If Ya Really Want To Be A Go-Giver

I had the privilege this past week of speaking to an amazing group of human resource professionals, folks who spend their lives in the service of others. I wanted to share with you the words I shared with them, because the challenge they face is one that many of us struggle with, regardless of the work we do.

One of my very favorite business books is Bob Burg’s “The Go-Giver.”  If you don’t have it in your business library, run out and get it. It’s a wonderful parable about a struggling young salesman. The lesson is: The more you give, the more you will be open to receive. Or as Zig Zigler said, “You will get all you want in life if you help enough other people get what they want.”

To be truly successful, the giving comes first.

But that’s not want I want to talk with you about tonight. Because being go-givers is not our challenge. If you’re standing in this room, you are a go-giver: every day of the week, all year long. You give: To your teams, to your staff, to your personnel, to your clients. You give, and you give and you give some more.

Being go-givers is what we do.

No, our challenge, as we come to the end of the year, is something much more daunting. Our challenge is something that many of us are not very good at; something that seems to many of us to have a dark and forbidding underbelly to it. Our challenge is this: To take care of ourselves. To nurture ourselves, to invest in ourselves, to re-create ourselves so that tomorrow…and the next day… and the day after that… and when we wake up on January 2, we can do it all over again.

When I spoke about this idea at a recent training workshop, one of the attendees, a parent, a mom, raised her hand and wondered aloud whether taking care of herself was selfish.

It’s not. In fact, failing to replenish ourselves is the ultimate in selfishness. Because – here’s the truth – if our tanks are empty, if we have nothing left – then what is there to give?

Most of you have flown, I trust. You get on the airplane. And just as the plane is being pushed back from the gate, the flight attendant comes out for that safety schpeel. And one of the things that he or she says is that in the event that the cabin loses pressure, an oxygen mask will drop down. And whose mask are you instructed to put on first? Yes, your told to put on your own mask first – before helping others.

Why? Here’s the truth: If you don’t put on your own mask first, if you don’t take care of yourself first, no one else will; and as important, you’re no good to anyone else. You can’t do a thing for anyone else if you’re dead on the cabin floor.

But we seem to forget this. Or pretend it’s not true. Or we convince ourselves that somehow we’re being noble. We engage in endless giving, endless self-sacrifice, endless depletion; because we think we “should;” and we get to the end of the day, the end of the week, the end of the year… and we have nothing left.

So our challenge – especially as we come to the end of this year and stand on the threshold of a new one - is to reclaim what is oxygen for us, to rediscover what lights up our hearts, what nurtures our souls.

Is it writing?

Is it painting?

Is it running?

Is it travel and adventure?

Is it getting in touch with your body again?

Maybe it’s a long walk in the woods with your dog; or sitting by the fire with the New York Times; or sharing a glass of wine with an old friend.

Whatever it is, our call – our obligation to ourselves and to those we truly love - is to heal ourselves; to get in touch with what feeds us again. And go and do it.

And we don’t really have the luxury of putting this off. Think how fast this year has gone. The sands run quickly through the glass.

The late great Steve Jobs once said, “For the past 33 years, I’ve looked in the mirror each morning and asked myself this question: ‘If today were the last day of my life, would I do what I’m about to do today?’ And if the answer was ‘no’ for too many days in a row, I knew that I needed to do something different.”

There is poignancy and urgency to this.

Because, at the end of our lives, none of us is going to wish that we had spent more time in the office, billed more hours, made more calls, sent more emails, updated our Facebook status more frequently.  What will matter will be the experiences we have had, and the love we have shared. What will matter is whether we have fulfilled the deepest longings of our hearts, whether we have spend ourselves not on the urgent, but on the important; whether we have lived without regret.

You have gifts that only you can share with the world. But to do that well, you need to be whole and complete; you need to be vibrant and alive. You know that you expect that of your people. And only you can make that happen for yourself.

Your inbox will still be full when you’re dead.

So reclaim your dreams; reclaim the song in your heart; reclaim the grand vision for your lives; reclaim what is oxygen for you.

Reclaim the fun.

Reclaim the laughter.

Reclaim the joy.

If you can’t do it just for yourself, do it because you care so much for those you serve.

“And now,” as Rainer Maria Rilke writes, “let us believe in a long year that is given to us, new, untouched, full of things that have never been.”

May it be filled with peace and all good things.