Are You Emotionally Generous?

By Celestine Chua

There is a wonderful mythical law of nature that the three things we crave most in life – happiness, freedom, and peace of mind — are always attained by giving them to someone else. – Peyton Conway March

How generous are you with your emotions?

Do you praise people often? Do you praise others at all? Do you tend to see others for their positive traits or do you harp on their flaws? Do you seek to bring happiness to people around you or are you just focused on making yourself happy?

Emotional Generosity and Emotional Stinginess

Emotional generosity is the act of making others feel positive without expecting anything in return.

Emotionally generous people continuously bring happiness, love, and positivity to others without expecting anything in return. They are constantly thinking about to make people around them feel better. They love praising others, recognizing their strengths, showing appreciation, encouraging people, and just uplifting people.

Giving a hug (Image: Ted Eytan)

The opposite of emotional generosity is emotional stinginess.

Emotionally stingy people have a miserly attitude toward sharing and giving. They are reluctant to praise others, often sizing them up before expressing approval. They are judgmental and critical of how others act. They are not one to encourage, support, or empathize when you need it. Relying on them to feel better is a bad idea as you end up feeling worse about yourself.

7 Causes of Emotional Stinginess

Emotionally stingy people tend to behave this way due to one or more of these reasons:

1. Lack. They lack happiness, which is why they don’t have any positive emotions to share. Most of the time they are trapped in their own mental cages to think about others.
2. Misery. They are miserable on the inside and want others to be like them too. After all, misery loves company.
3. Selfishness. They don't want others to experience what they have gained for themselves. The few things they have, they worked hard to get them, so they don't think it's fair for others to get the same.
4. Ego. To them, praising someone means acknowledging that he/she is superior. This means admitting that they themselves are not as good as him/her.
5. Competitiveness. They see people as competition and do not want to share what they have.
6. Fear. Being kind means opening up and being vulnerable. They are afraid to be hurt if their kindness is not returned.
7. Zero-sum mentality. They have the belief that whatever is gained by one is lost by another. They believe that if they share what they have, they will have less for themselves. To them, only one can win while others lose.

Unfortunately, emotional stinginess is quite common in today's society. In a place where we are continuously pushed to compete with others, where we are constantly measured against never-ending ideals, people learn to care for their self-interests, not others. Ego is the name of the game; we're all in a race; it's all about winning and beating others.

If you've been around emotionally stingy people before, you'll know that it's very draining. People who are uptight about acknowledging or encouraging you, instead being critical about your every fault. People who judge you without recognizing your feelings. People don't care about your emotions because you are not their concern.

Are You Emotionally Generous?

Take a deep look at yourself right now and think about how you think and act on a daily basis toward others. Are you emotionally generous or stingy?

1. Do you tend to judge or criticize others? Or do you praise and focus on others’ strengths and abilities?
2. Do you see people as separate from you, whom you need to guard yourself against? Or do you see them as humans together with you on a common journey?
3. Are you always thinking about yourself and your needs? Or do you actively care about others and their emotions?
4. When not with the person in question, do you tend to bad mouth or think about them critically? Or do you praise and speak highly of them?
5. Do you take good work for granted? Or do you appreciate and give thanks for it?
6. Are you always ready to tear down and negatively criticize people's content, artwork, videos, writing, etc.? Or are you ever ready to celebrate, appreciate, and give positive and constructive criticism if solicited?

The former set of behaviors is tied to emotional stinginess. The latter is tied to emotional generosity.

If you aren't emotionally generous, try it out and see where it takes you. You don't have to do anything huge or daunting. Just start with a small act that uplifts others — such as a smile, a praise, a show of concern, empathy, a random act of kindness, or a show of appreciation. Do this out of the kindness of your heart without expecting anything in return.

As you do that, notice how you start to be more positive. You start to live less in your head, and more in the real world. You become driven by love, not ego or fear. You start to care less about judgments and perceptions, and more about helping others. And you may be pleasantly surprised by the kindness others will share along the way.

At the same time, as you sprinkle positivity to others, realize that you are effectively planting little seeds of generosity in them too. Perhaps you may inspire others to become more emotionally generous like you. Perhaps you start doing for them what my ex-manager and ex-VP once did for me — open my eyes to a different kind of kindness, on how to be a better person to others.

Start giving today and experience for yourself the power of emotional generosity. It is by being emotionally generous, not emotionally stingy, that you start to achieve abundance in all areas of life, both for yourself and others.