Giving Unconditionally

Today we discuss the topic of "unconditional giving." When you give to others, are you expecting something in return? What does giving unconditionally mean?

Transcript

Welcome to Life,

Lessons and Laughter with your host Glenn Ambrose.

Hello,

Welcome to Life,

Lessons and Laughter with Glenn Ambrose.

We are live,

No we're not live.

Good enough.

Well,

I'm live.

When you're hearing this,

It won't be live.

Today,

We're talking.

.

.

We almost got through the first minute of the show without doing something weird.

No,

I said I'm not going to mess with the introduction.

Why are we talking about the introduction?

I'm not.

I'm messing up somewhere else.

So now you just want to say we're live.

I pushed it back to mess up somewhere else.

Awesome.

By next year,

You'll be messing up the finish.

Hopefully.

So,

What the heck am I talking about today?

I literally don't know.

I bet you have some ideas though.

Probably.

I'm going to fill you in.

Okay.

We're talking about giving without expecting anything in return.

Okay.

Alright?

Yes.

So I just gave that to you.

I'm expecting nothing.

And that's exactly what I'm getting.

Yeah.

So,

Okay.

So,

Unconditional giving.

Yes.

Unconditional.

Exactly.

Without condition.

So most of us,

You know,

What made me think of this is I touched on it in the last podcast.

And as I was listening to it,

I was like,

Ooh,

That would be a good show.

And the key aspect is unconditional.

So,

Paraphrasing what I had said in the last podcast,

It was something about when most people are giving,

Like in a situation where we give to a friend and a friend needs us and we're there for them and we give and we give and give.

And then all of a sudden,

And we say,

Oh,

You know,

I'm such a wonderful person,

I'm helping my friend and we feel good about ourselves and everything's wonderful.

And then all of a sudden,

It's,

You know,

We fall in a difficult place and all of a sudden we turn to our friends for help and they're not there for us.

Well,

In that situation,

A lot of times we point the finger at the friend and go,

Oh,

They were supposed to,

Why aren't they there for me?

I was there for them,

They're not there for me.

And if we take that outlook on it,

Then when we were doing for our friend,

It was conditional.

It wasn't unconditional,

You know,

And that's how we work subconsciously.

If you're expecting your friend to give back to you,

They need to give back to you,

Then what you're doing is you're making an unspoken deal with them.

I'll give to you if you give to me.

And it's unspoken,

They have no idea that this agreement has been made,

And then all of a sudden,

You know,

And then all of a sudden they're not living up to their side of the agreement,

But there was never an agreement made.

Right.

What if there's like a,

I don't know,

Like an expectation of like,

And I feel like this isn't a bad thing,

But when I,

My best friend and I,

Like ten years ago,

Decided,

Like not even thinking about it,

Like,

And then just this is the way it's always worked with us,

Like if one of us does something for the other person,

Like,

It's completely fine,

The other person's going to do something very soon for the,

For like,

You know what I mean?

Like,

Paying for meals.

Yeah.

We will regularly buy each other's meals and like,

It's never like,

Oh hey,

You owe me ten dollars,

Like.

Right.

But there is the,

Like,

Unspoken expectation that like,

At some point in the future,

He's going to do this for me.

Yeah,

And I mean,

Some relationships can work that way.

And it'll all even out.

You know,

They can work that way,

And that's,

You know,

One of the reasons why that's a little bit safer is because it's more surface.

You're not dealing with so much emotions.

Right.

You know,

When somebody's there for you in an emotional way,

When you're really hurting emotionally,

Generally there's an aspect of feeling like a victim to some degree,

And then all of a sudden,

So you're kind of open and wounded already,

And now all of a sudden somebody's not there for you emotionally that you think should be,

So now there's another hurt on top of it,

You know?

So,

It's,

That can be a little bit more powerful,

You know?

Well,

Like,

I had.

But it's the same basis.

Yeah.

But even like,

Surface things like,

Just,

I had friends in like,

Like,

You know,

There are people that you meet that like,

You think you're close with that are very much like,

I'm,

I,

Will,

You owe me this if I give you this,

And like.

Right.

There's not,

There's definitely not an unconditional feeling with people that you,

Like,

Some people that you're very close with.

Yeah.

I would imagine.

Right.

But I mean,

Some of that,

You know,

That's not always bad.

It's not always bad.

I mean,

You know,

If you're,

If you're in a tough financial position or something,

And you want to,

You know,

You have the right to make up whatever rules you want in life.

Yeah.

You know,

That you can feel comfortable with.

So if,

If,

You know,

Buying somebody,

If you have a certain person that doesn't feel that buying dinner for somebody and not getting paid back is okay,

Then it's more honest for them to say,

Listen,

I will buy you dinner.

I'm expecting you to buy me dinner in return.

Right.

Yeah.

And then,

Okay,

Well,

At least it's spoken and it's upfront.

That's better than them not saying it.

Right.

And then harboring a resentment because the,

The other person has no idea.

Yeah.

That's more commonly what happens.

Right.

You know,

So,

You know,

There's certain things that,

You know,

That it,

As long as,

When we're upfront and honest,

It keeps a lot of the mystery out of it and a lot of the hurt feelings.

There's certain times that I do that,

You know.

I mean,

If,

If there's,

You know,

If it's easier for me to,

Let's say,

Put a plane ticket on my credit card or something.

Right.

But I'm sitting there going,

Well,

I'm not paying for this person's plane ticket.

You know,

I just,

I'm not in that financial position,

So therefore I'm not going to do that.

Well,

I'm going to be very upfront and open because some people slapping a few hundred bucks on a credit card is nothing.

Yeah.

Whereas some people it is something.

So I'm not leaving that to chance.

You know?

I'll be like,

Hey,

Listen,

You know,

I don't mind throwing it on my card.

When can you get me the money?

You know,

Just to make sure we're on the same page.

Now,

I don't think that that's me being unkind.

It's just having clear expectations so everybody's on the same page.

I don't know why I do this.

I don't know.

I don't necessarily think it's a good thing.

I try not to give unless it's unconditionally.

Yeah.

Well,

That's good.

Like,

I don't know,

Like,

If I,

Hopefully I do a good job of it,

But like,

I feel like if I'm,

You know,

If I'm giving somebody something and I expect something back,

Like even if I'm upfront about it,

Like I feel weird.

I like.

Well,

You know,

That can be a problem in receiving.

You might not feel worthy to receive.

And that's another aspect,

You know,

Which if we haven't done a show on that,

We need to.

That's huge.

But yeah,

That,

You know,

It can be that.

But the,

You know,

Not giving,

That's a lot of what I try to do.

It's if I'm,

If I'm not in a position where I can give freely,

Then I don't give.

Like generally,

If I'm in a situation where I feel I can help somebody out in a situation and I feel that they would benefit from the help,

It's not,

Not every time you give help doesn't mean that somebody is going to benefit from it.

Sometimes you're enabling.

Yeah.

You know,

So if I'm in a situation where I think that somebody could,

Could benefit from,

I mean,

Something as little as like,

Let's say 20 bucks.

If I'm going to give somebody $20,

The first questions I ask is one,

Is it going to hurt me in my personal world financially if I don't get that back?

No.

Okay,

You know,

My responsibilities will still be able to be taken care of,

Even if I don't get it back.

Okay,

That's good.

Secondly,

Am I going to hold a resentment towards this person if they don't give it back?

And if I can answer,

No,

I'm not going to hold a resentment,

I'll just understand that I won't be able to give them money anymore and lesson learned and I'll move on with my life without harboring a resentment.

Oh,

Okay,

Then I'll give them $20.

But if for some reason I'm in a position that it's going to either,

You know,

It's going to shake my foundation of my responsibilities,

If I'm not going to be able to live up to my responsibilities because of their actions,

Then I don't give them the money,

You know?

And if I'm going to be walking around harboring a resentment towards them,

Then I don't give them the money.

So that's my,

That's my foundation of how I make my decision.

And we're talking a lot about money,

But it's not necessarily like,

You know,

Giving isn't just a monetary thing.

No.

It's giving of yourself,

Giving of your time,

Giving of good deeds.

And that's the more complicated aspect,

Is the emotional giving.

Yeah.

You know,

So,

But it's really good,

I'm glad we talked about the money first because emotionally it's very similar to the money.

Yeah.

It's the same principle,

But with money we can look at it kind of more black and white and just factually because there's not so much emotion around it.

All right,

So this just brought me to this train of thought and tell me if I'm way off base here on this,

But the phrase just popped into my head,

Like,

I gave them the best years of my life.

Like,

When a relationship is over,

There's the,

You know,

You thought you loved somebody and now you'd like,

You regret it or you want all your stuff back.

Yeah.

It became very non,

Very not unconditional,

Very conditional.

Right.

Everything that you gave them became very conditional.

Yeah.

You know?

Yeah.

When somebody is— And you're willing to give them all their stuff back,

Too.

Yeah,

Yeah,

Yeah.

Unless it's a shirt that fits really nice.

And it's like,

Well,

I don't really have an emotional attachment to this.

Right,

Yeah.

Nice.

Oh,

I just,

I was,

As I was working through this,

I noticed that one time.

I was like,

I was hurt from a relationship and I was getting everything that would remind me of this person.

And I was pretty good at being honest with myself,

So I would,

I was purging everything that reminded me of it.

So I would look and I'd be like,

Then all of a sudden I'd come across a shirt and I'd be like,

Okay,

Does this,

You know,

Is this going to remind me of her?

Should I purge this?

And I was like,

No,

It's a shirt.

I like it.

I'm not going to have a problem.

So I'd save that.

And then when I got done kind of separating everything,

I looked and it was amazing that all the stuff that I told myself wouldn't remind me of her,

Was stuff that I liked.

You know?

And stuff that I wasn't going to,

Was going to remind me of her,

Was stuff that I didn't like,

You know?

It's like,

So I was just fooling myself.

Yeah.

And I wanted to keep the stuff that I liked,

I wanted to get rid of the stuff I didn't like,

You know?

It was hilarious.

I mean,

You know,

I catch myself doing stuff like that too.

But what about that feeling of time or the gifts that you might want back or the,

You know?

Well,

Yeah,

I think,

I mean,

Generally the gifts you might want back,

I think that that's,

You know,

They were given at the time.

Yeah.

I mean,

So you got to let it go.

But that feeling of like,

That feeling.

Right,

It's the feeling.

Yeah.

And I think part of that feeling is that,

I think one of the reasons that we feel so hurt is that we think that the time that we spent with them wasn't real.

Like,

Because we hold it so special in our hearts.

Right.

And it was so meaningful to us that we look back and we go,

Oh,

That,

You know,

It must not have been real for them because otherwise they'd still want to be with us,

You know?

And so it was all a lie and it was all fake and I gave and I didn't get anything back and we fall right into the victim mode,

You know,

And I've been there.

And it's not a pretty place to be.

But the reality of it is that time that you spent with that person was real.

The feelings that you shared were real.

That doesn't mean that they're going to last forever.

And,

You know,

I think we touched on this in the relationship show we did recently.

It's,

We could probably do a whole show on this too.

But the,

The most relationships are not,

They're not really based in reality.

They're not really based in,

In that much truth,

In that much long lasting.

I mean,

You know,

When we look around us,

Look at the divorce rate.

It's,

You know,

I think that that is a,

I think it's a true representation of our misconception of relationships.

I don't think our relationships are really based in that much truth.

People hang on to relationships because they don't want to be alone,

Out of fear,

Out of all kinds of things.

But the,

You know,

When you're in a true relationship,

It can continue growing and feeding itself.

That zim-zum of love that we talked about.

But,

You know,

When you're in a relationship,

It's,

There,

When a relationship like that breaks up,

You have to go through a grieving process,

Very similar to a death.

You know,

I went to,

When I was younger,

I was in this relationship that was very painful when it ended.

And I was really not in good space,

So I was not dealing with it well at all.

And,

And I ended up,

I don't know how I did this,

But I wandered into a library and I came out with this book.

Well,

That's how much I read back then.

I don't know how it happened.

Oh,

How it happened.

I wandered,

Wandered into a library.

I was not spending time in libraries or bookstores or anything else back then,

You know.

But I did,

I wandered into a library,

Which,

You know what,

Until you started laughing,

I didn't even realize how funny that was,

But it's true.

It's true that it's funny.

And,

And even weirder,

I come out with a book on death,

Dealing with death.

And I start reading this book and it was making sense to me.

I think it was the five stages of death,

You know.

And I recognized that that's what I was going through and that it was the death of a relationship.

And I was going to go through different phases of grieving,

Of anger,

Of,

You know,

And all that stuff.

And it was,

It was profound at the time and it actually,

It really helped,

Helped me identify what I was going through.

We should,

We should do an entire episode or a series of episode on books.

Yeah.

Different books that you would recommend or like one episode or like a book you might recommend at the end of a topic.

I think that would be,

That would be helpful.

You always have a different book that you're recommending me.

Yeah,

That's true.

And I,

It's,

It's funny.

I'm not that huge of a reader either,

But it's like,

I just fell into,

Well,

Years ago,

I fell into a pattern of,

Of just reading small amounts consistently.

And,

And it's helped.

There is one book that has been taking up all of the storage because I usually get them on audio book when you,

When you suggest them to me and then I listen to them much like a podcast.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle has the creepiest guy doing the intro for that.

Really?

That I,

Yeah,

It's like also the things like 19 hours long.

Wow.

Or so,

I don't know,

Probably nine hours.

It's like ridiculous.

I've never even,

I've never even read or listened to that book.

I've just heard a lot about it.

And when we're discussing something,

I just,

It came to me that that would kind of fit in.

That would be a good thing for me to read.

Yeah.

Or listen to.

I think this podcast should be,

Um,

A book?

No,

A listing of other podcasts we're going to do.

That should be the title of it.

Okay.

Because we've come up with like three or four different ideas for podcasts during this podcast.

Yeah.

Usually this is the,

The stuff that we would do in like a production meeting beforehand,

But that doesn't exist.

Right,

Yeah.

If we had actual production meetings,

Then maybe we would have done this then.

Yeah.

That's,

That's overrated.

But,

You know,

Um,

But back to relate,

Um,

Expecting nothing.

Not relationships,

Relationships was the last one.

Yeah,

This is unconditional giving.

Unconditional giving.

Um,

Yeah,

It's important to do,

Do it for the pure joy of doing it.

You know,

It's just that.

And when you get rid of that,

It's a lot of times it's just as much,

Um,

Living in awareness.

It's just pausing for a minute before you're about to do something and go,

Okay,

Now wait a minute.

Am I doing this,

You know,

Because I want something in return?

Or am I doing this just because I want to give to that person freely,

Expecting nothing in return?

And if you just pause for five seconds and clarify that in your own mind,

One,

You're going to get more joy in doing it.

And two,

If it doesn't come back to you,

You're going to have already made the agreement in your mind that it wasn't about that.

So you're fine.

You know,

It's the,

You know,

I think we just need to be,

We need to be clear on what we're giving.

And what we expect from others is,

You know,

The expectations is,

We'll get you hurt every time.

You know,

It's not that we can't have people there for us when we need them,

But we can't expect certain people to be there when we want them to.

There's certain people that are capable of it and certain people that aren't.

And we have to figure out those that are.

So,

All right,

So in dealing with relationships,

It's best to not have expectations and to live in awareness.

Not only are we looking forward to other podcasts that we're going to cover in this episode,

But this also is a great continuation of a ton of past episodes where,

You know,

Those were topics that we covered,

Not having expectations,

Relationships was a recent one,

Living in awareness.

It all ties together.

It's so,

It's not weird,

But it's,

You can really see the spider web.

Yeah,

And that's- Everything points back to each other.

And since I just listened to the last podcast on the way here,

It's so fresh in my mind,

You know,

I say that I can deal with a lot of different situations because I understand the spiritual truths that flow underneath.

That,

This is an example of that,

It's not that complicated.

There's only so many spiritual truths that flow underneath everything.

And if you can draw a line to them,

You can figure out how to deal with them.

You know,

Life isn't complicated.

If you want to get to the truth,

Simplify.

So,

You simplify and it becomes very simple and clear how to handle these situations and why you need to handle them that way.

It's just this life buzzing around us is so busy and hectic and we haven't been taught this stuff.

So,

For us to get to that point,

You know,

That's a lot of what I do is just shine a light on the truth.

And then people,

When it clicks inside somebody,

They remember it and they go,

Oh,

Yeah.

It's not because they don't know this,

Everybody has it within them.

It's just they're kind of remembering it,

You know?

And another thing to go back to what you were saying before I got us back off of the unconditional giving track again was like the joy of doing it is,

Yeah,

To give and not expect something in return.

To do that with the awareness of that is really a joyful experience.

It's a fantastic way to.

.

.

It's a great way to fill your cup.

Yeah,

Exactly.

It's an awesome.

.

.

When you are able to give whatever it is.

Whatever it is.

Your time,

You know,

An ear.

Yeah.

Be there for someone.

Yeah,

Listening,

Sometimes talking.

It's,

You know,

More often than not,

People need an ear,

You know,

When they're really hurting.

Yeah.

So,

It's.

.

.

But yeah,

To be there monetarily is so down on the list,

You know,

Of what we can do for people.

There's a place for it,

You know?

But yeah,

The most we can ever give somebody is ourselves.

And it's just being there,

Being completely present with somebody.

It's amazing.

And giving of yourself,

You know,

Like you can take.

.

.

I think every child should experience some sort of charity work.

Some sort of,

You know,

Like I took my son down to hand out like different materials,

Like things that food stamps didn't cover.

Like paper articles,

Like toilet paper and soap and just stuff like that.

Cat food,

Dog food,

Anything that food stamps wouldn't cover.

So we went to this church and we bagged up stuff and people could check like five different things off the list that they wanted and we'd bag them and give them to them.

And you see my son doing that,

You know,

He was,

I don't know,

Maybe like 10 or something.

He loved it,

You know?

It's just.

.

.

It gives you such a feeling.

If you've never experienced something like that,

You need to experience that.

Just giving and how much pure joy it gives,

You know,

Without expecting anything in return.

I think that giving is very powerful.

I'd like to do our quote now for the day for this episode.

Okay.

And since we're on the.

.

.

Since we just got to the charitable portion of this,

Maybe we'll go into this little thing and this little area.

It's a quote from Biz Stone,

The inventor of Twitter.

I was going to say,

Do you see this blank stare on my face?

And basically it's for corporate types and charitable donations.

The quote is,

Businesses that do good do well.

And it's the idea that if you go out and,

You know,

Our charitable businesses that are charitable businesses that take a portion of what they're doing and make sure that they give it away,

You know,

Are all.

.

.

It helps.

It does.

It does.

It helps grow your business.

And it's,

You know,

You can look at it energetically because,

You know,

When you give,

When you give,

You will get back.

You will.

You just can't give with that requirement because then it blocks it.

But it's.

.

.

Everything's just energy.

So when you give,

Something has to come back to you and you can only receive what you put out.

So it's not going to come back to you negative,

You know,

It's going to come back positive.

It's just sometimes since it's spiritual,

Since it's energetic,

We can't draw a line from one to another.

So we think that it's not actually happening.

But everybody that's tried it sees that and it's growing in the corporate world more and more.

You know,

I mean,

If you look at a lot of the businesses that are mainstream right now,

A lot of them are giving back.

Why?

Because they're such wonderful people?

No.

I mean,

Quite frankly,

It's not.

I mean,

You know,

They're still corporate America.

They want the.

.

.

They found that giving back,

They don't fully understand it,

Half of them.

Half of them are like,

I don't care,

We'll improve public opinion of ourselves.

Right.

You know?

Okay.

So that's why we're,

You know,

They don't understand it,

But they're using.

.

.

See,

These spiritual laws work whether you believe in them or whether you don't.

If you're putting out good,

You're getting good back.

Period.

It doesn't matter if you completely understand it or you don't.

So they might be,

You know,

Putting out good,

Putting out good,

Putting out good,

And there's going to be a certain level of good coming back.

If they understood it,

It'd probably be even better.

But I think they're helping others.

There's going to be good coming back.

Yeah,

Absolutely.

You know?

And you can label it whatever you want,

But that's what's happening.

And that's definitely true for anybody.

If you put out good.

Right.

You put out good,

You get good.

And it has to.

And sometimes we block that,

But what's beautiful about it is it's all cued up.

It's all waiting for us.

As soon as we open up and allow it,

It comes streaming in.

You know,

I've done that.

I've been giving and giving and giving for periods of my life.

And every once in a while,

I'm like,

Oh my God,

When,

Like,

I just keep giving.

And when am I going to get,

You know,

I fall into that victim mode and then I'm like,

Wait a minute,

Glenn.

It's not about that.

It's not about that.

And I know that everything that I put out is coming back to me,

But I can't do it for that reason.

You know,

I can't keep score.

Every time I keep score,

I push it away.

Where's mine?

Oh,

Now all of a sudden there's another block.

Where's mine?

Oh,

There's another block.

It's not that I don't want it.

I mean,

I'm open.

You know,

I try to open myself up to receive all the good coming back to me.

And when I'm capable of doing that,

It comes.

But we tend to have this get mentality instead of the allow mentality.

And as we're trying to get,

Get,

Get,

We're blocking it.

As we open up and allow,

Then it comes.

You know,

So I think that's the important part.

And I think the,

You know,

Before we wrap it up,

I just want to touch on the part about people not being there for us.

We kind of left that a little bit open where,

Like we do for other people,

And then when it's our turn,

There will be people there for us.

They just might not be the people we think.

And there might not be as many.

And it might not be their fault.

But if we're so busy judging,

And we go,

Oh,

They're not there for me.

Oh,

They're not there for me.

We're not going to see who is there.

You know,

And Brene Brown,

Who's somebody I really like and mentioned some of her work here and there.

You know,

She said that if you have one or two people that you can turn to when the crap really hits the fan,

One or two that you can really turn to,

You hit the lottery.

That is,

You are rich beyond belief.

And for some reason,

We have this,

This thought in our mind that we need to have 5,

6,

7,

8 people.

And most people,

That doesn't exist.

Just one or two that we can really turn to when our insides are torn up and we're really hurting.

If you have one or two people you can turn to,

You're rich.

And that's important to keep in mind.

Instead of looking who's not there,

Look for who is there.

And if you're putting out good,

I guarantee you that there's somebody there.

And that's the person you can turn to.

And then all of a sudden you walk away and you might be closer to that person than ever.

You know,

Because of that intimacy that you had with them during that time when you were hurting.

You found out something.

That doesn't mean you have to abandon all your other friends.

Maybe they're good for you in other ways.

Maybe they're just not good for you in that way.

So,

I just kind of want to wrap that up a little bit.

That's a great place to end it.

Where can people find you?

Not in the Yellow Pages.

Why?

I'm not in them,

I don't believe.

Do they even still have Yellow Pages?

Yeah,

They totally still have Yellow Pages.

Well,

Why don't you find me online instead?

Life-enhancement-services.

Com Facebook,

Life Enhancement Services And Facebook,

Glen Ambrose,

Glen with two N's.

That's me.

All right,

Peace out everyone.

Thanks for joining us.

Talk to you soon.

Reviews

Good reminders, giving is great, receiving much harder sometimes, maybe do a podcast on unconditional receiving! 😊
Awesome as always, thanks Glenn and Ben💜x

Very informative