by Oli Anderson, Transformational Coach for Realness
When You Shift from Getting to Giving Your Life Gets Way More REAL
A lot of people begin their ‘healing journey’ because life doesn’t feel like it is working or because something is ‘off’ in some way:
They’re haunted by the sense that something indescribable should feel ‘better’ than it does and so – even when they’ve attained ‘success‘ on paper, or make progress in the ‘right’ direction with temporary moments of relief, they can still feel a sense of ’emptiness’ underneath it all.
This restless feeling that follows people around and leaves them feeling as though something important is missing is what I call the Void:
The Void is simply a disconnection from the truth and it pushes people to start a process of endless searching and striving:
They begin reading books, listening to podcasts, trying new habits, going to therapy, exploring ‘spirituality‘, improving their fitness, building businesses, and chasing better relationships – all of which are ‘good’ things but they end up treating them as the ULTIMATE thing that’s going to finally make life feel like it is flowing instead being forced.
Whatever ‘ultimate’ vehicle they latch onto, most of the time, their endless search begins with one basic motivation:
The belief that they need to ‘GET‘ something.
Some people want to get more peace, others want to get more abundance, respect, love, attention, power, confidence, or certainty – whatever the specific thing they need to ‘GET’ may be, the underlying assumption is always the same:
If they can just get enough of this missing thing, then they will finally feel whole…but this where many people just end up becoming TRAPPED.
The sad truth is that the ‘healing journey’ – when approached through this lens of ‘getting’ – often becomes nothing more than another project for the ego (which is the thing that’s causing the problems in the first place):
Instead of becoming more REAL, people end up becoming more strategic about their fragmentation which means that they’re still trying to escape themselves (without realising), but now they’re doing it under the banner of self-development.
This article is about how the real shift happens when we stop asking what we can get from life and start asking how we can become a blessing to it by GIVING.
That is where actual transformation begins.
Let’s dig a little deeper:
Table of Contents
- When You Shift from Getting to Giving Your Life Gets Way More REAL
- Why We Think We Need to ‘Get’ More in The First Place
- The Ego’s Favourite Strategy: Getting Instead of GIVING
- Independence & Separation are Illusions
- The Shift: From Getting to Giving
- Your Realness is a Gift
- Why Giving Heals the Void but ‘Getting’ Keeps You In It
- Practical Steps: How to Shift from ‘Getting’ to Giving
- The Final Word: From Getting to Giving
Why We Think We Need to ‘Get’ More in The First Place
The reason many people feel the need to work on themselves in the first place is because they feel like they are not getting what they really want from life and so there’s usually some external thing like money, love, status, security, peace, or recognition that they believe will finally make them feel ‘complete’.
The problem is that the thing itself is rarely the true issue and that the real issue is fragmentation (disconnection from oneself and life in wholeness).
The way we tend to pick up fragmentation is like this:
At some point in life, usually through pain, shame, fear, conditioning, or emotional wounds, we split within ourselves and then create a fragmented version of ourselves, which I call the ego, in order to survive.
The problem with this is that the ego is not who we truly are – it’s just a self-image we bought into and became so that we could cope with life when we felt disconnected from truth.
Ultimately, the ego is built around ideas of protection, performance, and control which means that it tries to keep us safe by helping us avoid pain and uncertainty, but in doing so it pulls us further away from reality (which is where we really want to be if we want to live our REAL lives).
In order for the ego to maintain its hold over us, the whole, real version of ourselves gets pushed into exile:
This is ‘exiled’ version is the shadow self: the hidden, rejected, and disowned parts of ourselves that still belong to our wholeness.
When we live from ego, everything becomes filtered through fragmentation which means that our goals become fragmented, our relationships become fragmented, and even our spirituality becomes fragmented and so we start chasing things not because they’re true, but because the ego believes they will make it feel safe.
This is why so much self-improvement leaves people exhausted – they’re trying to heal from the same place that created the wound they’re trying to overcome.
The Ego’s Favourite Strategy: Getting Instead of GIVING
When there is an inner split between ego (fragmentation) and realness (wholeness), we unconsciously spend our lives trying to prove to ourselves and others that the ego is real and so we look for ‘evidence’ to support the identity we have built around fear, shame, and separation.
Living like this, we waste all our time on defending the unreal stories we tell ourselves, protecting an unreal self-image, chasing outcomes like our self-worth depends on it, and seeking validation – all to collect ‘proof’ that the fragmented ego-version of ourselves deserves to survive.
Ultimately, the ego survives and keeps its hold over us by convincing us that stability will come from outside of us which is why it constantly tells us that if we can just get the ‘next thing’, then we’ll finally be okay.
This is why ‘getting’ can feel so addictive:
You get the relationship, the promotion, the praise, the attention, or the financial breakthrough, and for a moment the Void settles and you ‘get’ a brief feeling of relief – as though you have finally arrived.
Sadly, because the fundamental problem – disconnection from truth – has not been addressed, the silence never lasts and so the Void eventually returns.
This just creates the exhausting cycle that many people mistake for ‘normal’ life:
They keep chasing the ‘next thing’ and then the ‘next next thing’, hoping it will finally be enough to heal them – never realising that they’re trapped in a loop created by fragmentation itself.
In other words, it’s not life they’re experiencing but a repetition of ego.
Independence & Separation are Illusions
The deeper problem with the ‘getting’ mindset is that it’s built on the illusions of independence and separation:
It tells us that we’re here, life is over there, and our job is to somehow extract what we need from it.
This is one of the core assumptions of ego – that separation leads to control and control leads to force but reality does not work like that because real life is about INTERDEPENDENCE:
What this means is that we’re not ‘separate’ from life; we are participants in it.
We are not isolated observers trying to negotiate with reality from the outside; we’re already in relationship with life itself.
When we live according to assumptions of independence and separation, then there’ll always be distance distance between ourselves and ourselves, between ourselves and other people, and between ourselves and truth.
This creates unnecessary suffering because we place invisible barriers between ourselves and life:
We keep trying to ‘get’ more, but we’re just running on the spot because the problem isn’t that we lack things – the problem is that we’re disconnected from them.
The Shift: From Getting to Giving
The shift that puts us back into reality is simple – even if it is not always easy:
Stop focusing on ‘getting‘ and start focusing on GIVING.
This is where real healing begins:
Like we said, at first, most people think ‘healing’ is about getting peace, getting confidence, getting clarity, or getting [whatever else] – they believe transformation means finally receiving what they perceive has been missing.
If the ‘healing’ process is real, though, something changes within us:
Eventually, we realise that ‘healing’ is not about becoming somebody who needs ‘more’ but about becoming somebody who has more to give.
This generally happens through the three stages of transformation (I use these stages with my coaching clients):
1. Awareness – Deconstruct the Ego
The first step is Awareness which means we begin to notice the patterns that have been running our lives and to see how much of our behaviour has been driven by fear, shame, control, and performance over presence.
At this stage, we start to recognise how often we’re trying to get approval instead of living in truth and stop blindly obeying the ego and begin questioning the assumptions that have shaped our choices.
Ultimately, ‘Awareness’ allows us to see fragmentation for what it is.
2. Acceptance – Integrate the Shadow
The second step is Acceptance:
This means that instead of fighting and resisting ourselves in our REALNESS, we begin to meet the rejected parts of ourselves with honesty and truth.
When we start to CHOOSE acceptance, then we can stop pretending, stop hiding, and stop trying to perform our way into worthiness.
In other words, we allow what is true to be true.
This is where shame begins to dissolve, because healing only happens when we stop running from ourselves by judging ourselves.
(Judgement is the opposite of acceptance).
3. Action – Trust Self and Life
The final step is Action which – in the case of realness – means that we begin to move not from force, but from trust.
This means that we stop asking life to prove itself to us and start participating in it.
It also means that we take real action from a place of wholeness rather than from fear.
This is where giving becomes natural because – once we reconnect to what is real – we also reconnect to the gifts we actually have to offer.
Your Realness is a Gift
The truth is that (literally) every person has something REAL to offer the world:
I am not talking about a performance, a persona, or a carefully constructed strategy but about a genuine gift that exists underneath the noise of ego.
Sometimes this gift is obvious but sometimes it takes years to uncover because shame has buried it so deeply.
Either way, it’s always there beyond the distortions and the BS:
Maybe your gift is listening in a way that makes people feel truly ‘seen’; maybe your gift is making people laugh and helping them feel lighter; maybe it is your presence, your honesty, your discipline, your creativity, your courage, or your willingness to serve.
Maybe your gift is simply your ability to tell the truth when everybody else is pretending.
It doesn’t have to be dramatic because realness never is (drama is what happens when we step away from reality and hide behind a mask):
It simply means that instead of obsessing over yourself, you start showing up in the world with what is true about you by no longer asking what you can take from a moment and start asking what you can bring to it.
You become a blessing instead of looking for blessings and that changes everything.
Why Giving Heals the Void but ‘Getting’ Keeps You In It
When we focus on giving instead of ‘getting’, we step away from the selfish tendencies of the ego and stop reinforcing the illusion of independence and begin living from interdependence instead.
This means that a sense of inner and outer connection returns and life starts to flow again.
This isn’t because giving is some kind of moral performance where being nice earns rewards from the universe but simply because giving aligns us with reality.
Reality is relational, love is relational, and wholeness is relational (instead of transactional) and so when we live as though we are separate, we suffer but when we live in connection, we ‘heal’ (return to wholeness).
Giving is not unhealthy self-sacrifice or abandoning yourself in order to please other people – it’s simply self-expression from wholeness and the natural movement of somebody who is no longer trying to use life to fill an inner hole.
The blessing is not in what comes back to you but in becoming the kind of person who can participate in life without needing to manipulate it.
Check out my book Trust: A Manual in Becoming the Void, Building Flow, and Finding Peace if you want to go deeper into overcoming the Void and staying real.
Practical Steps: How to Shift from ‘Getting’ to Giving
This shift requires practice because it’s not just a mindset change but a way of living.
Here are some simple ways to get started:
1. Ask a Better Question
Each morning, instead of asking what you need from the day, ask how you can be useful and actually SHOW UP.
The simple question of “How can I be useful today?” shifts your focus from consumption to contribution and changes the energy you bring into your life and the relationships that form it.
2. Identify Your Real Gift
Ask yourself what people naturally receive from you when you are being most real – not when you’re performing or trying to impress but when you’re simply being yourself.
What do people trust you for? What creates a natural sense of connection?
That is often where your gift can be found.
3. Notice Your ‘Getting’ Patterns
Pay attention to the places where you are secretly trying to ‘get’ something like approval, control, validation, attention, and safety (or anything else).
Do not judge yourself for it – just notice it because Awareness weakens the pattern (like we said above).
4. Practise Small Acts of Service
Do not wait for some grand purpose or dramatic mission before you can start giving something real:
Start small by giving attention, honesty, patience, encouragement, time, or presence.
Most real transformation happens in ordinary moments where we can show up and choose to serve.
5. Trust the Process
At first, ‘healing’ feels like an attempt to get something – that’s normal in many ways but if you stay with the process and keep moving towards truth, the question eventually changes.
You stop asking how you can finally feel blessed and start asking how you can become one.
That is when life begins to get more REAL.
The Final Word: From Getting to Giving
Most people begin the journey because they want life to give them something like more peace, more love, more certainty, more abundance, and even more blessing.
There is nothing unusual about that because it’s often the pain of the Void that wakes us up in the first place.
The deeper truth, however, is this:
You feel blessed by becoming a blessing and you receive by giving not ‘getting’.
This isn’t because life rewards ‘good’ behaviour like some kind of cosmic transaction, but because giving returns you to reality by moving you from fragmentation to wholeness, from ego to realness, from independence to interdependence, and from force to flow.
At first, we think healing is about getting but, eventually, we realise that healing means we finally have something real to give.
Stay real out there,
P.S. If you’re ready to start showing up in your own life by growing real then book a free coaching session with me and I’ll help you start giving something real to yourself and the world.
Trust: A Manual for Becoming the Void, Building Flow, and Finding Peace is a book about learning to return to your realness by cultivating trust in yourself and trust in life.
It contains practical exercises and dedicated meditations (Transformational Bridges) to take you DEEP in knowing yourself and life.
This book will answer many of the questions you have growing REAL and flowing towards wholeness. It covers everything from shame to addiction to the unconscious mind and synchronicity (and way more).
Personal Revolutions: A Short Course in Realness is a book designed to help you look at your life from the inside-out so that you can stop holding yourself back and go get what you really want.
It contains 166 practical ‘Revolutions’ for awareness and over 8,000 Self-Guidance Questions for you to uncover new insight about yourself, the world, and reality that you can translate into action and start building your real life on the realest possible foundation.
Shadow Life is an exploration of the human shadow and the hidden side of our personalities. It looks at the masks we wear, where these masks come from, and how we can take them off.
The book explores how we can better manage our relationships with shame, guilt, and trauma in order to remove the Mask that the world has asked us to wear (and that we forgot we were wearing) so we can live an authentic life with less drama, chaos, or BS whilst we’re still around.
The Flow Builder Journal has everything you need to make the next 21-weeks of your life a turning point.
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