I love a mind map! For me, it is an excellent tool for visualizing and organizing my ideas. The mind mapping technique I use is simple but effective to help me discover connections and associations that allow me to delve deeper and expand broadly into a subject area.
The Generosity mind map I made feels especially rich. It reflects my creative path, my focus on my Core Values, and the joy I’m experiencing in this new way of learning to serve by creating content. I love how many of the words have already been weekly themes! The mind map helped make their connections even more evident.
Generosity is an abundantly Generous topic! It’s chock full of the many values desperately needed as humanity keeps trying to mature into a species that cooperates more with Life and moves away from an adversarial and parasitic relationship. No doubt, we’re having a rough time of it.
Our collective and necessary propensity for survival is getting in the way of our literal survival! We’re not going to get that much farther if we fail to shift to the intrinsic reality of our connection to each other and everything. This connection has roots in Generosity.
Many people and organizations are exploring how to harness the power of Generosity to help humanity grow.
What If Generosity Was Taught By Those Who Have the Least?: Nipun Mehta at TEDxMasala
As Nipun Mehta says in his TED talk, “We shift from transaction to trust, and we build a gift culture.”
The qualities/characteristics of Generosity, especially trust, can guide and support us moving toward a more consciously beneficial way to Live and thrive on this beloved planet.
My Ingredients of Generosity:
Trust
Abundance
Creativity
Expansiveness
Love in Action
Kindness
Listening
Devotion
Sacredness
Practice
I resonate with Generosity being a Sacred, Devotional Practice. A deep and intimate relational experience. Generosity can become a Lifestyle, not a one-off event that you enact a few times a year. How powerful it would be if we defaulted to Generosity in how we engaged with ourselves, others, and the world.
Directions of Generosity:
Towards Self
With Others
To Something Bigger
What Do We Have To Give?
I wrote last week about the idea that Generosity goes beyond the physical and into the energetic and emotional aspects of our Lives. We have so much to offer the world and each other. Liberating our beliefs around the limits of Generosity reinforces the evident abundance each of us possesses internally, even if our external experience of Generosity is compromised.
Resources, the tangibles of Life: Food, water, shelter, heat, electricity, comforts, necessities - pots, utensils, furniture, clothes, etc…, transportation, energy, computers, books, natural gas, the list is long!
Access: Education, health, safety, justice, wellness.
Time - Quantity: seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years.
Time - Quality: Experience of ease, expansiveness.
Presence: Our focus, attention, feeling embodied and grounded, intimacy, co-regulation, witnessing.
Emotional Support, our relational experience: Empathy, caring, reflection, feedback, truth-telling, encouragement, sympathy, problem-solving, understanding, positive challenge, inspiration, catalyzing.
Practice:
Make a mind map of Generosity.
This exercise can be as elaborate or simple as you like.
If mind mapping is new to you, refer to this guide to inspire:
How to Mind Map to Visualize Ideas (With Mind Map Examples)
https://www.lifehack.org/articles/work/how-to-mind-map-in-three-small-steps.html
By: Matt Tanguay
4. Notice how the words/concepts on the mind map relate to each other and Generosity.
5. How does this Generosity mind map reflect your Core Values?
6. Choose one word/concept associated with Generosity and use it as a focus to enhance the experience of Generosity.
May we open to the possibilities that Generosity offers us.
We do this thing together.
We do this thing together.