I want to trust that by being generous to other people leads to generosity back.
Of course, this isn’t always the way and the difficulty is that each time someone breaks this contract it sets us back and makes us think that we should protect ourselves, decrease how much we give and reduce the amount of honesty and creativity we give to other people.
I’ve had reason to think about this recently because I’ve invested a lot, in one way or another, in someone else whose decided they don’t want to be part of the ‘tribe’ anymore.
I’m not really surprised by this too much but I was disappointed initially that I haven’t ‘tied the person in’ in a better way.
I discussed it with friends today (on the Business Course Reunion) and we agreed that tying people in is a possible solution that several of us agreed we just don’t want to work like that.
I can’t compel you to like me, respect me or want to follow my path but when I give freely, openly and generously I hope that, in the majority of cases, it will come back in some way or another to the things that I am doing.
The most important thing though is that you can’t win every time.
It’s a ‘long race and one that you’re never going to win’, but you can only make a difference on the track along the way. If we give up being honest, open, generous and sharing what will we be left with?
I wouldn’t like to think about it really.
Blog post number: 1674