The Power of Giving

Description

Share your stories of the power of giving!

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Tags: Kenton Whitman,ReWild University,Human Rewilding,personal rewilding,mindfulness,how to,bushcraft,survival,wilderness survival skills,how to survive in the woods

Video Transcription

hello friends here in the United States the holiday of Christmas has been shall we say rather usurped by commercialism I know that's not a surprise to anybody the holiday decorations start coming out I think before Thanksgiving and you know how that whole thing goes and I'm not sure exactly where the giving of gifts came from in this holiday because I don't know a lot of the history of it but I do know that for Christians this this holiday is about something that their Savior Jesus gave as a gift to humanity and so perhaps that's where we got the idea that we could start giving gifts to each other and then it's ballooned into this massive just advertising money being dropped everywhere in order to you know get each other giant TVs and and who knows what so here is is a thought that I have for all of you what if we regain some of that spirit of giving and we start right here at Christmas but we do this all the time it doesn't have to be just right now for this holiday we're not talking about giving I'm not talking about going out and buying all kinds of big expensive presents for people and giving them things that they really don't need or that you know isn't gonna add to their quality of life what I'm talking about is really giving to each other I know for me you know a fair amount of you have become patrons and so you stand beside me when I make these videos and that makes this huge difference to me not it's not really the money so much is knowing that you're standing there beside me and that gives me this feeling and I want other people to have that feeling so here's what we could do maybe there's a person down the street from you

and and she's a single mom and she's trying to shovel her driveway every day but you come down and you say hey can I shovel your driveway this winter for you and that you know random act of kindness that's stepping out and giving this thing of yourself whoa how does that make her feel and here's the thing how does it make you feel because the studies on volunteering and on giving they show that if we you know if we're given to some money and we get to keep it for ourselves and buy something for ourselves it doesn't actually create that much happiness in us when we're given some money and we give it to somebody else if we buy something for somebody else it creates more happiness inside of us and the same with volunteering in some of the studies unhappiness they put that within the top five things that really give us happiness in life it's volunteering it's an older person that lives in your neighborhood that could just use somebody to talk to once in a while it's somebody you know that's in the hospital and could really use a visit it's your great cook and you make a meal for somebody and invite them over

maybe there's that homeless person on the street and you say hey come here let's go over to that restaurant I'm gonna buy you a meal and not only buying them a meal but talking to them and treating them as an equal human being and maybe it's not just giving to people maybe it's giving to nature maybe you're gonna plant some trees I'm not gonna plant any trees because the grounds frozen but maybe you're in a place right now where the ground isn't frozen you can plant some trees or you can volunteer at a Wildlife Sanctuary or injury animals are rehabilitated and then released back into the wild send somebody a letter send somebody a gift that you made call somebody out you've been meaning to talk to for a while go and see somebody who might be lonely these are the kind of things that make a huge real difference this is the kind of giving that I'm talking about that we can all do this season and that we can start thinking about giving that way after Christmas is gone it is the rest of the Year unfolds because giving feels so good and it can change the world can make a huge difference can make a difference in one person's life when you make a difference in one person's life that's gonna spread out it's gonna make a difference in other people's lives we can all do this and I would love to hear from you and to hear about your giving often we feel a little strange about saying hey here's this thing where I gave something to somebody and we don't want to brag about our giving or bring it out in fact a lot of us would like to do it anonymously but here I'm going to ask you step out and put down in the comments some instances in your life where you've given and the difference it's made in the other person's life and how it made you feel the difference it made in your life then as we read through these stories of giving volunteering of sharing yourself then I think it'll inspire all of us to be more giving in our lives thank you my friends please share your stories below [Music]