There are many ways to live life. Some people follow the guiding principles of gratitude, generosity and doing good work. They aim to plant seeds of hope that encourage both present and future generations.
Different people choose to follow these principles in different ways. Some aim to be grateful and appreciate each day. Some have a generous spirit and love to give to people. Some aim to do good work that cares for people or the planet.
Looking at your own life, when have you followed some of these principles in your own way? What did you do then to be grateful, generous or do good work? Let’s explore these themes in more detail.
Gratitude
Many people have researched the topic of happiness. Some have asked the following questions.
What are the characteristics of people who are happy? What are the principles such people follow? How can other people follow these principles in their own ways to be happy?
People who are happy often have a sense of gratitude. They count their blessings rather than their burdens. This provides them with the strength to encourage other people.
There are now many books that focus on gratitude. These often mention the life and work of Brother David Steindl-Rast. Writing in Gratefulness, The Heart of Prayer, he described gratitude in the following way.
What we really want is joy. We don’t want things.
Everything is a gift. The degree to which we are awake to this truth is a measure of our gratefulness, and gratefulness is a measure of our aliveness.
Gratefulness is the key to a happy life that we hold in our hands, because if we are not grateful, then no matter how much we have we will not be happy – because we will always want to have something else or something more.
What are the things that you are grateful for in your own life? Here are some answers that people give to this question.
I am grateful for:
Having a happy childhood … Being helped to find my talents by a special teacher … Enjoying forty years of health … Spending several years in a soul-destroying job, because this made me appreciate the satisfying work I did later in life.
Being with an encouraging partner … Being treated by wonderful nurses and doctors when I had a serious illness … The gift of music … Living by the sea for several years … Relearning how to enjoy a sense of wonder as I got older.
If you wish, try tackling the exercise on this theme. This invites you to describe the following things.
Generosity
Many of the happiest people are givers rather than takers. They have a generous spirit and love to give to people. Some aim to create enriching environments in which people can grow.
During my work I visited many different organisations. It was easy to detect those that had a caring culture. The leaders of such organisations were often the main cultural architects.
Such leaders were often warm, human and related to others in a caring way. It was interesting to watch their interactions with the receptionists, cleaners and other staff.
They liked to make a person feel at ease and the centre of their world. They enjoyed giving to people – whether it was giving them encouragement or opportunities to develop.
Adam Grant’s book Give and Take describes the different ways that people can operate in their personal and professional lives. Here is an excerpt from his website that provides more background to this work.
Give and Take changes our fundamental ideas about how to succeed – at work and in life.
For generations, we have focused on the individual drivers of success: passion, hard work, talent, and luck. But in today’s dramatically reconfigured world, success is increasingly dependent on how we interact with others.
Give and Take illuminates what effective networking, collaboration, influence, negotiation, and leadership skills have in common. In professional interactions, it turns out that most people operate as either takers, matchers, or givers.
Whereas takers strive to get as much as possible from others and matchers aim to trade evenly, givers are the rare breed of people who contribute to others without expecting anything in return.
These styles have a dramatic impact on success. Although some givers get exploited and burn out, the rest achieve extraordinary results across a wide range of industries.
Givers, takers, and matchers all can – and do – achieve success. But there’s something distinctive that happens when givers succeed: it spreads and cascades.
When takers win, there’s usually someone else who loses. Research shows that people tend to envy successful takers and look for ways to knock them down a notch.
In contrast, when givers win, people are rooting for them and supporting them, rather than gunning for them.
Givers succeed in a way that creates a ripple effect, enhancing the success of people around them.
Looking at your own life, what are the things you want to give to people during your time on the planet? Here are some of the answers that people give to this question.
The things that I want to give people are:
A loving home … Nourishing food … Practical tools that people can use to shape their future lives … The chance to find satisfying work … Helping people to learn life lessons through sports …Beautiful experiences.
A breakthrough treatment for a specific illness … A safe place where people can heal … A chance to regain their zest for life … Helping people diagnosed with autism to find jobs working with data.
If you wish, try tackling the exercise on the theme of generosity. This invites you to describe the following things.
Good Work
There are many ways to do good work. A person may cook nourishing food, make beautiful furniture, play uplifting music, nurse people back to health, help other to succeed or follow another path.
One approach is to follow your vocation. Your vocation remains constant throughout your life, but you may express it through various vehicles on the way towards doing valuable work.
Another approach is to build on your strengths and do satisfying work. You may be good at encouraging people, managing crises, solving technical problems or whatever.
E.F. Schumacher believed in the importance of doing good work. Best known for his book Small Is Beautiful, he believed that economics should serve people rather than the other way around. He described this in the following way.
The aim of societies should be to obtain the maximum amount of wellbeing with the minimum amount of consumption.
Call a thing immoral or ugly, soul-destroying or a degradation of man, a peril to the peace of the world or to the well-being of future generations: as long as you have not shown it to be ‘uneconomic’ you have not really questioned its right to exist, grow, and prosper.
Towards the end of his life Fritz, as he was known, wrote about the spiritual underpinnings of his approach. Central to this was his notion of good work.
Today many people are interested in the theme of doing well and doing good – rather than just doing well. Some people are pursuing this path by working as individual contributors. Some are choosing to join organisations such as social enterprises.
There are many ways to live life. One approach is to be grateful, be generous and do your best to do good work.
Let’s return to your own life. How can you continue to do good work? How can you build on your strengths, do satisfying work and help other people to succeed? How can you do work that helps people or the planet?
If you wish, try tackling the exercise on this theme. This invites you to describe the following things.
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