As the year is marching towards an end, you wouldn’t believe that we are already in the holiday time of year.

I’m going to share my biggest lesson that I learned this year, that I am finally saying enough is enough. It’s a lesson that’s been coming for me for years. A matter of fact, probably a lifetime.

So, as I share mine, I want you to share yours down below, and if yours is private, I understand. But I want you to be motivated and realize that you and I together will never allow our mistakes of the past to continue to plague us in 2017.

My biggest lesson: I’ve been way too generous.

Every time I’ve been generous with somebody, it’s come and bitten me in the ass.

Every time. Plain and simple, they never deserved to be treated that way in the first place.

I’m angry about it. I’m not going to tell you who I was generous to in my life. But it’s my own fault, and I’m taking full responsibility for being generous to people that I never should have been generous to. And it’s their fault as well, for not being appreciative, and not making efforts to pay back. But, once again, in life, you have to look at the whole lesson, and take responsibility for the lesson.

Am I angry at the people? More angry at myself. I’m more angry at myself for doing the things that I did and not fully understanding why I was doing them. Why was I being so generous to people? Was I trying to buy love? I thought about that many times. And I realized that’s not it. I thought that was it for a while.

But it really comes down to a much deeper loop. My father was never ever generous, so I guess in some way in my brain, and somewhere in my mind, I was going to be the man that my father wasn’t.

It’s something my mother taught me all the time. Be the man that your father wasn’t. So my whole life I used my father as this anti-role model. A man that I just never wanted to be like. So what happened? Well, my dad wasn’t generous, and I was. I did things for people out of the goodness of my heart. Practicing abundance, there’s loss of reason for why I’ve done this.

Guilt is another reason. You know. Because I guess I felt guilty if I could help somebody and didn’t say no. I mean, the list can go on and on.

But the bottom line is: I was generous to people who were just takers. People who were close to me. People who didn’t reciprocate in the way they said they would.

So I say no more to that. Anybody wants money from me, he wants me to help them out financially, can go fuck themselves. Sorry to be so harsh, or anything like that. But nobody’s deserving of it anymore unless they can reciprocate. Because people in general just look out for themselves. All the time.

And, people just are not appreciative. People have always never been appreciative of what they did not earn, so they don’t feel the need to be able to pay people back, or reciprocate in ways that they should. So lesson learned.

Give somebody something for free and most people just don’t value it as much as if they actually worked hard and paid for it. The people who I lent money to, they know who they are. The people who I was generous to, they know who they are. They just made choices, and I’ve had to accept it. One of them was just to flat-out not appreciative and really complained. And I heard stories behind my back on how I could have even been more generous. The nerve of that.

They’ve got to live with that. I’m sure they don’t care. But deep down, if they really looked at themselves in the mirror, they’d realize they’re not exactly who they think they are.

The people that I’ve given money to for businesses and other things, they know who they are. They’re just making choices, not to take care of what they need to take care of. They’re just ignoring it, and hoping it will go away. But in reality, the more they ignore, the more angry I get. And the more annoyed I get, and the more fractured the relationship is, really on a whole.

It’s my own fault for doing all of this. Full responsibility. The thing is, you’ve got to learn why you do things so you never do them again. Because if you never do them again, then you won’t have to go through the grief and the anger and everything.

There’s nothing wrong with anger at all. You can get angry at somebody. Somebody owes you money, or you did something for somebody and they never paid you back, or what ever it was, or you have a pattern and you’ve allowed people to take advantage of you. You can get angry at them. Get more angry at yourself, and say to yourself “no more.” No more will you be doing this. They don’t appreciate you.

Whatever it might be, people don’t value the money you give them, the time you give them, or whatever it might be. Learn from the lessons so you don’t repeat it. Because even if it’s money, you lost money, it’s just money and you either may or may not make it back, but you can prevent the same people from taking advantage of you in the future.

We all have soft spots. We all do things that we regret. We all help the wrong people. We are only human. Take a look at what your biggest lesson was, that kept coming up for you in 2016. What was your biggest lesson? How are you going to learn from it, and how are you never going to let it repeat ever again because it’s what’s important. Learn that lesson, never let it repeat, and forgive yourself. You’re only human. You fuck up.

Could be in a relationship.

Could be giving away your time, love to the wrong person. Maybe a child that took advantage of you. As they go older, didn’t appreciate you as a parent, whatever it might be. You have to stop the behavior. You have to look deep, dig deep, see why you were seeking validation the way you were seeking it or whatever it might be. Learn from your lessons. Lessons are a beautiful thing. They are hard, they’re painful. They make you angry, but they’re beautiful things to experience. Learn from it and onward we go to 2017.