Can Giving Too Much Damage Your Relationships?

Almost everyone would agree that relationships are a key component to a full and enjoyable life. As a result, we all do our best to establish and maintain relationships. Relationships can be tough, however, and often we end up in a broken relationship that causes more pain than joy. But we know that we can’t live without relationships, in fact the equation is pretty simple:

 Better relationships = Better life

So, how can we grow in our ability to relate to others? Sometimes it all starts with asking the right questions.  One of the most important questions you have to ask yourself if you want to have healthy relationships is, “Am I giving too much?”

It sounds like a ridiculous question, doesn’t it? I mean, aren’t you always supposed to give to others?  Don’t people who give more have better relationships? The answer to that last question depends. Take for instance, antibiotics. We are privileged to live in a world with easy access to antibiotics. We have the ability to endure and survive illnesses that killed countless people just a hundred years ago. As good as antibiotics are however, they can still be misused. If you take antibiotics when they are not needed, they can attack beneficial bacteria in your body. It’s also possible for bacteria to build up a resistance to antibiotics which could lead to trouble down the road.

Giving in a relationship is crucial to its success. But giving too much or at the wrong time can have disastrous effects. Healthy relationships include both giving and taking. Here are just a few of the things that can happen when you give too much in a relationship:

You Lose The Enjoyment of Receiving

It’s enjoyable to have someone give your their time, affection, or even a listening ear. When you insist on always giving, you block other people’s ability to give and thereby your chance to receive good things. Many people who have been hurt by others who didn’t care well for them often use giving as a way to avoid disappointment and hurt. While it’s possible for people to let you down and not care for you, you almost guarantee relational emptiness when you refuse to do anything but give in a relationship.

You Could Be Blocking Someone Else’s Growth

Like I said in the previous point, when you give all of the time, you block other people’s ability to give. Learning to sacrifice your time and other things for the good of others is a key component of personal growth. When you always give, you could be impairing your friend, child, or co-worker's growth. Many people become angry after years of giving when they realize what an immature and selfish person they have as a friend or spouse. It’s possibly that they may have contributed to that lack of health, by never giving them an opportunity to give and grow.

You Could Be Affecting People Outside of Your Relationship

Even when you are not aware of it people are learning from your example. Giving all of the time can look good to those watching you. You may look selfless and caring, and others will want to emulate that. When that happens they will begin to reap all of the consequences of unhealthy relationships as well. Let people know that all humans need to both give and receive, not just by telling them, but by showing them.

Being a giving person is an admirable trait, but when it’s overused it can lead to relational misery. Be honest with yourself about some of the relationships you are in. Are you the only one giving? Is it possible that you are giving too much? If you are, take a deep breath, and step back a bit. Remember, a healthy balance will lead to a more healthy relationship. 

Ronda Rousey and Identity: What The Best Fighter In The World Taught Us About Life

By now most people have seen Ronda Rousey’s interview with Ellen DeGeneres. The reactions to the interview were mixed (as media reactions almost always are). I for one am grateful for her courage, and feel that her honesty was commendable. I hope her words will encourage others to admit their own struggles and challenges and to seek help. If you haven’t seen the interview, you can watch it here:

          Ellen's Interview With Ronda Rousey

Rousey talked about what her first ever loss in the ring did to her. She admits that she defined herself by her undefeated streak. She was the fighter who never loss. She was the unbeatable champion. Then in a matter of minutes it was all gone. In the moments after the fight, she said to herself, “What am I anymore if I’m not this”.

Rousey is not the only one to define herself by something fragile. We all do it. We define ourselves by the number of zeros on our paycheck. We define ourselves by our ability to attract the opposite sex. We define ourselves by our physical strength, or by our intellect. All of these things are fragile. All will leave us in the very same place Rousey found herself after her fight. Broken and scared. Our physical strength fades. We get older, slower, and more wrinkly. There’s always someone smarter, and there never seems to be enough money, no matter how much we make. When we turn to these things to determine our value, we will only find heartbreak.

You are more than your performance. You are more than your earning potential. You are more than your physical appearance. “What am I worth?” is one of the most important questions we can ever seek an answer to. The only reliable and unchanging answer to that question has to come from a reliable and unchanging source, God. God’s answer to this most important question is…

You are worth living for and dying for.

God chose to live on earth for you, and He chose to die so you could live. God will never change his opinion of you. He will never love you less, and His plans for your life are the only ones you can trust. If you feel broken and confused, know that God is for you. You are worthy because you are worthy in the eyes of God, and God is not wrong about you. 

How Much Is Enough: Why We Burn Out

I ran long-distance races for my track team in high school. I wasn’t very good, but evidently neither were a lot of people in my conference. So, I could be counted on to finish third or fourth at most meets and get a few points for our team. I remember clearly the nightmare of each lap of my 2-mile race. After two laps I would ask myself, “Why didn’t I run the 800m?” After four laps I would ask, “Seriously, why could I not have run the mile race?”  One thing I did like about track and field was the clarity. There was no question about how far you needed to run. The finish line was clearly marked. The laps were loudly counted as teammates cheered you on. You knew exactly how far was far enough. You might not be able to get there as quickly as you liked, but you knew when you had done enough.

Knowing when we have done enough can be a challenge for many of us. I stumbled across this line from Barbara Brown Taylor’s great book, Leaving Church that I can relate to, and maybe you can as well:

     “No matter how many day planners I bought, none of them told me when I had done enough.”1

Our relationships can always benefit from more time and energy. Work always has more tasks for us to complete. We can always come in a little bit earlier and stay a little bit later. The chores around the house are never ending. We can read more, learn more, achieve more. There is always more. When we always pursue more, we inevitably believe that we have not done enough. That sort of compulsion, though often applauded in our society is destructive. To avoid the burnout of endless striving, we have to make some choices:

Choose Who

There will always be an abundance of people who want your time and energy. If you don’t make choices about who you want to get your best time and most focused energy, then life will decide for you. Are the most important people in your life getting your leftovers? Is it possible that the people who need you most, see you the least?

Choose What

There are an infinite number of things to do every day. You will only get a few of them done, no matter how productive you are or how hard you work. You have limits. If you can’t do it all (and you can’t), then you need to choose what gets done and what remains undone. It’s easy to do what is most urgent each day rather than focusing on what is more important.  Remember, urgent doesn’t always equal important.  

Choose When

You are a very different person at 9am than you are at 2pm. You are different later that night after dinner. When you do your important work and when you engage your important relationships matters a great deal. You want the best of you to engage the things that are most vital. It’s possible to waste your most clear and energetic hours each day doing things like returning email or scrolling through Facebook. Email and Facebook aren’t bad, they are just not likely your most important priorities today. 

Choosing with clarity what "enough" means for you is the key to avoiding burnout and stress. No one knows what matters to you more than you, so take some time today and make some choices about how your are spending your time and energy. When you have done "enough", take some time to be thankful for the opportunities and choices you have! 

1- Barbara Brown Taylor, Leaving Church (New York, NY: HarperCollins 2006)

Making The Trades That Make Life Great

When I was child I was told, “you can do whatever you set your mind to”. What liars those people turned out to be! Yes, you can do lots of things in life if you are willing to work for it. The problem is that you can’t do everything you want in life, at least not well.

Life has limits. Everybody and everything has limits. We only have 24 hours to spend each day. If we don’t spend a good amount of that time sleeping, our health and performance will suffer. If we don’t spend some of that time eating and drinking our strength and eventually our health will diminish. Most of us have to work, and most of us have relationships that we value that require time as well. We also have clubs, sports, hobbies, and chores that demand attention. There are books to be read, plays to be seen, and sights to travel to. How can we possibly fit it all in?

We can’t.

The only way to have a satisfying life is to accept the truth of trade-offs. Everything in life costs something.  It may cost you time, money, energy, or all of the above, but it will always cost something. You will have to trade your time to build relationships in life. We trade energy to be a part of the basketball league. We trade money for a place to live, plane tickets, and meals. There are limits however to the time, energy, and money we have to trade. So you have to be deliberate about what you trade and what you receive in return. Everything in life is a trade-off, but are you getting what you want out of the trades?

Ignoring the reality of our limits and the truth of trade-offs doesn’t change the facts. Pretending that you can do everything without ever having to say "no" will only work for a while. You will still make trade-offs, it’s just that you won’t be one determining which trades you make. If you don’t decide which trades in life to make, life will make those choices for you.

So, if you find yourself dissatisfied with your life and relationships, take a second and ask yourself, “What do I really want most in my life?” When you have that answer, you are ready for the follow-up question, “How can I trade my time, energy, and money to get the things I want most?”  Trade-offs are a reality of life, but if you trade wisely they can lead to a satisfying and enjoyable life.

How To Balance Contentment And Ambition

Extremes are almost never good. We all are driven to extremes at times. We hate some things and love others. We eat at the best restaurants on the planet or the absolute worst dumps around. Our trips to the beach are the best experiences of our lives and our setbacks are catastrophes that make the Titanic seem like a minor malfunction.

Not only do we explain our life in extremes, we react in extreme ways as well. School shootings make us want to ban all guns forever. Terror attacks make us want to level the offending countries with every tank and fighter jet available. While extremes are unavoidable, success in life most often comes from balancing two equal and opposite extremes. Such is the case with contentment and ambition.

You either are or know someone who is perfectly happy with the status quo. Change is scary, painful, and not fun. They are fond of the phrase, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. "Why bother with the flow of things, when things seem ok?" Most of their energy is spent in avoiding pain and discomfort. “Why make changes and deal with an entirely new set of problems? I’m perfectly happy with the problems I have now”. They may start out trying to be content with life, but end up somewhere else. When change is avoided at all costs, contentment becomes stagnation. Stagnation is what happens when we have avoided change and discomfort for so long that we begin to lose our desire for more. Growth is impossible without some level of discomfort, and life is meaningless without growth.

The opposite extreme isn’t much better.

You either are or know someone on this extreme as well. In healthy doses they are ambitious, but in extremes they are compulsively driven. They apply for any new job that hits the boards. If things aren’t constantly changing they become restless. There’s always more to be had, more to be done, and more to achieve. The problem with a compulsive life is that it can’t stop and enjoy all it has accomplished.

So, what’s to be done?

Contentment and ambition can live hand in hand. Their unhealthy extremes of stagnation and compulsivity however, cannot. So, how can you be content and at the same time ambitious? Here are some tips:

Celebrate Successes

Taking time to look back and appreciate what you have accomplished, fights against the compulsion that robs us of joy. While compulsion always looks forward, celebration takes time to look back and to look around. The act of celebration is one of the most overlooked spiritual disciplines. Celebration provides a pause and much needed clarity to life. Take a second and admit that you have actually done and seen some pretty great things.

Be Imperfect

In order to keep contentment from turning into stagnation, you have to make peace with your own imperfection. One of the reasons so many people become stagnant is that they are unsure of how to take their next step well. If they don’t know how it will all turn out, they often don’t take the step at all.  No one wants to fail or look foolish, but failing and looking foolish are an inevitable part of life. Life only works if you can endure looking foolish at times without believing you are a fool. When you realize that you don’t have to be perfect, you are set free to grow (which is not a perfect process).

Choose great ambitions in your life. Tackle big problems, seek to fight enormous injustices. As you do, stop from time to time to enjoy where you are at and the people all around you. Contentment and ambition are not only possible, they are key ingredients to a successful life.

Photo Courtesy of Death To Stock Photo