day 24

Mind Alchemy Day 24 – Reciprocity

February 25, 2011 By Steven Aitchison 12 Comments

Welcome to day 24 of Mind Alchemy. For the remaining days of the course we’ll be taking it a little easier, so the exercises are not so taxing on the mind, but still powerful.

Today we are going to be looking at something called ‘Reciprocity’.  Speaking from a sociolological point of view, reciprocity is when people respond to each other in kind – returning benefits for benefits.

Mind Alchemy Day 24

We are going to take reciprocity a step further.  Instead of expecting benefits from others, we just give without expectation, and continue to give without thinking about the benefits to ourselves.

So what’s this got to do with developing your mind?

Giving somebody something whether it be a gift, your time, a shout out, a helping hand helps the giver feel better about themselves.

Studies have shown that when you give someone a gift, or your time to help you can begin to feel more confident, happier and more worthy as a human being.  We don’t necessarily do it to get something back in return, but sometimes we unconsciously expect it.  However when we begin to consciously give without expectation we can drop the social expectation of the law of reciprocity, therefore making us feel more valued within.

Robert Cialdini, in one of the best psychology books ever written, in my opinion : The Psychology of Influence, recounts a story of a professor who sent christmas cards to perfect strangers to find out what they would do.  He was amazed to find that christmas cards came flooding in addressed to him, and most of the strangers did not enquire about the identity of the professor.  This tells us a lot about human psycholgy.

A few weeks ago, when it was snowing quite heavily, I was walking to my car, rather tentatively, as it was icy.  An older woman was walking slowly up the hill and stopped me and asked if I could help her walking up to the main street, about 5 minutes (she must have thought I had a trusting face).  As she held my arm, we talked as if she was my gran.  She thanked me and went on her merry way.  The feeling of being able to help someone was quite elating, a feeling which stayed with me for the rest of the day.  I didn’t expect anything, didn’t want anything but got a hell of a lot in return.

This is the feeling we are aiming for here, to feel valued as a human being and just being able to help someone else is a gift – if you have a gift it is your duty to share it.

Today’s exercise

Your exercise for today is really simple.  Think of 7 ways you can help someone and over the next 7 days go out and help them.

Download todays exercise here

Tomorrow

Tomorrow we will doing another visualization exercise which is really powerful.  Until tomorrow my fellow Mind Alchemists……..