Daily Gifts
“Cami, I think you need to stop thinking about yourself. I have a prescription for you. I want you to give away 29 gifts in 29 days.” I blink and consider this for a moment before deciding it is stupid.
That section, the opening passage to “29 Gifts: How a Month of Giving Can Change Your Life”, always cracks me up. The author is so honest with her feelings about this advice! And yet she agrees to give it a try. As a woman struggling with the daily frustrations of dealing with Multiple Sclerosis, Cami Walker decides to do the crazy thing and stop thinking about all of her problems just long enough to give away one thing every day. One thing. It can be anything - an intentional smile to the mail delivery person or a coat donated to a collection for children whose caregivers can’t afford one. What follows in the next 200 or so pages is a picture of how the simple act of giving small gifts changes Cami’s life forever.
Science is starting to back this up. Ever wonder why the Christmas season has such a glowy feeling around it? Much of that might be directly linked to the act of gift giving! Researchers in a study gave $5 to 96 different participants every day for 5 days (Science of Giving). Some of them were told to spend it on whatever they wanted, and others were told to give it away, to donate it. Each day the participants reported back on what had occurred and their general feelings. The adults who kept the money for themselves experienced a gradual decline in joy, but the group of adults who gave it away? Their happiness levels remained consistent throughout the whole week (Science of Giving)!
Scientists have learned that when we engage in the same activity over and over, it slowly starts to lose the amount of effect it has on us. They call it “hedonic adaptation” (Science of Giving). The simple way to explain it is that chocolate cake every day of the week for a month is not the same thing as chocolate cake once a month. But guess what? That’s not the case with gift giving! No matter how many times we give something to others, it always has the same positive effect on us every single time (Science of Giving).
“If I wash the dishes because I’m supposed to… I am in a very different mind space when taking the action. I actually end up feeling resentful. When I’m approaching everything as a gift, my heart feels open and it’s easier to enjoy my day, my life,” wrote Cami.
Mahatma Gandhi once said that the best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others. There’s deep, beautiful truth in that, and it’s a truth we can tap into easily, gift by gift.
Reference: Here’s why exchanging gifts feels so good, according to science. Ritual. Retrieved from https://ritual.com/articles/1-science-of-giving.
Challenges/Points:
Giving to others is one of the only activities scientists have found that never loses the positive effect it has on the giver.
When we think about what we can give to someone else, we automatically stop thinking about ourselves.
Gift giving has been found to stabilize or increase happiness.
Questions:
Do you consider any of the things you do throughout an average week to be gifts?
Would you like to try giving away 29 things for 29 days? Write each gift down!
What’s something completely free that you could give someone today?
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