{"id":278,"date":"2014-01-10T20:27:50","date_gmt":"2014-01-10T19:27:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/andilee.com\/blog\/?p=278"},"modified":"2014-01-10T20:27:50","modified_gmt":"2014-01-10T19:27:50","slug":"year-living-generously","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/andilee.com\/blog\/2014\/01\/year-living-generously\/","title":{"rendered":"A Year of Living Generously"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve long despised the idea of making New Year’s resolutions, because they are usually overly ambitious and rarely last the month. But, I made one this year (which broke a previous one – “Never to make another New Year’s resolution”). I made this exception because I’ve been overwhelmed by the generosity of others in the past year. My last blog post about Mental Health<\/a>\u00a0provoked a huge amount of feedback and all of it was kind, generous, understanding and helpful. So, I decided to spend a year living generously. With my time, with my money, with my ideas, with my skills and so on. To share. To help. To make people happier.\u00a0It’s not that I’m not a generous person anyway, I certainly can be, but I mean, this year, to do\u00a0it actively and consciously.<\/p>\n

At the end of last year, I read an article, while flying, about an idea called “Because I said I would<\/a>.” The idea really struck home, and I made hundreds of the cards and gave them away to colleagues and friends. I like the concreteness of stating the idea, not just somehow having it as a part of a personal philosophy, but as an active statement of how I choose to live.\u00a0So, combining these two ideas here is my new year’s resolution:<\/p>\n

\"I<\/a>
#YearOfLivingGenerously<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

As a strong believer in the idea of ‘giving back’, I want to promote the idea of a “Year of Living Generously” more widely – I’ve created the hashtag on Twitter\u00a0https:\/\/twitter.com\/#YearOfLivingGenerously<\/a>\u00a0and I’d love to have others join in. All I ask is that you just use that hastag after doing something generous: it can be anything. You don’t (and this is important) have to say what you’ve done – though you can, just put the tag out there. It’s not a #humblebrag, it’s not about who can be the most generous, it’s not a competition. It’s just to remind ourselves to be generous in our daily lives.<\/p>\n

Here are a few things that I’ve done in the past 9 days – I’m not saying it to garner praise, just to demonstrate what I’m meaning<\/p>\n