WHY YOU SHOULD FLUSH 90% OF YOUR TO-DO LIST DOWN THE TOILET?

It’s easy to confuse abundance with blessing, especially in our work life. But sometimes abundance is just another word for burden. And it’s crucial for our success and satisfaction that we learn to spot the difference.

More opportunities cross my desk every day than I can manage, and I bet it’s the same for you, even if you don’t always realize it. We face a constant temptation in life to take on more than we can handle. We just don’t have the bandwidth. But it’s hard to let an opportunity go, isn’t it? 

Dismantling the "yes bomb"

Each invitation, pitch, and request feels special, seems flattering, and promises more money, fun, or significance than we currently have. It’s just too good to pass up, we rationalize - forgetting that we’ve already excused several other yeses using the very same logic. It’s even harder to reject demands from employers, clients, and others, even when we know we can’t manage them all.

We figure we’ll have to squeeze the new demand into the margin someplace, unaware that all our yeses are building a bomb that will eventually make casualties of our health, job performance, family life, and more. “There are far more activities and opportunities in the world than we have time and resources to invest in, and although many of them may be good, or even very good, the fact is that most are trivial and few are vital” says Greg McKeown in his new book Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less.

That’s the crucial difference between blessing and burden. We can fill our time with very good things and end up saddled, straddled, and stressed. That’s because good things might still be trivial. As McKeown shows, Essentialism is a lifestyle focused on discerning the difference between the “many trivial” and the “vital few.” Essentialists are committed to the vital few in every circumstance they can manage.

The benefits include not only lower stress, but the satisfaction of developing real excellence and making a vital contribution through our callings. McKeown numbers seven realities every essentialist knows:

1. The power of choice. When we forget we have the power of choice, we allow others to determine what fills our time instead of ourselves. Essentialists remain empowered by choice to determine what they do and don’t do with their time.

2. The momentum of focus. For every ten things Nonessentialists do, Essentialists do one. Instead of diffusing their energy, they focus it and gain momentum to make more impact than they otherwise could. When we complain about being “spread too thin” at work, this is a sure sign we need to shed tasks and train our focus.

3. The importance of tradeoffs. To do one thing is to miss out on others - and maybe even essential things. The more we commit to doing, the more strained our schedules for the the things that are truly important, including family, rest, and play. Essentialists weigh every opportunity against the potential tradeoffs.

4. The value of extreme criteria. Essentialists don’t consider the minimum requirements for a yes. They use extreme criteria: Is this exactly what I want? I’m I ideal for this opportunity? As McKeown says, “If it isn’t a clear yes, then it’s a clear no.”

5. The role of the journalist. The role of a journalist is not to regurgitate facts, but to explain the meaning of those facts. Essentialists act as journalists of their own experience. Instead of allowing others to determine what matters and why, Essentialists make that determination for themselves.

6. The power of clarity. According to McKeown, Essentialists pass on about 90 percent of opportunities. If we are clear on what we do, we can filter out a thousand things we shouldn’t. To gain this clarity requires asking hard questions, making difficult tradeoffs, and exercising self-discipline. And Essentialists know it’s totally worth investing in the 10 percent of opportunities that make sense for them.

7. The liberating possibility of no. Saying no to the many trivial requests, Essentialists are really saying yes to what matters most in their lives: their faith, their family, their health, their calling.

To be successful, satisfied, fulfilled people, according to McKeown, we need to save our energy and creativity for just a few essential opportunities and pass on all the rest. That will mean some hard choices, but we’re tricking ourselves to think burdening ourselves with superfluous yeses will make our life more comfortable. We’ll just shortchange the important activities and people in our lives.

What’s truly essential in your life right now and what extraneous activities do you need to limit today? 

WHY YOU SHOULDN’T BOTHER MAKING NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTIONS!

New Year’s resolutions are as old as time, but that doesn’t mean they’re very effective.

About billions usually make New Year’s resolutions, and another 50 million sometimes do, according to research by the University of Michigan.

The same research says most can of us stick it out a few weeks, but after six months fewer than half are still going. Only 8% of us are actually successful. Some industries even count on us giving up. Fitness centers, for instance, sell year-long contracts knowing most of us won’t actually show up more than a few times. Their business model depends on most members getting distracted, overwhelmed, or uninterested.

This is about much more than numbers, of course. It’s about people’s dreams. Most New Year’s resolutions are about health, wealth, relationships, or personal development. In other words, they’re about the kind of things that matter most to us.

I’m sure you have your own personal stories of starting the New Year strong only to get busy, fall behind, and eventually lose motivation. It’s happened to me. And it’s exactly why I don’t bother making New Year’s resolutions anymore, at least not the usual kind.

How to make resolutions that really stick

Some dreams are just too important to entrust to a faulty system. Instead, I utilize a proven goal-setting process that incorporates safeguards for many of the things that cause typical resolutions to fail. It’s taken me years to develop this process, and I’ve seen it work not only in my own life, but also in the lives of countless people with whom I’ve shared it.

Some people will say that the best way to make our resolutions stick is to only pick one or two for the year. But that’s leaving too much on the table for me, and probably a lot of you too. We’re talking about the things that matter most, right? Why leave so many things undone and miss so many opportunities to grow? Instead of cutting back, we just need to bone up on a system that actually works.

Life’s too short for typical New Year’s resolutions that are almost guaranteed to fail. It’s time to make progress toward the things that matter most.

WHAT I'VE LEARNED FROM THIS YEAR’S FAILURES

People often look at my success and assume I haven’t had any failures. Excuse me while I laugh. Have you seen my recent blooper reel?

The truth is that I have experienced plenty of failure, and many are a lot worse than a flubbed line. I just don’t usually publicize them.

Here are three failures, just from this year:

1- Batch releasing my posts - I thought people would love this. They could binge-listen to my show, just like Netflix, right? As it turns out, not so much. Yes, I had a few hundred fans do this, but it’s barely worth the effort. I doubt it is something I will continue.

2- Best Year Ever launch video - I use one of the best video app on the planet. But sometimes you have no time to launch video for 10 days or more. Just the same with my posts.

3- Best Year Ever Leaders Edition - My overall launch has been hugely successful. I literally have doubled my services from last year. However, one piece never got off the ground at all.

I shot three videos for a special Leaders Edition, but I wasn’t happy with the results, so I scrapped them. I then rebuilt the entire course from the ground up, but I still wasn’t happy with the final product, so I scrapped that, too.

Then were dozens of other mistakes, too, most of which I recovered from. But still, across the board, these mistakes represented a significant negative impact on my business - not only in expense and burden on my team, but also in lost revenue.

If you’ve ever had a product slip or not ship at all, you know what a massive face-palm it can be. But still, in spite of these failures - or maybe because of them - I've managed to double my revenues and profit for the year.

But while failure, mistakes, and bloopers are inevitable for all of us, we can choose to respond in ways that help us on the road to success. Here are six steps for making sure your failures move you forward.

1- Acknowledge the failure - There’s no point avoiding the obvious. The first step for processing failure is to admit our initiative, product, or promotion just didn’t work. We have to be willing to say, “Now that was a failure”. Rather than defending it, there’s enormous freedom in simply declaring it.

2- Take responsibility for it - More then merely acknowledging it, we need to own up to our part in the failure. Blaming outside forces, including other people, might cushion the blow to our ego, but it won’t let us get beyond what went wrong or what was missing. More importantly, it won’t move us forward.

3- Mourn it (if necessary) - Some mistakes are simple things we can blow off - like thirty-seven takes on a simple video. (I’m not making that up.) But others are major emotional letdowns. There’s nothing wrong with being real in the midst of a disappointment. Grieving is often a natural part of helping us get beyond a setback.

4- Learn from it - Once we’ve faced our failures for what they are, we can begin to analyze them for what went wrong and why. There’s learning in the middle of every letdown. For example, I’ve gone over the Leaders Edition failure in my head a dozen times and now see several things I will do differently next year. I can hardly wait to get started!

5- Adjust your behavior - Learning leads to action. Whether it’s retrying a video take in a different way or reworking a major product, once we learn from our mistakes we can act in ways that minimize or even leapfrog those problems going forward. In this sense failure always serves to make us better - if we allow it.

6- Enter into the next project - Failure is part of life. But so is success. It just takes working through our setbacks and staying on the path. A process like this can reframe our failures so we see them as practice - and even the vital preparation - for success. So what are you waiting for? Like I say in the blooper reel, a lot, “Let’s try that again”.

Failure is inevitable, but we can choose to respond in ways that accelerate our journey to success. In other words, if at first you don’t succeed … you’re normal. But - and this is big - we don’t have to be defined by our failures. We can work through them, get past them, and let them fuel our eventual success.

What setbacks have you experienced recently and what have you learned from them?

HOW TO BLOG IF YOU DON’T HAVE TIME?

If you want your message to reach the maximum number of people, a blog is hands down the best means I know. But who’s got time?

It doesn’t matter if I’m speaking with someone just starting to blog or someone who’s been building their platform for a few years, the first struggle people face is finding enough time in the day to do it. Maybe you can identify. I definitely can. In fact there have been times I’ve wondered if I even have what it takes to keep up the pace with any sort of consistency, but I’ve found seven strategies that help me make and maximize my time for blogging.

1- I Own My Schedule

This is foundational. Nobody has more time than anyone else. We just have different commitments and demands on the time we have. The important thing to remember is that we have agency when it comes those commitments and demands. We don’t find time so much as we make it. It’s not accidental. It takes intentionality, determination, and the willingness to make tradeoffs. That means I have to take responsibility for my time. If I don’t prioritize my life, as Greg McKeown says in Essentialism, “someone else will.”

2- I Set My Schedule

Armed with this determination, I act on the responsibility by setting my schedule. I cordon off time in my week to work on my blog. Whatever the activity, the principle is the same: what gets scheduled gets done. I’ve tried different things, but right now I’m working in concentrated periods on more posts. I’ve done it differently in the past, and will probably switch things up again. The point is that I carve out dedicated time to work. If I relied on fitting things into a few unclaimed hours each week, you’d only have something to read about once a month from me.

3- I Use a Timer

One of the world’s greatest productivity tools is a deadline - and that goes for micro deadlines like setting a timer for writing. If I have ninety minutes in which to finish a post, I set myself an alarm and work as intently as possible toward that goal. Part of owning our schedules is making them work for us, and setting a timer forces me to stay focused, get to the point, and keep the schedule I’ve set for myself.

4- I Write

I know, it sounds obvious, but do you know how much time I don’t actually write in the time I have set aside for writing if I’m not careful? The humorist, P.J. O’Rourke, has a funny passage about this. And plenty of other professionals say the same.

“Let me tell you about writers,” says John Podhoretz. “Writers sit. Then, after a while, they stand. They pace. They sit again. Sometimes, they talk on their telephone. Or they surf the Internet. At some point, they generate words.”

Here’s the truth: it’s hard to stay focused and write. While coaching another writer, Flannery O’Connor said she thought the person spent too much time reading during their writing time. And of course research, social media, even fiddling around with formatting can slow us down. Now when I write, I write, at least when I’m being good. I try to have all my research ready to go when I start, and I learned to stay drilled in on the work.

5- I Stay Close to My Subject

I read somewhere that writing is like wrangling a horse. No matter how well you did yesterday, you have to saddle it again today if you want to ride. The trick is not letting the horse get too far from you. I try to stay as close as I can to my audience and the topics I cover. I’m thinking, talking, reading about them all the time. The benefit is that when I sit down to write my head is already in the right space. The horse is already saddled and ready to go.

6- I Keep a Notebook

Part of staying close to my subject is keeping my subject close to me. I have a notebook where I keep research, quotes, post ideas, anything that will keep me present to the work. I never have to work from scratch because I can always pick up an idea and get started.

7- I Use a Template

I’ve identified the key elements needed in most of my posts. That list has become a template that offers me a simple, straightforward guideline as I get started. I’ve written about my blog template before, and you can read more about it here. But the big idea is that there’s no point wasting time reinventing the wheel if you don’t need to. I don’t, and the template has saved me countless hours over the years now.

We all know that blogging consistently is crucial for building our platforms. The questions to ask yourself are: how much influence do you want to have and how far to do you want your message to go? If you get connected to what’s a stake, it makes the decision to blog consistently a no-brainer, and it doesn’t have to be torture. Like anything, it just takes commitment and a little help from a good system.

What are the biggest obstacles you face to blogging consistently? Tell me!

 

WHAT SEPARATES THE SUCCESSFUL FROM THE UNSUCCESSFUL

People often ask me how I’ve been able to build a successful business that’s that has survived two big crises and has been steadily for the last 11 years.

I had similar wins in the corporate world. I was able to set some audacious goals and beat them again and again. This has been a pattern for me professionally, but I have a secret: I’ve never assumed I could do it on my own. So how have I done it?

Here’s the answer: I always invest in the best training I can get my hands on. As far as I can tell, that’s the main thing that separates the successful from the unsuccessful. It’s how I’ve been able to consistently grow both my leadership and my business.

I stress the word invest. I’ve utilized plenty of free resources over the years, and there is some amazing help to discover in something as cheap as a ten dollar ebook. But the real jumps have been when I’ve matched the money to the momentum I expected to achieve.

You get what you pay for

There’s nothing magic about a price tag, but there’s also truth in the old adage that you get what you pay for. I have paid hundreds of dollars for conferences, consultants, coaches, and online courses over the years and without exception these investments have been the catalysts for breakthroughs in my business.

One reason is that the cost demands my full engagement. I’m not about to waste my hard-earned money. But that’s not the main reason. It’s not even the second or third.

What we don’t know

Most of us experience those times when we want to get to another, better place. It could be in our professional or personal life. Regardless of what it is, we feel like we’ve plateaued and we don’t know how to get to the next level. It feels like we don’t know how because - are you ready for this? - we don’t know! We all have certain insights and skills that have gotten us to where we are. But those insights and skills may not be enough to go beyond.

I’m not going to improve my swimming until I know what improvement looks like. In the same way, I’m not going to grow my business until I know what to do differently than I’m doing now. That’s where premium training comes in. It’s an infusion of information that you can leverage to go to the next level.

3 Reasons to fund four own success

The right training may cost you. In fact it probably will, and it might cost you a lot. But I think there are three key reasons we have to be willing to invest in ourselves:

1- Mindset - We know what we know, and it’s not always enough. That’s not only true for the bare facts and data we need to learn, but it’s also true for the different frames of mind, the different angles, that we can’t just generate on our own.

2- Strategy - There are two ways to learn winning strategies: We can get it by trial and error - usually lots of error - or we can have someone else give us the inside scoop, saving us tons of time and effort. Even if it costs us money in the meantime, if it’s the right information, it’ll save us that in the long run too.

3- Skills - Sometimes the most important thing we need to learn to go to the next level is a simple skill set. Ballroom dancing is great example. So is time management and the kind of productivity hacks that lop ten hours off your workweek. To win in certain areas, you need specialized skills - and you can pay someone to teach you. I’ve always followed this basic assumption, and it’s true for all of us: To be successful, we need teachers, and our success is worth funding.

What have you done and invested to take your business to the next level?

EVERYBODY WANTS IT, BUT NOBODY SEEMS TO GET ANY

I know what you’re thinking, but I’m talking about margin - breathing room, think time, downtime, those moments we all desperately need really stay effective and enjoy the things that matter most.

But the truth is we seem to be getting less and less of it. Not only are prices racing while wages slow, but we’re working more hours, too.

We’re used to thinking “full time” work means forty hours a week. With that kind of commitment, we still have time for ourselves and families. But there has been a significant creep on our weekly work hours.

Nowadays the average Brazilian worker is clocking closer to 50 hours a week, according to a Gallup survey, and for some it’s even higher. A quarter of salaried workers put in more than 60 hours a week! And what about those of us who are entrepreneurs? It could feel good to cram the calendar or scary to clear it out, but either way we’re often drowning and in desperate need of margin.

I suffer from this as much as anyone. The reality it is that almost everything I know about time management I know from not having enough and learning from mistakes I’ve made in mismanaging that finite resource.

What I’ve learned is that the only way to gain more margin, is to create it - to actively make the space we need to breathe. With that in mind, here are three steps you can take for getting more margin starting today.

1- Intend your time. It’s impossible to understate the importance of this foundational step. Margin isn’t a matter of luck; it’s a matter of self-leadership. That means we have to determine that margin matters enough to us to change the way we work, or we won’t gain any.

Once we’ve made that determination, we have to believe that we have enough agency to actually accomplish what we’re setting out to do. We have to adopt the mindset of possibility when it comes to our time or we’re just spinning our wheels.

2- Spend your time. “Time is money” goes the old saying, and it’s true in more ways than one. The best trick I know for creating margin is blocking it out on your calendar. If you don’t commit your time, others will find more commitments for you.

One way to do this is to create an ideal week and let it determine your schedule. I show you how to do that here.

Whatever system you use, the important thing to remember is that a schedule is a filter. If you set it up well in advance, it’ll prevent most of the margin killers from getting through. It won’t be perfect, but without a plan, we’re goners when it comes to margin.

3- Defend your time. Once we decide to get intentional and budget our time, we have to defend the decisions we’ve made - and I’m talking like knights on the castle wall.

The filter is only a strong as our resolve. There will be outside requests - even things we personally want to do - that can ruin the margin we’ve created. No one will defend it but you. If you really value margin, you have to defend it. It’s a simple as that.

No one cares about your margin as much as you do. Getting more starts with self-leadership. We have to determine to create it and defend it.

Without that determination, the pressures of our work environment, fear about our finances, or the escapism of work will eat up the time we need for the things that matter most.

Think about it, and get some action, NOW!

THE POWER OF BELIEF

Just as what we believe with great intensity can destroy our life, so it can also save it - and vice versa.

I once read a very interesting story in a Dr. Lair Ribeiro's book. It was about a beggar in the United States called Charles Harris: "One Friday afternoon, Charles was looking for a place to shelter himself during the night. He found, in a railway station, in an open carriage and entered. As he closed the door, he realized he was in trouble, literally, for it was a refrigerator wagon! He tried to open the door, but there was no way he could do it from inside. He started feeling cold. Found a pilot pen on the floor, used to mark the meat, and began to describe his sensations on the wall of the wagon. He felt his hands freezing, his teeth creaking with cold, and he began to wonder what it would be like on Monday when they found hi body lifeless. He was experiencing the effects of the gradual freezing of his body. It was when, without strength to continue, he collapsed on the floor."

However, this story has a fundamental detail: the wagon was in maintenance that weekend, which means it was off! At no time has the temperature dropped to less than 10° C. This is the power of belief, the explanation for what happens in our lives.

Gradually we are establishing a belief system that directs our thoughts. Thinking generates behavior, which generates consistent action, which generates positive habits, which generate results, which generate new beliefs, thus generating new thoughts...

Here is the cycle of success! If you think you are a winner, you should think like a winner, and then you will behave such as one. As a result, your actions and attitudes will be winning, generating the positive result that will make you believe that you are truly a winner, and so you will think as a winner with a lot more intensity, and then ... Can you see where that will end? Just as what we believe with great intensity can destroy our life, so it can also save it - and vice versa.

It's up to you to decide on what to believe.

I hope to meet you on the road to success. If you need any little help, count on me.

FOUR WAYS TO BEAT THE RESISTANCE AND REACH YOUR GOALS IN 2018

It’s about that time you overcame what's holding you back. Based on the statistics, a large percentage of people who made New Year’s resolutions are thinking about throwing in the towel. Some already have.

According to research from the University of Scranton, nearly 4 out of 10 people quit their resolutions before reaching the month of December. Even more will fall off after that. But what about you?

If you’re like most people, you have goals for your health, relationships, faith, wealth, or personal development. These are the things that matter most to us, and yet it can be so easy to start with the best of intentions and flame out after a few weeks.

What’s Stopping You? The Resistance

Life happens. Given all our personal and professional demands, it’s no wonder we get distracted, feel overwhelmed, or find ourselves wrestling along the way with doubt, discouragement, even fear. But what if we didn’t let all of those demands and distractions have the last word? Since our goals represent the things that matter most to us, shouldn’t we fight for them? Aren’t our greatest hopes worth overcoming the resistance?

The person who popularized the term resistance for what we’re talking about here was Steven Pressfield in The War of Art. It’s been a pivotal book for me. In fact, I recently listed it as one of the 30 best business books I’ve ever read. Pressfield says that we encounter the resistance any time we try doing something important. It could be improving our health, writing a book, reaching a financial milestone, getting our inbox to zero - we’ve all felt it a hundred times. I’ve already felt it this morning - twice.

But there are tactics we can employ to beat the resistance and accomplish the things that matter most to us. I've picked four of the best ones:

1- Stay connected to your why - I’ve been teaching this tactic for a while because it’s the core of any important goal. Let’s face it, unless a goal is motivated by something big, it’s just another way to kill time.

When we hit the wall, when you feel the resistance, the answer is to remember why you wanted to go over it to begin with. If you goal is about improving your marriage, get reconnected to what that would mean for you and your spouse. If it’s about losing thirty pounds by the middle of the year, remember what that will mean for your energy and long-term health.

We have to imagine our desired outcomes and stay emotionally connected to them. Our dreams deserve at least that much, don’t they?

2- Keep your negative emotions at arm’s length - While we need to stay emotionally connected to our why, we need to push any negative emotions we experience to the side. We don’t have to shut them down. In fact, we shouldn’t - they can be useful. But we shouldn’t let them dominate.

I watched a documentary about Valery Rozov, a BASE jumper who leapt from the face of Everest. It was the highest base jump in history. But as cool as the jump was, what stayed with me was Rozov’s approach to fear. He says that he feels several emotions that we usually call fear, but he separates himself from them, minimizes them, and then jumps anyway. Rozov is in control, not his emotions.

Pressfield says that the resistance is always internal. It’s not the facts of the case that are the problem, but how we emotionally respond.

Fear, doubt, disappointment, feeling overwhelmed - we may experience these emotions, but we don’t have to let them dictate our actions. We can notice them for what they are, and then just keep moving forward.

3- Find someone who’s already done it - Since the resistance we feel is internal, many obstacles we face to our goals are just in our heads. If we can see the possibility of pulling it off, we can usually pull it off ourselves.

I’ve written before about the pathbreaking accomplishments of Roger Bannister and Chuck Yeager. Here’s another amazing example. In the middle 1980s skateboarder Mike McGill did the first ever 540-degree aerial turn in his sport. No one thought it could be done, but once McGill finally did the “McTwist,” everyone started doing it.

And once McGill paved the way, others pushed it even further. Tony Hawk did the first-ever 720-degree turn. And then in 2012 Tom Schaar - at just twelve years old - did the first ever 1080. That’s three full rotations in the air! “It was the hardest trick I’ve ever done, but it was easier than I thought,” Schaar told ESPN.

Overcoming the barrier once means that overcoming it again - and doing even more - becomes imaginable, maybe even inevitable. Tactically, what that means is that we should find people who’ve done what want to do or can show us how. If we can see the road, we can walk it.

4- Get the help you need - I don’t know why we make this one so hard. A goal represents new ground, new territory. That means you won’t know how to traverse it. That reality is actually essential to establish compelling goals. Once you have a reason, the resources will start to materialize. But sometimes we feel like we have to go it alone. Why?

Resources are more than time, talent, and money. Information, experience, and training are also important. And you can buy those - at least indirectly. I decided on some significant health-related goals for myself recently. I’ve been running for years, but I knew that running alone wouldn’t get me where I wanted to go.

I also knew that I didn’t want to waste a lot of time trying to figure it out. The delay would possibly dampen my spirits. So I got a personal trainer who developed a plan for me and is helping me, day by day, reach my goals. Sometimes all we need to overcome the resistance is a hand. Why fly solo when the right copilot can get us to our destination?

Millions of us start the year with high hopes, but lose altitude within weeks. We don’t have to join that number. Our goals are too important to let the inertia and difficulties of life stop us. The resistance is real. But we can overcome it, instead of letting it overcome us.

Then we can look back at the hardest thing we’ve ever done and say it was easier than we thought.

What could happen in your life if you could punch through the resistance and make it happen in 2018?

THE HABIT OF GENEROSITY

Nothing characterizes the Christmas season like generosity of us to each other. Gift giving has been an important part of Christmas ever since the Three Wise Men presented their gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. But sometimes it can seem like receiving gifts is the main point of the holiday.

We’ve all heard it’s more blessed to give than to receive. Probably like you, I take that on faith. But it’s fun to see all the ways science now supports the idea that special benefits come from giving, not just receiving.

Like expressing gratitude, there is a lot of research that generosity enhances the life of the giver. Here are three big ways generosity improves our lives:

Generosity makes us happy. Giving our time and money to others gives us an emotional boost. Why? According to researcher Christian Smith it’s because feeling good is a product of doing good. It’s built into our neurochemistry. And it’s true across cultural and economic lines, too, according to a Harvard Business School study. It’s just part of being human.

Generosity improves our relationships. In a study of generosity and its effect in marriage, researchers found that the recipient of generosity expressed high levels of marital satisfaction, but so did the giver.

Generosity lowers stress. This example might be a stretch, but one study I read found that being stingy might actually raise our stress levels.

After hooking people up to heart monitors, researchers found that when they felt they were giving too little in a transaction it actually drove up their stress levels. Being generous, on the other hand, kept stress down. It’s like the Golden Rule in action.

None of these studies are directly about Christmas, of course, but I think there’s an important connection. It turns out that thinking about God can lead us to be more generous. Two related studies show this. And Christmas is a natural time of year to turn our minds this direction.

But we can’t leave it there. If we want the full positive effect of generosity, we have to make it a lifestyle.

Generosity has to be a practice. The empirical evidence was very clear. Nothing we tested where you just do it one time has an effect. But all the things that you have to sustain over time have that effect. The habit of generosity is the key. It’s a lifestyle, and there’s no better time of year than Christmas to begin giving that gift to others (and ourselves).

How have you benefited in your life from being generous?