What makes a great gift?

What makes a great gift?

The anticipation of watching someone unwrap your gift, what will their reaction be?  Joy, surprise, shock, strained gratitude or even worse, obvious disappointment?  If we have gone to the effort of buying a gift, we presumably care for that person and want them to enjoy it, so what makes a gift a great gift?

Gifts can be useful, beautiful, expensive, needed, indulgent and the list goes on, but here at Two Wise Ladies, we think the secret ingredient is thoughtfulness.  Being thoughtful is showing consideration for the needs of other people.    In this busy world we live in, its taking a minute to think what that person might like or need and how you want them to feel.  A thoughtful gift might not be the most expensive, but it comes with something that people can’t buy, and that is your time and effort.  The more effort you put in, the more the recipient will feel incredibly loved and special.

A gift story that made a huge impact was one I heard at a corporate training day.   The story goes that a CEO wanted to buy his assistant a gift for Christmas.  She did everything for him, so he needed to source help getting her a gift, points to him for realising she shouldn’t be organising her own gift.  The woman was a single mum to two children in primary school, she worked long hours for him in a very demanding role. He sought the assistance of another woman in the office to organise the gift, he instructed her to organise a spa voucher and was prepared to spend a significant amount of money, that’s the sort of thing his wife liked, so he thought his assistant would like that too.   Luckily, he had sought the assistance of someone very thoughtful!  She realised that if the assistant had the opportunity to do something with that sort of money, there is no way she would go to a day spa and when was she going to go to a spa and what would she do with her children?   So, she got talking to the assistant and asked all sorts of questions about what would she do if there was no limits, what would be really special, what would she want if she could do anything this Christmas?   The answer was not a day at the spa!  All the assistant wanted, more than anything, was to take her two children to a local theme park.  They had little money for this and she had no time, the time she did have was in holidays and the park would be too full to enjoy.    Her gift that Christmas was a day off work, a private car collected her and her children and they had a day full paid for at the theme park!   The woman was so overwhelmed and grateful and her kids, well, I am sure it’s a day they will never forget!    Now that is a gift that oozed that secret ingredient of thoughtfulness!

What is the best gift you ever received?