When you feel as if you’re not receiving enough from the world … whether that’s love, attention, or money, is your strategy to give more?

It’s a common and mostly unconscious strategy.  We want more, and so we give what we hope to receive, hoping that the world will reciprocate.  We give the love we want in relationships, hoping it’ll come back to us.  We invest more work in our businesses, hoping that our prospective clients will make an equal investment.

Giving when we’re not receiving enough makes us feel as if we’re in control.  We feel comfortable going after what we want.  After all, we get to DO something!

However, giving more in order to receive more simply doesn’t work.  Actually, it sets up a cycle of depletion that can leave us exhausted and unfulfilled.

We’ve all been taught relentlessly that “it’s better to give than to receive.”  I would argue with that.  If everyone is constantly giving, where does it all go?  Giving is joyful – but only if what we have given is also fully received and acknowledged!  If we are not willing to fully receive, we are depriving everyone in our lives of the joy of giving.  I think many of us have become exceedingly comfortable with giving, while receiving is practically a lost art.

Receiving requires trust.  We have put our energy out into the world, into the Universe, through thought and word and action.  We must now trust that we will reap what we sow.  But in order to truly receive, we have to be still for a little while.  Rather than bursting forward into yet more action, into more energetic “output,” we have to be willing to be receptive, to wait a little, to see what our efforts may yield.  We have done the “action” part of “attraction.”  Then it’s time to see what our actions have attracted into our lives.

This is about truly tuning into the feedback mechanism of this dimension!  Only by witnessing what we receive back can we come to understand the quality of what we are putting forth into the world.  But if we’re constantly doing output and more output, giving and giving and giving … well, we miss the greatest learning opportunity available to us.

I think, deep down, we are terrified that what we’ve put forth so far simply isn’t good enough.  We’re frightened that we’ll receive much, much less than what we want.  And so we churn out more output and more still, until we are exhausted and wondering why we are tired and unfulfilled and broke.

Do your work in the world.  Then be still, rest, and witness the result.  Course correct as necessary –but only AFTER the cycle of giving and receiving is complete.

Blessings,

Andrea

Filed under: Embrace Your Highest Path and Purpose

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