Giving Doesn't Have To Be Hard

Read time: 3 minutes

Welcome to The Ascend Archives, a weekly newsletter where I share a story about a transformation, revelation, or change in thinking that has helped improve an aspect of my life.

Last Tuesday night, I finished up an intense small group training workout and went over to the recovery area to spend 30 minutes with the Normatec leg compression machine (trying to take advantage of my fancy new gym membership)!

It was 7 PM and I decided to use the time to catch up on emails after a long day. One of my favorite quick newsletter reads is Shaan Puri’s 5 Tweet Tuesday. Each week, Shaan shares his 5 favorite Tweets with his two cents. I love reading this because I get to leverage Shaan’s time browsing Twitter all week and still feel like I’m somewhat in the know as to what is going on.

Usually, Shaan provides a few chuckles or interesting facts but last week, one of his tweets inspired me to act. Here is the Tweet with Shaan’s perspective written below:

I read this and instead of just scrolling to the next email, sat and thought about who I could do something nice for. I wasn’t trying to change the world but just come up with something that wouldn’t require a ton of money or time but was thoughtful.

I love creating memorable experiences for people. Getting people together for an epic golf trip, poker night, or backyard BBQ brings me joy. So I started to think through my family and friends and see if anyone was doing something cool or had a something exciting coming up their lives that I could help make a little bit better from my recovery chair at the gym.

After a couple of minutes, I remembered my friend Luis mentioned he and his fiancé were meeting up with our other friends in Ann Arbor for the Michigan game around Thanksgiving. I looked up the schedule: Northwestern @ Michigan was on Saturday.

Perfect.

Going back to Ann Arbor as an alumni for gameday is one of the best feelings in the world. There’s nothing quite like bar hopping on South U before the game, walking through the Diag, and marching down Hoover towards the stadium with 100k other people.

While I wished I could have joined my 4 friends in Ann Arbor that weekend, I figured there was a way for me to make their weekend a little more special. I knew they would hit the bars before the game, so wouldn’t it be cool if I bought their first round of drinks? Plus they all just got engaged so I could knock out 2 birds with 1 stone.

I opened up Venmo and sent them all a little beer money with a message “First round at Garage Bar on me. Happy engagement!!”

That was it.

While it wasn’t a brand new Vitamix blender or set of fancy bowls from the registry, I hoped that maybe buying the first round of drinks would make their day a little more special and help inspire them to be grateful for being together in a place we all love so much.

And that’s exactly what happened!

Luis sent me this photo on gameday. They were all super appreciative and it made my day.

I don’t usually ask for anything in these newsletters but today my ask for you is to send a little something to someone in your life - family, friend, team member, whoever. Keep it small but make it thoughtful.

This story is proof that Shaan is right… it doesn’t take much to make someone’s day.

Thank you for reading! As always please reply and let me know what resonated, what didn’t, or what you question. I love chatting about this stuff!

Cheers,

Andrew