How Giving Back Enriches Us All
Creating Abundance at Home, at Work, and in Your Community

By Azim Jamal & Harvey McKinnon

Book review by Tedi Elliott

Of course, we all know we should give of ourselves. We know it doesn’t have to be anything material or monetary in order to be valuable. We each have unique gifts of wisdom, experience, time, love, and attention that are urgently needed in this world. Is it really important for us to hear this again?

Yes. And this book goes beyond just telling us again. It clarifies that the time for knowing this, for just thinking about it as a nice idea, is past. The time for doing it is now. Now, at this critical time on our planet, it is time for us to act, to finally do good, to give to others as we have never done before. And if we all do this at the same time, the result will be a positive transformation of ourselves, and the world.

Jamal and McKinnon set out all the particulars for giving; the “why’s”, the “what’s”, and the “to whom’s”. Giving puts one into the flow of abundance and allows each of us to experience that abundance in the form of new friends, better health, more happiness, a sense of pride and feelings of security.

Everyone can give something. The trick is often just to recognize and value the intangibles we all possess that could help others, such as hope, laughter, touch, advice, or an attentive ear.

The authors provide many resources for ideas on who might need your gifts. There are books, websites, and lists of organizations and entities to consider. In the chapter called Corporate Giving, there is a discussion of Jamal’s idea on corporate executives who display a blend of traits combining success, power, ambition and material abundance with essence, principles, giving and spiritual abundance – he calls it “Corporate Sufi”. Enron could have used some of this insight!

There seems to be a perfect storm brewing around this notion of “now is the time for action”. Marianne Williamson made reference to this in a recent talk she gave in San Marcos, Texas. (see related article in this issue). She emphasized that the time for “data collection” is over. Now is the time to act. Similarly, Arianna Huffington wrote a recent post on precisely this topic. Whatever one’s political persuasion, it is clear that we need to do many things, in massively different ways from how they’ve been done in the past.

When an idea’s time has come, when its tipping point is almost reached, it seems to appear everywhere, every time you turn around! Imagine what could happen if we all became active givers, right here, right now.