Reaching out feels good on it's own

Dear James, Daniel and Emily,

As the youngest child in a family of 7 (well 8 if you count the younger foster brother but he came later so he doesn't count) I developed a habit of making sure that when I did something good I had to almost demand notice. It's not easy to get noticed in a family that large. So when you did something, especially as the youngest, the way to get acknowledgement was to figuratively jump up and down and yell: 'Hey I did something, notice me!' And unfortunately that is a habit that became somewhat ingrained in my life. And along with it a tendency to let what I didn't do just fade into the background.

What this has resulted in is that often when I do something good, something altruistic, I still feel I have to jump up and down. And since the accompanying humility of being the youngest meant that the effort to jump & down was hard I tended to not do that many good things just for the sake of it.

Well last week I mentioned that I had decided to make it a point to 'pay it forward' regarding my efforts to lose weight and put myself out there with some friends who are trying to do the same thing. The funny thing is that I have discovered how easy it is to type in the advice and atta-boys on Facebook. And how good it feels to do so, even though there is no expectation of quid pro quo. I guess this whole post is a way of my jumping up & down for that attention. But that's not the point, it's more to share that I have crossed that point where I have learned to do something good just for the sake of doing it.