Austin, who designs elaborate surprise experiences for people, grew up in an isolated community he later left. He describes how acting generously, even toward people who didn't deserve it, became his way out of feeling powerless.
…in. That's super easy to do. I didn't want to be stuck in the river. I was like, how do I find the edge and climb up and stick my eyes over the edge of this channel that my mind has carved? How do you get out of your own mind in your own space? And the answer to that for me was through generosity.
Okay, tell me about that.
I found that I hadn't, I felt really powerless when I was, so for example, when I was leaving my community, I felt really powerless. Or at other times in life, I felt. Often felt very powerless. And in those times, I found that one of the things that really worked for me was to act with generosity towards things that maybe didn't deserve the generosity. Someone you hate, if you can be generous towards them or someone who hates you, if you are generous towards them, they have no power over that part of the thing that you control. You, weirdly enough, are outside of all of their jurisdiction when you're acting with generosity.
You're taking your power back by giving away things. Yeah.
Yes.
Can you give me like a concrete example of when you first started to see, like, oh, this is a hack here. If I can figure out how to be generous in this interaction or this relationship, like, what was one of the first things you where you gave it that name?