part of yourself.  Love is inclusive.  It is the energetic movement towards oneness.  When you love something, you energetically pull it towards you and include it as you.  The exact opposite vibration of love is fear.  To fear is to separate something from yourself.  Fear is exclusive.  It is the energetic movement towards individualization.  When you fear something, you push it away and dis-include it from you. The ultimate reality in this universe is that of oneness.  We may perceive there to be separate things in the world.  But this perception is an illusion.  We are all comprised of the same energy that is merely expressing itself as different things. If you take something as a part of you, you do not perceive yourself to be separate from that thing and so suddenly, its best interests are a part of your own best interests.  You can also perceive it with more accuracy.  This means that you will automatically have an impulse to give for the sake of someone else’s best interests as well as a better idea of what to give and how to give it.  Never forgive that to give is a natural response to loving someone or something.  And to love is a choice.

No one has ever become poor by giving.  Giving has a way of making your life experience, along with everyone else’s, richer and richer.  It is for this reason that I’m going to end this episode with the wise words spoken by Winston Churchill.  “We make a living by what we get. We make a life by what we give."