Let's Start the "Generosity Revolution"

We think that when we show generosity, the person that gets the benefit is the person whose need we are meeting. Someone moves forward because we give them our money, time or words of encouragement.  But generosity works as much (if not more) in the heart of the giver as it does in the life of the receiver. It shares this unique capability to take the momentum of good and then flip that momentum back at the originating person with other expressions of love. For example, when we forgive someone else, we think we are letting them off the hook, but what happens when we forgive another person is that our own hands are removed from our own throats. When we show generosity, we think we are providing resources to a life of scarcity, but what really happens is that our own hearts broaden and grow in abundance.

Recently I shared 12 thoughts on generosity in a talk entitled, "Let's Start the Generosity Revolution." The goal of that talk was to radicalize the audience towards generous lives. Don't listen to this talk unless you want to be radicalized yourself.

But I wonder, who would you become if you became your most fully generous self?

Here are the bullet points from that talk, some that might surprise you.

• Generosity cannot be crammed onto your To Do List.  The opportunity to show generosity lies within every item on your To Do List.
• Generosity implies heart-spaciousness or soul-bandwidth.
• Generosity is attention.
• Generosity is inconvenient.
• Generosity is going to pinch your rock and roll lifestyle. 
• Generosity is not a doing, but a way of being. 
• Generosity is not a doing BUT, it is ridiculous to say you ARE something if you are not doing it.
• Generosity is surprisingly intentional.  
• You don’t do generosity, generosity does you. 
• Generosity is subversive.
• When done as a crowd, the impact of generosity is unfathomable. 
• To become most fully generous, you must first receive it fully yourself. 

Let’s start a generosity revolution. 

Right here. Right now. With you. With me. 

At work and everywhere else.