The Importance of Knowing How to Receive

Knowing how to receive is as important as knowing how to give.

We often hear about the importance of giving, the satisfaction of giving and how real giving is to give without expecting anything in return. Give because it comes from your heart without any interest. But it is not that often to hear about the openness to receive.

The thing is that to be able to give, there has to be a receiver and it is as important as the giver. Is the same idea of speaking and listening, if you are speaking but the receiver is not listening, were your words or your message received?

In the same way, we tend to not know how to receive love, and it is not because there is no love being given to us, it is because we are not open enough to receive it. In general, we were taught and told to give, to share but we were rarely taught to also receive what was given to us.

We weren't taught that we deserve what is being given to us, to receive it with open hands and open hearts, saying thank you from your heart, appreciating and being grateful for “that” that is being given to you. Whether is coming from life, from your neighbor, from your mother, from an animal or from a “stranger”, anything that comes to you from any source, be grateful for it - some things will be given to make you smile, some things will be given to make you grow-.

If you give something to someone and that person is not grateful or open to receive, that giving isn't whole, it is fractured, (it doesn't mean you have to stop giving, its just a vision of the whole). Have you ever given a hug and felt like the other person didn't open their arms enough and it felt stiff and rigid? Its like “yes I am hugging but don’t get too close”. The reason/s why a person behaves that way is a whole other story that may come in another insight.

Now, the hugging is an example of that giving. You can have the best intention to give and give with all your love in the same way life gives you with the best intention, but if you do not feel free to receive, if you don’t open your arms and heart to whatever is being given to you and appreciate it, then you are not really receiving anything. Not knowing how to receive will leave you with a sense of lacking, loneliness, emptiness and dissatisfaction.

Simply be aware of the little details that you receive each day; a smile, a cup of coffee, a piece of bread, the fact that you can breathe, the sun that is giving you warmth and energy, and the breeze that is cooling you down. These are just a few examples of simple details that you receive each day, and life is made out of simple details.

This appreciation for each simple detail is just a reminder of how blessed and rich we all really are, it brings us down to earth and makes us stop fighting or complaining for unimportant things; for things that really don’t matter. It reminds us that we all share a world and anything you do will affect the other, will affect you, will affect nature and will affect your children.