Summary
Joe and Brett explore generosity as a transformative practice that goes far beyond giving money. They distinguish true generosity — which cracks the heart open and dissolves the ego — from obligation-based giving that reinforces hierarchy. Brett shares stories from Iran where extraordinary cultural generosity created palpable happiness, and Joe describes a friend who lived entirely on a “gift economy” while serving as a CFO. They identify multiple forms of generosity: admiration, seeing people deeply, financial giving done with respect and seeing, and simply being present with someone without needing anything to change.
The conversation takes a deeply personal turn as Brett shares that his brother Scott is dying of brain cancer. Scott’s wife asked supporters to channel their generosity outward into the world rather than toward their family, triggering a chain of generous acts — someone paying off a single mother’s loan in India, Brett’s sister bringing cookies to homeless people and discovering one had brain cancer too but with no support system. Scott observes that there are a million acts of generosity happening around us that we haven’t even recognized.
The episode culminates in the insight that the highest act of generosity may not be giving at all — it’s simply being with someone without needing anything to change. Brett describes praying with his mother and dying brother as a moment of pure surrender and presence that exemplified this deepest generosity.
Key Concepts
- True generosity is a way of being, not just giving
- The depth of generosity is measured by how much it dissolves the ego
- Seeing people deeply is at the core of all generosity
- Giving is empowering; holding on from scarcity is disempowering
- The highest generosity is being with someone without needing anything to change
Key Quotes
“There’s a lot of different ways that the first moment of generosity can completely crack you open.”
“You don’t get the benefit of generosity by giving — you get the benefit of generosity by being generous.”
“You can tell which level you’re on by how much it breaks your heart open.”
“It’s very empowering to go ‘I’m going to share this because there’s going to be plenty.’ It’s very disempowering to go ‘I have to hold on to this because if I don’t I’m going to die or I’m going to be hungry.‘”
“There are a million opportunities to be generous every day, but there’s also a million acts of generosity that you haven’t even recognized.”
“The highest act of generosity — it’s not giving at all. It’s just being with somebody without needing anything to change.”
Transcript
there’s a lot of different ways that like the first moment of generosity can completely crack you open yeah it’s a documented phenomenon that generosity can be one of the first first steps you can take to improve your own mental health and even if you would wanted to consider that a selfish way or a self oriented way yeah and yet it’s also one of the last tools that people talk about talk about all right everybody welcome back to the art of accomplishment where we expl living the life you want with enjoyment and ease let’s talk generosity years ago I visited Iran I was invited there for a base jumping trip I’ve like lived and traveled in more than 40 countries and one of the things that I’ve noticed is that the cultures that are the happiest also tend to be the cultures where generosity is really high and in Iran that turned out to be more true than almost anywhere I’d ever been and I was blown away and and in one instance which I wrote about recently we can drop that in the show notes but I found myself in a home stay in teron yeah and this family took me in they made me dinner I found myself at one point lying on the floor playing Jenga with the daughters of the family while the father of the family was sitting on my back giving me a back massage like a cat just like purr purr and I’m like apparently this is just what happened you know from the day that I got there from the mo moment I got off the plane I had people whispering to the back of my ear as I walked by welcome to Iran we are not our government we we welcome you here we love you here thank you thank you for coming I’m so happy you’re here and people would come up off the street and just give me a hug or shake my hand and yeah welcome me just welcome to Iran was a thing that I heard all the time yeah it’s interesting the a lot of the cultures in the Middle East that my experience that I’ve experienced are incredibly generous I remember when I was in Saudi Arabia I went over to a house of a wealthy man and I admired something and he wanted to send me home with it and it was like some very expensive thing and I was like oh that’s cool I was whatever I was 10 years old okay then you get it if you like it you get it and just such a part of their culture yeah I think often times the people who are people who are deeply generous especially in their Homeland lives especially in their interpersonal lives there’s a lot of there’s a lot of Happiness there’s a lot of Joy there even when they have very little perhaps especially when they have very little man perhaps yeah it’s like the less you have the bigger the proportion of the generosity you can feel when you give the little that you have yeah so many parables are shaped in that way yeah like The Gift of the Magi yeah it’s true right if you’re a billionaire giving away $100,000 is isn’t as substantial as if you’re a beggar giving away a meal yeah yeah though it’s not only about the amount it’s also the context and it’s also what it means for you and what it means for them and the impact that it has and ways that it breaks down your identity and your ego to do so there’s a lot of different ways that like the first moment of generosity can completely crack you open yeah it’s a documented phenomenon that generosity can be one of the first first steps you can take to improve your own mental health and even if you would wanted to consider that a selfish way or a self oriented way and yet it’s also one of the last tools that people talk about talk about or want to bring out or or it’s talked about but it’s kind of considered like yeah yeah you you can do that but also you can do something practical right yeah well I mean the first thing is what is generosity because there’s plenty of people who give and it’s not out of generosity yeah right you can give out of obligation and there’s you don’t get the you don’t get the benefit of generosity by giving right you get the benefit of generosity by being generous I remember that there was I think it might be in the Jewish tradition there is the levels of generosity and there’s the level in which everybody knows that you gave something there’s the level in which the people who you gave it to don’t know and then there’s the level in which nobody knows what you said earlier seems to be really true which is how much the generosity isn’t about you how much the generosity disintegrates your ego yeah nobody knows about it and I’m still giving yeah sometimes I think giving with people knowing about it is more important because there’s a generosity of the story that gets told there’s a generosity in the giving itself but either way something that cracks your heart open when you’re giving something that’s not because you’re supposed to because you have to and the other thing that I notice is generosity comes on many levels I think in our society we see generosity as money but there’s a we value money so we see generosity through the the lens of what we value yeah for others it would be different yeah there’s a so there’s a guy Thiago Forte he runs a building a second brain and he is one of the most uh generous people as far as admiration goes he’s so generous in his admiration he looks at somebody finds something to admire about them what you see is that the people around him when he admires them they they light up it’s it’s like they’ve been given a gift way better than a couple hundred bucks right they’re just poof and they have this this sensation of oh like I’ve been given to and they they step into their best so there’s that’s one you can have like the generosity of admiration my my friend Fred he has this ability to be really generous in the way that he sees people so he he’s an amazing individual and he’s restored all these rivers and he’s worked with all these Indian tribes before and just an amazing human being Godfather of Esme and um as a matter of fact he’s taking her in to hopy into a hopy canyon to help restore this Canyon this summer and that’s part of his generosity right there it but his generosity is to allow people to be seen so when he walks into a city or a an Indian tribe the way he listens is generous the way he shows up with pictures of the land Circa 150 years ago that you know he’ll find that print and he’ll bring that so the like this is what’s this is what we’re after there’s a generosity to the way that he sees people which is unbelievably amazing and if you get to hang around with him yeah and and when he gives financially which he does too quite a bit he gives in a way that people feel seen in it he doesn’t give like oh here’s some money if he’s working with say an Indian family that doesn’t have a lot of money he’ll see that the craft that they do and he’ll buy the Craft he’ll buy the buy and and this thing that you made is special to me and he sees them in that he’s not generous in such a way where he’s putting himself above which is another way that people are generous I’ll help those people out because I’m better than them kind of they pour them I’ll help them out right which typically ends up creating dynamics that aren’t actually helpful for everybody in the end in a lot of cases yeah not all cases it can still work out well but yeah I like the Jewish tradition says there just seems to be levels of generosities and yeah and and you can tell which level you’re on by how much it breaks your heart open like you’re just like oh that that’s a whole different level of generosity if it’s breaking your heart open I have a friend his name is beu and he always shows up with a gift but he for years didn’t collect a paycheck he lived completely on what he called the gift economy so he would do something MH and then people would pay him or not for the stuff that he did and you think just do donation based career yeah but it’s like you think that’s kind of hippie but the thing he would do is like he’d be the CFO of a company for whoa yeah he was a CFO of two different companies and they’re like what do you want to get paid and he was like it’s a gift economy wow pay me what you think it’s worth wow yeah yeah that breaks my brain yeah it does doesn’t it right you think this is this is guys like making jewelry and selling that Burning Man or something but no he’s he was the CFO of a real estate organization and a I mean that’s that’s Burning Man ethos in the wild in the wild you know my my wife Alexa has uh has this way of telling the parable of uh like Jesus on the the mount with The Sermon on the Mount where the fishes and the bread yes yeah where you know that the way that I was taught that that Parable is that there was like two fishes and a loaf of bread and then Jesus waved a magic wand and then suddenly there was a bunch of food for everybody and the way that Alexa’s that story is that everybody had already brought enough food just for them and they were keeping it kind of close to their chests because they’re out in the desert and this guy Jesus talks for hours and hours you never know what’s going to happen and so there was already enough food yeah but it seemed scarce because people were holding it close and so what Jesus did is simply pass out the food that he and his disciples the people close to him had which was seemed like little and then others did it and others did it and then before you knew it there actually was plenty because once you opened the tap of gifting turns out there was enough yeah and I really love that that framing of it so there’s lots of forms of being generous and but the depth of the generosity is in the how much you are self-defining on it or how much your ego is yeah cracking I remember I was in Nicaragua I’m with this Navy SEAL from the 1970s and he’s just chain smoking and drinking beer and he was such a great guy and he was basically dedicated his life to saving Turtles but nobody in this part of Nicaragua was saving Turtles but him he also built a house that was pretty much a fortress he had clearly some some things just but incredibly generous to Turtles mhm and so I’m I’m there I’m hanging out with him and I run across a whole bunch of Canadians who were partying on the beach and I said oh what are you all doing here it was clearly not very many non- nicaraguans in this area M and they’re like oh we took a whole bunch of clothing from Canada and we’re bringing it here so that we could give it to the poor people here and I was like oh cool so what are you what are you doing for trade they’re like no nothing we’re like we have everything we’re just giving it away to them and I was I was oh so it seems to me that you’re just teaching them that they they can’t do stuff for themselves you’re saying to them that you’re not capable of taking care of yourself we need to take care of you and they’re like well what could we ask in return I was like I know this guy down the street he’s saving Turtles you could ask for them to help save the turtles in exchange for the clothing m and and then they get to give something there’s there’s the yeah they get to give exactly the idea is that the person who’s receiving somehow like that’s the gift as if it’s not the giving that’s the gift yeah my experience is giving feels just as good if not sometimes better than receiving right because it’s a deeply empowering act yeah that’s what I think people miss about giving if you take that sermon oh it’s empowering to go oh I’m going to share this because there’s going to be plenty it’s very disempowering to go I have to hold on to this because if I don’t I’m going to I’m going to die or I’m going to be hungry right like that is and then to be given something sometimes it’s quite lovely and sometimes it’s very disempowering right I mean so what what do most people want a paycheck for if not to be able and feel unable to give their time and love and attention to their family and the things that they care about about the people that they want to give to it’s it’s almost as though like I think it is as though that which we want to receive we want to receive in such a way that gives us the opportunity to feel giving not that that opportunity is required by money but there’s I think even that that logic is in it the the opportunity to help with the turtles and receive clothing yeah it’s like I’m connected now correct in in something bigger than myself and something you said about Fred you were like this is one kind of generosity is in generosity in seeing yeah I’m curious if that’s one kind of generosity or if maybe that’s like at the core of generosity my story about generosity in Iran was um so my dad was stayed there after they shut down the airports they opened them up we flew out in a crazy manner five of us on two seats three kids two moms and then my dad stayed and at some point as the story goes um my father was in the house with the driver the driver’s name was rustam and he was zor asrian so he wasn’t Muslim and there was the the re of them yeah the Revolution was Muslim for the most part and they came they stormed the house to take my dad and um you know there was all the hostages that were taken and whatnot and RAM generously risked himself stopped them and said hey knowing he could get in trouble knowing he could get beaten knowing whatever could happen he said wait wait wait wait wait you need to call the the university probably where the person you knew was going to school at the time go call the University and talk to the professors because his wife was taught at the University they know her and so they’re sitting around the kitchen table apparently smoking cigarettes machine guns and they call that somebody says yes let him go and my dad drives out through Afghanistan rustam that’s a generosity that is most of us don’t even get a chance to experience that level of generosity yeah right and then most likely my dad at the time mean that came from probably years of my dad being generous with rustom never looking down on him it was something that my dad could do in a way that I still admire yeah I’m now seeing the linkage from generosity not just to being seen or seeing but also to respect there’s a there’s a respect in it there’s a respect in it isn’t there yeah and if it’s done without respect then it doesn’t have the same yeah juice with my daughter for instance she had she was traveling through Europe some part of Spain had her passport stolen and she came to me later and she said how there was one act of offense led to her experiencing 30 acts of generosity people giving her shoes people paying for her trip to get to the Barcelona so that she could re get the new passport and a woman giving her a a bed in her fairy ride and like just endless moments of generosity when somebody saw somebody else in need wow yeah and for her she said it was it was hell but it was totally worth it just because it was the first time that she got to experience that kind of generosity from Humanity you know we recently talked about my brother he has terminal brain cancer yeah and as of today he’s in paliative care in in the hospital same hospital that he and I were both born in but basically he’s dying and they’re caring for him okay um he’s got uh internal bleeding PM embolism I don’t even know how brain cancer leads to all the stuff that’s going on for him but it’s systemic and severe and he’s still there he’s able to speak yeah and be spoken to and so over the past days I’ve been on the phone with him and my mom my sister and my dad and we’ve just been crying together sharing sharing not even stories anymore but just sharing love yeah and the way that this relates to generosity is that my brother’s wife uh posted on Facebook recently to update everybody on his current status yeah and she said if you want to support us if you want to offer any kind of assistance support we really love that we appreciate it what we ask is that you go out and do it into the world give it to somebody donate a book to a library bring somebody cookies and what I’ve been seeing happen in the wake of that just in the past couple of days has been Earth shattering for me yeah well first of all it’s uh is in it’s incredibly generous of her like if we if we’re defining generosity as being seen that the the helplessness of having someone you love die and you can’t do anything about it yeah like and and her saying here here’s something you can do yeah and I just I in a moment I saw that post I hit reshare you know like yeah this is I want this out there and within a couple hours somebody posted that somebody somebody in this community posted that they had they had paid off the loan of a single mother in India with a dis disabled kid in Scott’s name and then I got to pass that back and my sister got to tell Scott and he cried and and then I was just speaking on the drive here to do this recording I was talking to Carrie my sister and she said that one of her acts was that she she she brought cookies to a couple of homeless people under a bridge nearby where she lives and one of them was homeless she found one of them is homeless because he got brain cancer and he lost his home and he had nobody to care for him he didn’t have any back stop and he’s under a bridge with brain cancer my brother’s in a hospital with health insurance and a family and people giving around the world on his behalf and this person’s under a bridge and you know cookies what the do cookies mean right what what are cookies but to be I can only imagine to be seen in that way the way that whatever when my sister learned that piece of what was going on for him yeah whatever happened for her and him in that moment was worth far more than cookies right yeah something something that my brother apparently said after hearing some of these stories is he’s like yeah you know there’s a million opportunities to be generous every day but there’s also a million ways that you’ve been generous that you haven’t even seen a million acts of generosity that you haven’t even recognized as well as the opportunities that’s a crazy one that’s a crazy one if I consider that for a minute this has been happening to me a lot recently you know people get on the calls and they uh thanks for doing this it’s really generous of you it never feels like generosity to me m yeah I mean we don’t have to do things for free we don’t have to do the podcast for free like I get that but it it doesn’t feel like generosity and I’m I’m wondering now how much of that is me not letting it in not letting the gener let letting my own generosity in and how much of it is that I I can’t think of another way to do it I feel like generosity is only there if there’s a choice to it if that makes any sense like I can’t imagine not doing this not doing what I’m doing and what what is a choice that we recognize or that we don’t recognize like something that feels automatic to me now may feel automatic now as a result of the choices that I’ve made to become the person I am now so abely oh for sure I remember when I first started this work I did feel generous it doesn’t now yeah now it feels like oh this is it’s like living on purpose it’s to not do it feels would feel painful yeah to not have my first priority be making a living by supporting people in their authenticity yeah so on the one hand we have the recognition of all the ways we have been generous and haven’t seen it and then on the other hand just like Esme the recognition of the generosity we’ve received that we haven’t recognized that one in itself is amazing like my daughter went to school there’s a and there’s all these teachers who taught her there’s generosity in each one of them to become a teacher for a living there’s a generosity in that maybe they didn’t even recognize it my daughter recognized him as good people but she probably didn’t recognize it the way she recognized it while she was getting help with a pair of shoes trying to regain her passport right if I really let that in for a second like our business wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for the generosity of a lot of people you cat behind the camera yeah it’s it it’s a bit overwhelming to allow that full experience in yeah and sure as I didn’t recognize I didn’t recognize the generosity of my brother’s cancer when I first heard about it yeah the generosity that he didn’t die in a car accident that very day the generosity that I’ve gotten to say goodbye to him yeah a number of times and every time I’ve said goodbye to him I walked away and I was like oh there was a way I could have I was still holding it together man I was still trying to be you know like the strong little brother for the big brother in some way and I got to process that each time and like the last time I saw him in person this time last week as I said goodbye I got to allow myself just to cry and just a fully let go which gave him the opportunity to feel seen where he’s barely able to move his arms just lift them and kind of do one of these and for me to come in and like like I wanted like I had wanted the previous time to actually be able to cry on his shoulder and have him hold me yeah and have my mom hold us the way she did yesterday on the the call she prayed with us and it’s the first time I’ve unironically prayed with my mom in decades maybe that should be the highest ACT of generosity it’s not giving at all it’s just being with somebody without needing anything to change yeah with my conception of what prayer even means cuz yeah like what what it felt to me there was simply the three of us letting go of everything in the way and surrendering to being there with each other yeah and I’m deely grateful for that that’s a good place to end yeah thanks everybody for listening to the art of accomplishment