Giving Heart: Unlocking the Transformative Power of Generosity in Your Life - Softcover

Ryan, M.J.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1573245216 ISBN 13: 9781573245210

Publisher: Books That Save Lives, 2000

Synopsis

Gratitude and generosity go hand in handthe more we appreciate our lives, the more we want to give to others. In A Grateful Heart, M. J. Ryan provided tools for expressing thanks. In the bestselling Attitudes of Gratitude, she taught us the inner work of realizing the many blessings we take for granted. Now, in The Giving Heart, she presents her latest examination of the virtues we need to cultivate for the twentyfirst century and takes a look at generosity: what creates it, what blocks it, and what the practice of generosity can bring to our lives.

In a series of short, heartfelt essays, Ryan encourages us all to stop living from what she calls "the ledger sheet mentality" of obligatory gifting, and to begin giving from the overflow of a loving heart. She asks readers to consider where and how they are stingy as well as where they are meant to give, and to contemplate all the types of possible generosity, because the giving of time, energy, kind words, loving gestures, and forgiveness may ultimately matter more than any amount of money.

In her downtoearth, accessible style, Ryan takes us to the heart of what it means to truly give, and what that giving can do not only for the recipient, but for ourselves, as well.

As the current economic boom brings attention to altruism and "giving back" The Giving Heart shows us how to experience joy, peace, and fulfillment when we live from a place of generosity.

About this title

About the Author

M.J. Ryan is an inspirational speaker and human development expoert, and author of several bestselling books including This Year I Will..., The Happiness Makeover: How to Teach Yourself to Be Happy and Enjoy Every Day and Attitudes of Gratitude. She lives in the San Francisco Bay area with her family.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

The Giving Heart

Unlocking the Transformative Power of Generosity in Our Lives

By M.J. Ryan

Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC

Copyright © 2000 Conari Press
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-57324-521-0

Contents

Foreword by Sylvia Boorstein
1 Opening Our Hearts and Hands
2 The Gifts of Giving
3 The Spirit of Giving
4 The Practice of Giving
5 An Ever-Expanding Circle
Acknowledgments
Giving Back: About My Shopping List for the World
About the Author

CHAPTER 1

Opening Our Heartsand Hands

It's not the earthquakeThat controls the advent of a different lifeBut storms of generosity....

—Boris Pasternak

I was sitting in a café one day, waiting for a friend, when I noticed a middle-agedwoman walking toward a nearby table, juggling three cups of coffee and theparaphernalia that goes along with them. She handed two of the cups over to twogentlemen who were sitting there. "Thank you," one of them said. "My pleasure,"she replied and flashed such a radiant smile that I knew down to my bones thather simple act had brought her pleasure, and even happiness.

If you are like me, you want to be happy. Like me, you've probably spent a lotof time trying to be happy. Are you? A large study in England and the UnitedStates recently found that the number of Americans who consider themselves happyhas been steadily declining over the past thirty years. I think it's becausewe're looking for happiness in all the wrong places.

The United States is currently undergoing the biggest sustained economicexpansion in history, and the Internet and the stock market are creatingmultimillionaires left and right. It's all about making money these days. Evenmy peers, ex-lefties and hippies, talk about nothing but IPOs. Several youngfriends are regularly ridiculed by their peers for following their careerpassions instead of jumping into the dot-com craze. The clincher about where ourcontemporary values are came while I was watching the television show Greed: TheSeries. It's a game show in which contestants "climb the tower of greed," andgive in to their "need for greed" when "The Terminator" allows one of them toget an automatic $10,000 if they challenge a teammate. I couldn't get over thefact that greed—a vice, a poison, something that spiritual traditionshistorically caution against—was now elevated so openly into something good,something to be joyously indulged in.

What is wrong with this picture?

I don't profess to have all the answers. All I know is that in my twenties andthirties, I was your average unhappy and fearful person. Then, about twelveyears ago, through a series of circumstances, I began to refocus my life on whattruly mattered and stopped being miserable. And that has made all thedifference.

It started when I, along with several others, published the book Random Actsof Kindness.™ It seemed like a good idea at the time—let's all do nice littlethings for strangers—but once I began to see and hear about its effects, Isensed I had stumbled upon something very important. Suddenly I was inundatedwith letters from people telling me about the joy they had experienced as eitherdoers or receivers of these acts. I will never forget the letter from a highschool student who said he was going to kill himself until he read our book anddecided that life was worth living. I became fascinated with the power ofkindness, and went on to help write a series of books on the topic. I tried toenact what I was writing about and became more kind both to strangers and tothose I am close to. Like the boy who didn't kill himself, I got happier.

I began to wonder about the other qualities that could produce the samepositive effect as kindness, and turned my attention to gratitude. The more Icultivated a sense of appreciation for all that I had instead of focusing onwhat I lacked, the happier and less fearful I was. I wrote about my experiences,this time in Attitudes of Gratitude, and once again, I received many lettersabout the power gratitude has in bringing peace of mind and a sense ofcontentment.

My study of gratitude led me to generosity, the spontaneous giving ofourselves and our resources to someone else. In a sense, I have now come fullcircle. Generosity is the mother of kindness. Our desire to give help, comfort,support, or appreciation is often the reason we do kind things.

In reading, talking, and thinking about generosity, I realized just howimportant it is. Boris Pasternak alludes to the power of generosity in the quoteat the beginning of this chapter. We tend to think about generosity asvolunteering or giving money or time, but generosity is actually much broader.It comes in all kinds of forms—material, intellectual, emotional, and spiritual.We can be generous when we give our knowledge, our awareness, our empathy, orour silence. Generosity is also about letting go of grudges, hurts, and conceptsof ourselves and the world that stand in the way of our connection to others.

True generosity is open-heartedness, the experience and expression of ourboundless, unconditionally loving nature. It is such an important concept thatBuddhists consider its opposite to be delusion. When we are out of touch withour giving hearts, the natural flow of generosity within us, we think we need tohold on to money, possessions, and fixed ideas. We are sure we need these thingsto be happy, when our very grasping and clinging is what makes us miserable. Wehold on so tightly that our hands are unavailable to reach out for the happinesswe could gain by letting go. Our delusion of material happiness prevents us frombeing truly happy.

However, when we are living from true generosity, we feel expansive andabundant. We know that we can find true happiness in loving and being loved tothe core of our being. Our hearts and hands are open, ready to offer what theycan and able to receive what comes back to us in return.

As the woman in the café realized, giving makes us feel great. It's a fabulousfeeling, even when we offer something as small as a cup of coffee. Giving liftsus out of our preoccupation with ourselves and reminds us that there is plentyof kindness to go around.

Like kindness and gratitude, giving—both of ourselves and our unique gifts—isactually very simple. So simple that it's often difficult to believe it canbring us such joy. We think giving should be hard, so we make it complicated. Weguilt-trip ourselves into thinking we should give more or try harder, usuallyturning our guilt into shame, and then trying to avoid the whole issue entirely.

It doesn't have to be that way. The purpose of A Giving Heart is to provideencouragement. Encouragement in noticing that the river of generosity is alreadyflowing in you, and encouragement in opening your heart as much as you feelcomfortable and giving exactly as much as you want. It's about paying attentionand noticing how you feel when you give, when it feels good and when it doesn't.Noticing the effects on your life and then choosing to do more of what makes youfeel good.

I've come to understand that generosity is both a feeling—of fullness, ofexpansion, of joy—and a choice. The more we make the choice, the more weexperience the feeling. This book charts a journey through attitudes andbehaviors that I hope will allow you to open your heart more easily andfrequently.

I am not setting myself up as an expert. If you met me, I don't think you'd beparticularly struck by my generosity. Regard me as a fellow seeker on the path,a person who has often been quite fearful and stingy but who wants to change.Recently I read a novel about a girl with "a heart so clear you could see allthe way through it." That's how openhearted I want to be. I've seen, and eventasted a bit for myself, the peace, joy, and sense of contentment that thegiving heart can offer, and I want us all to share in more of that contentment.

I'm convinced that we are here on Earth to grow our souls, to open wider, toreach higher, and to stretch farther. Our goal is to soften where we wouldnormally constrict, to loosen when we would habitually tighten, and to extendwhere we would usually hold back. Each and every one of us has so much to offer,and the world needs what we have to give.

CHAPTER 2

The Gifts of Giving

About all let us never forget that an actof goodness is an act of happiness

—Count Maurice Maeterlinck

We begin by examining the bounty generosity can bring us whenever we open ourhearts to another being. Understanding the rewards we will reap may motivate usto cultivate our own gifts and offer them wholeheartedly to the world. As wediscover the grace that comes of giving, we begin to experience generosity as anatural upwelling of the heart that exists in each of us, and as a limitlesstreasure that can bring us immeasurable delight.

Giving Is a Great Mood Elevator

No joy can equal the joy of serving others.

—Sai Baba

It was one of those no-good rotten days in which nothing was going right for me.I had been up half the night with my daughter Ana, my computer kept crashing,and I got ten phone calls that distracted me from my writing. When I picked Anaup from preschool, I was in a less than stellar mood. I popped her into the car,and, still grumbling to myself, we headed for the grocery store.

At the store, the line seemed interminable. Finally I was the next one up, butit was still taking forever. Despite my annoyance, I tuned in to what washappening. The young woman in front of me kept asking the cashier to give herthe total after each item. She had a tiny baby in her cart, and it was clear shedidn't have enough money to pay for all the food she bought, so she went off tomake a phone call, presumably to ask someone for money.

While she was gone, I asked the cashier to total up everything and tell her thatshe had enough money. I would make up the difference when she left. The cashierasked me if I knew her—I didn't—and then if I were wealthy. "Yes," I replied,thinking of my beautiful daughter, the roof over my head, and the privilege ofdoing work that I loved.

When I left the store, I realized I was singing along with the radio and feelingremarkably good. The best part of the situation was that the woman neverrealized what I had done. A bit puzzled, she had gladly wheeled her cart away. Ismiled to myself. Reaching out to her had reset my mood, and I felt like I wasin love with the whole world.

Helping others really is like a "feel good" pill. When I was doing the researchfor my last book, 365 Health and Happiness Boosters, I realized that makingsomeone else happy creates happiness the fastest. Lending a hand, making someonesmile, or being of use to someone other than ourselves helps us stop focusingsolely on our own difficulties and gives a larger perspective to our days. Thisis what Karl Marx meant when he said, "Experience praises the most happy the onewho made the most people happy."

Giving Can Heal

There is a wonderful, mystical law of nature thatthe three things we crave most in life—happiness, freedom,and peace of mind—are always attainedby giving them to someone else.

—Anonymous

During the break-up of a fourteen-year relationship, I was in terrible pain andleaned heavily on the love and advice of my friends, including author DaphneRose Kingma, who flew up from Santa Barbara to sit with me for a few days. Whenshe was about to leave, she gave me a tiny piece of paper, her prescription formy healing: (1) Go to therapy; (2) Meditate; (3) Reach out to others in pain.

I'm glad to say I did all three items. At the time, though, I didn't see whyhelping others would help me. I understood the benefits of therapy—workingthrough the grief, coming to see my part in the break-up, and understanding therelationship dynamics I tend to encounter. I saw how meditation might work—tappinginto the sense of peacefulness and wholeness beneath the pain of mysituation. But giving to others? Wasn't this a time to focus on myself?

Once I began to volunteer at a "Meals on Wheels" organization for people withAIDS, I learned that giving to others was also a way to help myself. Helpingothers forced me to notice something other than my own misery, which was a greatgift. Rather than wallowing in all the ways I had been mistreated and abused, Icould turn my attention to someone else. As months passed, however, I discoveredsomething else. Walking the halls of the welfare hotel where most of mydeliveries were, I stopped being so attached to my particular wound and began tosee that suffering is part of life. All kinds of terrible things happen topeople, often for no reason, and I was not specially singled out forvictimization.

While it wasn't true for me in this situation, giving when you are feeling hurtoften makes meaning out of your suffering. The person who's paralyzed by agunshot wound and then becomes an advocate for gun control, the woman whofinally escapes from her abusive husband and works to set up a shelter forbattered women—these are individuals who reach up out of the particulars oftheir individual tragedies to ensure that others will not have to suffer thesame fate.

You don't have to be suffering from some specific hurt to reap the benefits ofgiving. Any time we reach out to others—in our hurt or with our love—we feelbetter.

Giving Is Good for Our Health

It is one of the most beautiful compensations of life that no man can sincerelytry to help another without helping himself.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson

I have a friend who has had a terrible case of lupus for nearly twenty years. Shehas been hospitalized many times and is constantly on medication that hashorrible side effects, including cataracts. She had to quit her job as a graphicdesigner and now is completely supported by her husband. She can get really downabout her life. Recently she decided to become a volunteer at a soup kitchen.She goes when she feels up to it, and she's started to discover that the moreshe goes, the better she feels—emotionally and physically. Her arthritis (aconsequence of lupus) isn't as severe and she has more energy.

Helping others can not only make us feel good about ourselves; it can alsoincrease our physical well-being. The mind and body aren't separate. Anything wedo to elevate our spirits will also have a beneficial effect on our health. Arecent study by Cornell University found that volunteering increases a person'senergy, sense of mastery over life, and self-esteem. Other studies havedemonstrated that such positive feelings can actually strengthen and enhance theimmune system. Positive emotions increase the body's number of T-cells, cells inthe immune system that help the body resist disease and recover quickly fromillness. Positive emotions also release endorphins into the bloodstream.Endorphins are the body's natural tranquilizers and painkillers; they stimulatedilation of the blood vessels, which leads to a relaxed heart.

While we don't quite understand all the reasons why giving creates good health,many studies have documented generosity's positive effects. Michigan researcherswho studied 2,700 people for almost ten years found that men who regularly didvolunteer work had death rates two-and-one half times lower than men who didn't.In a separate study, volunteers who worked directly with those who benefitedfrom their services had a greater immune system boost than those whose volunteerwork was restricted to pushing papers.

Harvard researchers also conducted a study that showed how giving is such apowerful immune booster that it can be experienced just by watching someone elsein the act of giving! In this well-known experiment, students looking at a filmof Mother Teresa as she tended the sick in Calcutta—even those who purported todislike Mother Teresa—got an increase in immune function.

Psychologist Robert Ornstein and physician David Sobel are well known for theirexaminations of the health effects of altruism. In their book Healthy Pleasures,they describe what they call the "helper's high," a kind of euphoria volunteersget when helping others—a warm glow in the chest and a sense of vitality thatcomes from being simultaneously energized and calm. They compare it to arunner's high and claim it is caused by the body's release of endorphins.Because of all these health benefits, as Stella Reznick says in The PleasureZone, "the one who ends up getting the most from a good deed may, ultimately, bethe good Samaritan."

Generosity Alleviates Fear

It is expressly at those times when we feel needythat we will benefit the most from giving.

—Ruth Ross

I've never had the privilege of meeting writer Anne Lamott, but I have loved herbooks, particularly Operating Instructions. Her emotional honesty leaps offevery page—here is a woman who is not afraid to show herself, warts and all. Inadmitting her vulnerabilities, she makes it okay for us to be just who we aretoo.

In an interview, she was asked about her relationship to money. As a singlemother living off her writing, her financial security has been precarious atbest. She spoke of having survived, at times, off the generosity of friends, andthen said something that leaped out at me. "I know that if I feel anydeprivation or fear [about money], the solution is to give. The solution is togo find some mothers on the streets of San Raphael and give them tens andtwenties and mail off another $50 to Doctors Without Borders to use for therefugees in KOSOVO. Because I know that giving is the way we can feel abundant.Giving is the way that we fill ourselves up.... For me the way to fill up isthrough service and sharing and getting myself to give more than I feelcomfortable giving."

(Continues...)

Excerpted from The Giving Heart by M.J. Ryan. Copyright © 2000 Conari Press. Excerpted by permission of Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

Edition details

• Publisher: Books That Save Lives
• Publication date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1573245216
• ISBN 13: 9781573245210
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 173