What Does It Mean To Pay It Forward

For other uses see pay it forward disambiguation.

One of the easiest examples of this is buying a coffee for the person in line behind you at the coffee shop and then they buy a coffee for the person behind them and so on. As mentioned earlier paying it forward means putting your focus on others and thinking of them in the same way as you do for yourself if not better. Book your online tutor. It s almost like the opposite of revenge.

When you focus on others your thought pattern changes and instead of focus why what and how something is better for you you start placing others in your place and see how your act of random kindness would make the life of other people better. Paying it forward is a third party beneficiary concept that involves doing something good for someone in response to a good deed done on your behalf or a gift you received. When you pay it forward however you don t repay the person who did something nice for you. The simplest way to define pay it forward is that when someone does something for you instead of paying that person back directly you pass it on to another person instead.

The concept is old but the particular phrase may have been coined by lily hardy hammond in her 1916 book in the garden of delight.