As anyone who has seen me play guitar and sing live before knows, I don’t do requests. (It’s not so much that I’m pretentious; it’s just that I’ve never learnt the classics that everyone always seems to shout out like “Brown Eyed Girl”!)
Having said that, I never like turning down a challenge, and one was thrown my way whilst enjoying some liquid refreshment after a long 16 mile walk down the Leicestershire canals. (Which was, I think anyone who was there will agree, a huge challenge in itself!) I was thrown concepts left, right and centre to weave into my next “tips”. And as the ones I could remember were good concepts, I thought I’d see what I could do!
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One was about feeding something back into the community. I’ve already spoken about the weird sense of satisfaction you often seem to get when giving your time or money for the benefit of others. (Check back through my previous tips if you need your memory refreshing.)
What makes it worthwhile though? If it had been a 5 or 10 mile walk would it have been as satisfying? The sense of achievement is often related to the degree of sacrifice. Similarly you might think that the sense of appreciation for a gift received is related to the cost? However I would actually argue it’s more to do with the level of sacrifice. If you receive a gift that cost £10 it might not seem like a significant gift. But if you find out that it’s from a small child who hasn’t bought any sweets for the last month in order to save that money then suddenly the gift becomes more significant.
When you’re willing to sacrifice for something it shows commitment. You see it in business, in friendships, family and in relationships (or at least you should). When you give up some of the things you would like for the benefit of someone you care about it shows your loyalty towards them. Too often in the world today it is deemed as alright to just move on when you’re not getting what you want any more. I think the world would be a much better place if we started demonstrating this quality not just in our shopping (“loyalty cards”) but also in some of our other more important decisions.
