How much of your life do live out of obligation? …Half? …More?
Now, how much of your life do you live from a place of generosity? I bet you live generously way, way less than you live out of obligation. I know because I lived there for most of my life.
Saying yes to things when you don’t want to, faking happiness when you know you are expected to be happy, keeping gifts you hate, and spending time with people you can’t stand because you have to.
For most of us, this is NORMAL. This is the way we are SUPPOSED to act. Supposed to ACT.
We are taught to fake it. To pretend. To settle.
Because it is what is expected. Because it is what everyone does.
And I don’t know about you, but I got tired of living that way. I got fed up with doing what was expected of me by everyone else because it made something better or easier for them. And never putting myself first. I got tired of people never valuing the things I did to make their lives better. I got tired of feeling like I had no value besides what I could do for people.
So I began a journey of self discovery, and along the way I realized that I have to create my own value. And in order to do that, I had to begin by honoring my own value. Unfortunately, at that time, I had spent so many years depending on others to give me value that I had none of my own. So I took the long road to figure it out.
Until somewhere along the way I discovered a short-cut to removing obligation from my life. And it started with removing the expectations I had of other people.
Gifts is my love language, so I started giving gifts with no obligation. When I would give something to someone, I gave it with love and just let it go. I had no expectations of them in relation to my gift. By letting go of my expectations it gave them the freedom to do whatever they wanted with it.
They could love it and want to show it off to everyone or they could give it away to someone they knew that would love it if they didn’t. They could toss it, donate it, re-gift it or whatever would be serve them. I didn’t care because I had no expectation of them.
And what I found was that by giving freely to others, I began to experience the same freedom in my life.
I started doing less and less out of obligation and more and more out of choice. And with that choice it became easier to live from generosity. I still have to do things I don’t like sometimes, but I can do it from a place of choosing to do things instead of having to do them. And generously treating myself by honoring my highest values rather than anyone else’s expectations.
