Revealed: formula for finding perfect Christmas present

Lx2 - Listening to the person we wish to buy for is the first stage.

This means tuning into any little hints that they may be consciously or
subconsciously dropping about what they like.

Concentrate doubly hard, hence the x 2, so you can pick up on the subtle clues
as well as the more obvious ones.

Listen to the things they suggest buying others too. This will contain clues
as to what they themselves would like.

O – Observing who you are buying for will reveal what makes them happy.
Watch carefully when they are in a store, online browsing, or just window
shopping and notice what excites them and makes their eyes light up. It can
be quite surprising what you might learn. Also the longer they look at
something or the more times they return to it, the more they like it.

E2 - Research has shown that the amount of effort that goes into the
finding/creating of a gift hugely enhances the value to the recipient. It is
not just about physical effort – time spent searching online or wandering
aimlessly around a store hoping for a lightning flash of inspiration.

It is about putting extra effort into choosing a gift that shows your
understanding of the recipient, their likes and their personality. Grabbing
a potted poinsettia at the station on your way home on Christmas Eve shows
little effort and will be of correspondingly little value to the receiver
who will know you did not go out of your way to choose their present. Or
buying your partner an iPad, when they know that you really wanted one,
again shows little thought for their desires.

However a special visit to a garden centre to find a plant they have always
wanted, or a rose bush named after someone or something that they care about
shows the sort of effort that will be enormously appreciated, as does giving
an iPad, but taking the trouble to load it with photographs of places and
people that the recipient loves.

Will this formula actually work?

PD – Personal desire can throw a spanner in the works when it comes to
choosing presents and must be carefully subtracted from the process. The
problem is that as human beings we over-estimate our understanding of others
– even our loved ones and assume that other people are much more like us in
their likes and dislikes, than they actually are.

This translates to a basic mistake when shopping for gifts of assuming that
because we love something, someone close to us will too.

We often allow our strong feelings of personal desire (PD) for a gift, to
overpower the results of our “listening” and “observation”
stages which skews our judgement of what our loved one would like, and
that’s when it all goes wrong. “When we think we have found the perfect
gift for someone we should stop and check that it’s not driven by our own
preferences,” advises Professor Pine. “This is the reason men tend
to buy women gadgets or electronic gifts, when their partner would probably
prefer something more personal or with more sentiment attached to it.”

EM – Empathy is the ability to pick up on another’s emotions and
imagine what they may be thinking or feeling.

The perfect gift shows a depth of love and understanding for the receiver of
your gift. The ability to put yourself in their shoes and imagine how they
will feel when opening your gift shows empathic understanding. Someone who
shows empathy may not buy an expensive gift, but they will choose a present
which has a special meaning just for the two of you.

Professor Pine added: “When it comes to spend and value of a gift,
research reveals an asymmetry between the gift giver and the receiver. Gift
givers tend to place a lot of emphasis on how much a present costs and think
how much they spend on certain people is very important. But actually the
receivers of gifts place less emphasis on how much a gift cost, and value
the effort and empathy which has gone into it far more. “If you have
satisfied all the criteria in this formula when choosing a gift then you
will have discovered the magic of Christmas.”

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