Selecting the Perfect Gift

Selecting a gift for someone is a tedious job, and making a gift selection that will complement the person you are giving it to is even tougher! You spend hours of your valuable time in selecting the perfect gift for your loved one and end up picking a gift, which is probably not the right one. It will become a lot easier if you keep certain gift suggestions in your mind while shopping for that perfect gift.

When you go to shop for gifts, think about the person you are going to buy the gift for. A perfect gift is one that fits the recipient. Remember the recipient's areas of interest, hobbies and personality. This will help you in selecting the right gift for him or her.

Consider the recipient's personality when you are finding a gift. For instance, your friend is the quiet, intellectual, studious type. A book would be the ideal gift for your friend. However, if your friend is the energetic, talkative, party animal type then a book is likely not a great gift idea. Consider too the recipient's likes and dislikes. If you are buying clothes for someone, buy it in his or her favorite color or favorite print. Buy a gift that will bring a smile on your recipient’s face. Gifts must fit the recipient; in addition to that, the gifts you give must also fit the occasion. So your choice of gifts should be made accordingly.

Gift-Choosing: When in Doubt, Ask

Magazines and websites abound in gift suggestions. Step-by-step decision-making processes, gift lists, good planning -- all these are quite effective procedures. Still, there are times when nothing seems to help and you are completely clueless as to what gift to give. You spend days trying to figure out what to choose, until you realize you've run out of time. Most of the times, you end up grabbing the first decent thing you find, even if you know the recipient won't be overwhelmed.

Perhaps the problem has its roots in the way we have come to conceive the process of choosing a gift. Somehow, we associate it with the idea of surprise: the recipient must not suspect for a minute what the gift might be; then, as they unwrap it, they will be speechless at the sight of the present they could never have guessed. This can sometimes work out perfectly, but let’s not forget that not all surprises are pleasant. What if you somehow buy a wrong gift?

Let’s be reasonable: the surprise element might be a nice add-on to the gift, but it’s ultimately the gift itself that people will love or hate. So why not focus on the gift, even to the detriment of the unexpected? Is it so bad if the recipient can anticipate the present? After all, anticipation can be a pleasant emotion too. It is never wrong to ask, candidly, what the other person wants. This approach will narrow down your choices and, even if you can’t find exactly what they want, you can look for something related to it.

To reconcile the two approaches, you can ask the relevant questions a long time before you have to give the present, in a way that will not let the recipient suspect that you're preparing a mental gift list. That way, they may forget about the question by the time they get the present, so you can still surprise them.

Next time you are planning to buy a gift for someone, make sure it’s the perfect gift, one that will be cherished by the recipient through out his or her life.