Helping other people
Imran (
Afghanistan
)
The satisfaction of helping others – Imran’s goosebump moment
Imran: “Hello, I am from Afghanistan. My goosebump moment is about helping an old lady. One day, I was going to buy groceries and I saw an old lady try to cross the road with a heavy bag of food she was unable to pick up. Suddenly she fell down on the road and her food was damaged. I saw this and ran towards her to help her cross the road, and buy some food for her with my grocery money, so I went back home with empty hands. I was so happy for helping her and this was the very best goosebump moment of my life. It gave me a lot of pleasure and peace of mind that I did not get any time before. Thank you!”
Helping others gives us comfort
Doing something out of love for others, personally, with friends, family or co-workers not only helps to bring a smile to others, but it also comforts our spirit, helps us feel satisfaction and fill that emptiness we sometimes have inside.
Helping others moves positive energy around the world. It begins to manifest a chain effect towards other people and back to you. We can start with small things in our daily lives, from something as basic as opening a door for someone, helping them with a task they don’t know how to do or don’t understand, to collaborating with an aid organization or NGO.
How to help others with small, everyday gestures
Giving up your seat in the subway or on the bus, helping someone cross the street, lending a helping hand to friends with their move. Helping others can be a simple, everyday thing that not only benefits others, but also oneself.
Everything adds up, everything counts, and the consequences of actions like these, besides being beneficial, are unpredictable: our neighbors, in turn, will be more sensitive to the efforts of others, the elderly will talk about our gesture and other people will take an example from us on the bus. All this without forgetting the great satisfaction that comes from helping others!
There are many ways to help others. A small gesture, such as a smile at the right time, a convenient greeting or a well-timed tap on the back can have effects that you might not imagine.
What do small gestures like these cost us? Nothing. Sometimes we even do them and don’t even realize it. Like these, there are many other things we can do effortlessly, in our daily lives, to help others, to improve our world a little and, above all, to be happier, better, and more comfortable with ourselves.
These types of gestures are, in many cases, the origin of important initiatives that are part of what we now know as global citizenship, a concept that seeks to consolidate networks of people in the world that contribute to improving the conditions of the environments they live in.
But that is not all. These global citizenship networks are based on values such as dialogue, justice, solidarity, defense of rights and freedoms, commitment, co-responsibility, and environmental awareness, among others.
Benefits of helping others
Caring people live longer. Studies have confirmed that people who contribute to or regularly participate in some charity or volunteer work, or who help others with everyday tasks, live an average of five years longer than those who do not. It’s not just about living longer; it’s about living a better quality of life.
Helping others improves your health. When you do a kindness for someone else, your brain releases certain neurotransmitters such as oxytocin, dopamine, and serotonin, which not only help counteract stress, but make you feel happy, relaxed and calm. These happiness hormones help you maintain an optimal state of health or keep under control any chronic ailments you may have.
Helping makes you feel useful. Feeling needed and valued is important in everyone’s life. Doing something for others increases your self-esteem and self-confidence because you can mean something for someone else.
Collaborating with others helps reduce symptoms of depression. If you are depressed or distressed, you can focus on doing volunteer work, because it not only makes you forget your own problems, but it helps you reduce the classic physical and psychological symptoms of depression, such as apathy, fatigue, increased or decreased appetite, insomnia. Helping others can be a better antidepressant than any medication and without any side effects.
People who give more, receive more. By the simple law of “karma”, what you send to the universe, it gives back to you in return. It is not that you must invest large sums of money in charitable foundations. In fact, small contributions count just as much, because it is our small grain of sand. If everyone puts in, great things can be achieved.
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