The Gift Of Giving & Stretching Yourself In The Process

Two weeks ago I came back from Ensenada, Mexico on a trip to build a house for a family of nine who couldn’t afford it. I took my son who’s six and my dad with me, and it was an amazing experience. We stayed in an old hotel room with five bunk beds in it. Now, people give money to charities and that’s good. But I saw that when you can stretch yourself out of your comfort zone to give, it’s questionable who really benefits from the act. Is it the other person, or it is you? From what I experienced, I think both.

I got started much closer than Ensenada. In my hometown of Vancouver, the homeless people come to the Downtown East Side to survive the Canadian winters. A few friends and I wanted to help them directly. We sent an e-mail and a dozen people showed up to give out blankets and gloves to the East Side people at Christmastime. Two magical things happened. The first time we got onto the streets, we quickly realized these people felt more like a community than any neighborhood I’d lived in.

The second thing is that these people told us they didn’t really need blankets—they needed socks. By the time we did this four years later, we got together socks, gloves, hats, a thousand bags of these things to give out. It was all given away to people to needed it in just over 30 minutes.

We got out of our comfort zones to do this. Mexico was similar, a couple of days of building a house. I came away with these insights about both experiences.

 • We were helping people less fortunate, and that let us see how lucky we were in our own lives.

• We got to spend high-quality time with friends and family. It’s a very different experience doing charity work together than watching a movie or TV show.

• We met incredibly interesting people in an environment where almost anyone would be at their best.

 It changes how you feel about things, and what you see. Giving of yourself is about as equal to a win-win as is possible on this planet.

Coach Kevin’s Challenge

Look at ways of giving that are not only extremely meaningful for you, but create a change or stretch within yourself and your family. What would you like to do, but aren’t quite comfortable enough to commit to?