“Give what you want to receive” is an operative strategy in human relations. From personal experience, I believe it is flawed.

I have mentioned before that I worship at the altar of consistency. It’s an aphrodisiac for me. It’s the one thing that I make an effort to give but I rarely see it reflected back.

The second thing I cherish is someone having my back. It’s one of the things I go out of my way to provide to others, but again I don’t see a lot of it on the return visit.

So, I could easily deduce that the people I am expecting something in return from are flawed. That’s not the case. The flaw is that they are under-informed by me.

One of the larger mistakes we all make is to think that people think like us. They don’t. We assume that they make the same assumptions with the same set of facts. They don’t.

Giving has nothing to do with receiving. There is no quid pro quo.

Giving is expecting nothing in return, other than the warm feeling you get from doing it.

When you expect something in return, you set yourself up for disappointment. What mother breast feeds her child thinking that I’m doing this for you so that someday you will provide for me when I can’t provide for myself?

Give what you give because it’s part of your character, not for an ulterior motive. Giving is giving and receiving is receiving. They run on separate tracks. When we believe it’s a two way street, we are mistaken.

Expecting to automatically get back what you give goes against the grain. If you want what you give, you have to ask.

The answer to getting what you give is in the asking, not the expecting.

We rarely ask for what we want. We expect it. Every time we don’t get what we expect, we assign the blame outward.

There is an old NLP axiom that reads: “The meaning of the communication is the response that you get.”

If you desire what you are giving and not getting it, your communication skills are lacking. That means you are not asking for what you want; you are having people guess. There are low odds on that strategy working.

Just as fat never turns into muscle, giving never equals receiving.

The magic is in the asking. When you make a specific request, you will get instant feedback, no more guesswork about your relationship with the other person. Either you will get what you ask for or you won’t.

If you are expecting without asking, you will continue to live unrequited in your own world where no one else knows the rules.

Here’s an acronym you can use to remind yourself of the biblical prescription on how to get what you give: A.S.K.

“Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.”

All the best,

John

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