I’m talking to you today about investment and I don’t necessarily mean of the financial perspective. I was listening to a podcast recently with ‘Tony Robbins’. He’s very big in the personal development world. He is a quite tall American man who is very loud but very good at what he does, anyway, he was talking about the program that he runs for disadvantaged young people. He spoke about a program that he has developed for young people which was either about helping them with personal development or it may have been an around helping them to gain wealth in the future. The point is that when he spoke to the children’s parents to say that he would like to offer them a place in the program. He said there is a deal involved “so it’s free they don’t have to pay but I do expect them to give back to society in some way. I expect them to give their time to the needy or you know people who are in a very unfortunate position in their lives”.

The really interesting thing was that some of the parents denied the place on the program for their child because they felt that their own family was needy, that their own family was in a position of needing help and therefore why should they be giving help to others.  Even though their child was being offered this amazing opportunity to go through this development program with someone who is incredibly successful and very well thought of, in the personal development world. Parents turned down the opportunity for their children to do that because they didn’t feel that their child should have to help others in order to earn their place.

In my therapy clinic in Hertfordshire where I use NLP and CBT for Children, I’ve had my own kind of experience like this where we had been running a free program for disadvantaged children. The children that attended haven’t had to pay but what we had asked them to do is to make a small financial contribution towards the next program. This small contribution would go towards the next group of families that would benefit in the same way that they had and the take up has been relatively small. In fact, I would say it’s around 10% of the people who had taken up their free place on the program but who then haven’t paid for it forward or giving other people the same opportunity that they were given. I don’t know if the reasons are the same but I’m hazarding a guess that they might be thinking ‘well if I need it then why should I give it to others’. As if giving to others, kind of takes away from what you have and actually, this is the mentality of a child. Children often do not have the concept of how giving doesn’t take away from themselves and some of us grow up and maintain that state of mind some of us become adults with that state of mind.

If I give to others I’m taking away from myself and actually that’s not true! When you give to others no matter what your personal circumstances are, you also get by return, even at the very least, you get to appreciate the warm fuzzy feeling inside that you got from giving away.

I remember when I was in my teenage years, it was coming up to my GCSEs exams. I was walking through town and this is not necessarily something that I would do now but things were very different back then. Back then where I lived it was very rare to see homeless people around the town. However, this lady came up to me and she was clearly a homeless person and she asked if I had some money to give her a cup of tea. I gave her my bus fare money and then I walked home. Now when I say that giving to someone else kind of pays itself back to you, as well as, what you have paid to them, here’s an example of that because at that moment I could have thought well if I give her my bus fare I’ve got a walk home that means I lose out because I have given something away but actually what happened was I gave my bus fare but I did have to walk home. However, when it came to doing my GCSE in English I had to write a short story about a time in the past where I’d give them something away so you can guess what I ended up writing about and I got a B for English. It did kind of pay itself back to me although it was a little bit later on down the line so I would like to encourage you as parents as professionals working with young people to encourage them to become proactive givers.

Now the thing with it is, is that you can’t give for the purposes of receiving because if you do that then that’s when it’s going to catch you out, you know, you can’t give because you hope to get something back. You have to expect that you possibly won’t but very often you do. I want us to move away from this idea that if I give you something it causes me depletion. It causes me to go without because if you can get a kick from giving then you’ll always get something back for yourself anyway.

I think it’s really important that we start to cultivate a generation of young people who are comfortable about giving their time, about sharing their resources and about being compassionate because those are the young people that can be looking after you and me well we’re in a care home when we’re older and I know what kind of people I want nursing me in my old age.

This is my proposition to you for this year is to encourage your young people to be givers. If you need some support doing so, our counselling, CBT and NLP therapies can help.

By Gemma Bailey

www.childtherapisthertfordshire.nlp4kids.org