The Art of Receiving

Giving is a beautiful thing isn’t it. Finding the perfect gift and seeing the receiver light up with delight on opening it is a moment of pure joy.

Supporting a friend through a difficult time.

Giving a great piece of advice that lands and helps.

Giving time or resources to charity and knowing you have helped in some way.

Giving your time to others.

Giving. Giving. Giving.

Yes, it’s beautiful.

And when we give and give and give and give and give and give and then, give some more, we can find we have slowly but surely disappeared.

We can disappear in to exhaustion, depletion, resentment.

Giving becomes less beautiful when it is from a place of martyrdom.

Giving is part of a cycle.

We give

We receive.

We help.

We are helped.

Is your giving cycle in balance?

Our culture often reinforces this out of balance focus on giving. Especially for women. The best description of this I’ve read is in the book Burnout by Emily and Emilia Nagoski. They explore the concept of Human Giver Syndrome. It absolutely made sense to me. It feels like a good time to shine a spotlight on it and see where we are falling in to the ‘giver’ role and forgetting that we have needs and wants and desires of our own. That we can set boundaries, say no and receive safely, openly, gracefully.

Giving is great. Toxic giving is not. Let’s make sure we can make the distinction between the two.

|| Caroline Doran || Coach | Facilitator | Trainer || Book a call here ||