Give and Take

The Brown Sugar Café August 9, 2021 3 Comments

In my previous blog post, I discussed the benefits of having Meaningful Relationships, and this led to episode 1 of my new podcast. While closing out the episode I started talking about give and take. Since I received a lot of feedback about that part, I think it’s only right to dive into it some more. If you haven’t read the blog post or haven’t listened to that podcast episode yet, please do so.

We’ve all heard the term give and take and we’ve all probably used it at least once without thinking. We’ve been told all of our lives that relationships are about give and take, but meaningful relationships are about giving and receiving. When you bring value to a relationship, you should receive some value in return. Not necessarily the same type of value because there are different types of value that we can all bring at different times, in different situations, but some sort of value.

A simple definition of the word take is to remove, and a simple definition of the word receive is to welcome. Takers are concerned with removing, without any thoughts on giving back. While most givers struggle with receiving anything in return. I was guilty of this at one time because I wanted the person to know that my gesture of giving was from the heart and not for personal gain. I learned that when you’re a give from the heart, people receive from their hearts, and give from their hearts in return.

If you evaluated all of your relationships, what would you find? Are you receiving what’s given from the heart or are you taking with a sense of entitlement? Are you giving to someone who’s receiving from the heart, or are they taking from you all that they can get? In Lauryn Hill’s Ex-Factor she asked, “who do I have to be to get some reciprocity?” If you find yourself asking the same question, it’s time to make some changes in your relationships so that value can take its place.

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