Do Good Things for Others
The Hidden Gifts of
Helping:
Do Good Things for Others
This Holiday Season
Article by Stephen
G. Post,
Author of The
Hidden Gifts of Helping,
a Wall Street Journal bestseller
Ebenezer Scrooge
begins in The Christmas Carol with a “Bah humbug!” He is both miserly
and miserable. As the story unfolds, he eventually discovers the “giver’s
glow,” as I like to term it. He is dancing on the streets in the enduring joy
of his newfound generosity of heart. I compare the giver’s glow to a glow stick
that children get at parades and fairs. These are the translucent plastic tubes
containing substances that when combined make light through a chemical
reaction. After the glass capsule in the plastic casing is broken, it glows.
The brokenness is part of the process. Give and grow, give and glow. Scrooge
discovered this before it was too late.
Human beings are wired to give of
themselves for noble purposes, regardless of circumstances. Recently, I
delivered a sermon in an African-American Baptist church in Coram, New York.
The subject was how we benefit when we love our neighbor. Afterwards, a
wonderful elderly woman, who was full of vitality, said to me, “You know, that
giver’s glow is how we African Americans have been getting through hard times
for two centuries!”
On the inside cover of a copy of The Book of Common
Prayer, given to me in 1986 by the Rev. William B. Eddy of Tarrytown, New
York, is an accumulating memorial list of twenty people I have known closely as
models of kindness and generosity over the years. To get on the list a person
must have passed on and, by all accounts, remained generous even in their final
days. These are people who understood that happiness is not to be found just in
the getting, but in the giving, and they taught by example. Have you noticed
the warm glow in your heart that comes when you act kindly? They had a deep
sense of common humanity, and they all had a certain happiness about them—a
sort of gaiety that comes with a life well-lived and rightly inspired.
In my most recent book, The Hidden Gifts
of Helping: How the Power of Giving, Compassion, and Hope Can Get Us Through
Hard Times (Jossey-Bass, A Wiley Imprint), I describe a bit of an upheaval
in my own life, and how helping others got me and my family through the
inevitable tough times that come everyone’s way.
“After twenty years of being ‘at home’ in
the Cleveland suburb of Shaker Heights, my job disappeared. Maybe we were too
attached to Cleveland, and maybe God wanted us to move on. But as a family we
never anticipated just how challenging up-rootedness is, especially when it is
not something that you would have opted for in better times. So in June of
2008, we sold the house and moved east on Route 80 from Ohio to the George
Washington Bridge, landing in Stony Brook. What a great place! But still, we
just had not quite imagined how stressful such a move would be and how hard we
would have to work to find renewed peace of mind and heart.
“Suddenly cut adrift from friends
and community, we felt painfully uprooted—out of place, stressed out,
disoriented and at odds with each other. Most movers suffer from a lack of
companionship and intimate friends, at least temporarily, and doing this
repeatedly is really tough. Fortunately, we had those twenty good years in
Ohio. We struggled to find our footing with the move, determined to recreate
the good life of community and friendships we all so keenly missed. The key
turned out to be something we knew quite well, but learned to remember daily in
our upheaval: the healing power of helping others. The medical prescription is
this—Rx: Helper Therapy.
“Simply put, helping others helps
the helper. Research in the field of health psychology, as well as all the
great spiritual traditions, tells us that one of the best ways to get rid of
anger and grief is to actively help others. Science supports this assertion:
Giving help to others measurably reduces the giver’s stress; improves health
and well-being in surprising and powerful ways; renews our optimism about what
is possible; helps us connect to family, friends and lots of amazing people;
allows the deep, profound joy of our humanity to flow through us and out into
the world; and improves our sense of self-worth. These are valuable gifts anytime
and particularly in hard times. If there is one great secret to life, this is
it.”
After all was said and done, this move worked out. My wife
found a grade school where she could continue her work as a teaching assistant
for especially needy children, my son Drew volunteered at the hospital and I
started working with families of individuals with autism. We eventually
realized that wherever we are, we are at home when we can contribute to the
lives of others. We got back in touch with the things that matter most, and
maybe that is what hard times are for. We helped others in ways that we felt
called to, we used our strengths so as to feel effective and we shared our
experiences with family, faith community and like-minded others.
Eventually, of course, everyone stumbles on hard times, and
no one gets out of life alive. Today, even those who had considered themselves
protected from hardship are being touched and their lives changed by volatile
economic markets, job uncertainty and the increasing isolation and loneliness
of modern life.
Here are
four things to keep in mind. First, as Washington Irving put it so well:
“Love is never lost. If not reciprocated, it will flow back and soften and
purify the heart.” Second, love often does beget love, just as hate
usually begets hate, and so good givers need to be good receivers. Third,
we should never count on reciprocity because this is sure to be frustrating and
ultimately small-minded. Better to take joy when those upon whom our love is
bestowed do not “pay it back” to us, but rather “pay it forward” to others as
they move through life remembering our good example. Or to bring this to the
kitchen table, as I heard one Italian mother in Cleveland tell her son, “Love
and forget about it!” And fourth, in I Corinthians Paul linked
“faith, hope and love,” and he proclaimed that “love never fails.” What is
faith but having confidence that no matter how harsh a particular scene in the
drama of our lives or of history might be, it is love that wrote the play and
love that will be revealed in the final act.
Do a little good this holiday season. The 2010 Do
Good Live Well Survey, released by United Healthcare and
VolunteerMatch (www.VolunteerMatch.org),
surveyed 4,500 American adults. 41 percent of Americans volunteered an average
of 100 hours a year. 68 percent of those who volunteered in the last year
reported that volunteering made them feel physically healthier. In addition:
·
89% reported that
“volunteering has improved my sense of well-bring”
·
73% agreed that
“volunteering lowered my stress levels”
·
92% agreed that
“volunteering enriched my sense of purpose in life”
·
72% characterized
themselves as “optimistic” compared to 60% of non-volunteers
·
42% of volunteers
reported a “very good” sense of meaning in their lives, compared with 28% of
non-volunteers
How wise it is to do what one
can to contribute benevolently to others!
Some individuals on my The Book of Common Prayer list
were well known and others lived quiet lives out of the limelight. Some were
appreciated and some not. We might prefer to think that loving servants of
goodness would, after a long and successful life, die peacefully in their beds
and all people would speak well of them at their funerals. But this is too
simplistic. Everyone on my list experienced an enduring joy as a by-product of
their generosity. Thus, the motto of my independent Institute for Research on
Unlimited Love (www.unlimitedloveinstitute.com),
founded with the help of Sir John Templeton (who happens to be on my list!), is
“In the giving of self lies the discovery of a deeper self.”
To request permission to post this
article or for review copy and interview information, contact:
Audra Jennings - 800-927-0517 x104
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