we help ourselves when we help others essay brainly

In Helping Others, You Help Yourself

The benefits of social regulation of emotion..

Posted May 30, 2018 | Reviewed by Jessica Schrader

Consider the positive feelings you experienced the last time when you did something good for someone else. Perhaps it was the satisfaction of running an errand for your neighbor, or the sense of fulfillment from volunteering at a local organization, or the gratification from donating to a good cause. Or perhaps it was the simple joy of having helped out a friend. This “ warm glow ” of pro-sociality is thought to be one of the drivers of generous behavior in humans. One reason behind the positive feelings associated with helping others is that being pro-social reinforces our sense of relatedness to others, thus helping us meet our most basic psychological needs .

Research has found many examples of how doing good, in ways big or small, not only feels good, but also does us good. For instance, the well-being-boosting and depression -lowering benefits of volunteering have been repeatedly documented. As has the sense of meaning and purpose that often accompanies altruistic behavior. Even when it comes to money, spending it on others predicts increases in happiness compared to spending it on ourselves. Moreover, there is now neural evidence from fMRI studies suggesting a link between generosity and happiness in the brain. For example, donating money to charitable organizations activates the same (mesolimbic) regions of the brain that respond to monetary rewards or sex . In fact, the mere intent and commitment to generosity can stimulate neural change and make people happier.

Recent research suggests yet another way our well-being can benefit from practicing pro-social behavior: helping others regulate their emotions helps us regulate our own emotions, decreases symptoms of depression and ultimately, improves our emotional well-being.

Regulating each other’s emotions

Our day-to-day lives offer plenty of opportunities for regulating our own emotions. When we are happy, sad, frustrated or anxious , we find ways of managing our feelings to meet the demands of our environments. At times, however, when the weight of our emotions becomes too much to bare, we turn to others for support. Social regulation of emotion is a key component of our relationships. Whenever we navigate children through tantrums, help a friend through a breakup, or rely on our partners for comfort after a challenging day, we often engage in social regulation of emotion. Whether we are the ones providing the emotional support or the ones seeking it, the 2 most common ways to help others regulate their emotions are through acceptance (showing empathy by validating their feelings) and reappraisal (helping others think about their situation in a different way). A recent study from Columbia University has revealed that when helping others navigate their stressful situations, we are enhancing our own emotion regulation skills, and thus, benefiting our own emotional well-being.

Over a three-week period, participants were provided with an anonymous online environment where they could share their personal stories of stressful life events. They could also provide emotional support to other participants by replying to their entries with short, empathetic messages. Participants helped each other by identifying potential distortions in thinking, suggesting reappraisal strategies or providing words of acceptance. Responses were rated for their degree of helpfulness and participants were given the opportunity to express their gratitude for the acceptance or reappraisal messages that they received from others.

The results showed that helping others to regulate their emotions predicted better emotional and cognitive outcomes for those participants who were giving the help. Moreover, because heightened levels of self-focused attention are common in depression , the more people helped others, the more their helping behavior predicted a reduction in their own depression, thanks to the use of reappraisal in their own daily lives. Follow-up analyses further showed that this increase in reappraisal in people’s lives also affected their mood and subjective happiness. Interestingly, messages that used other-focused language (e.g., second-person pronouns such as you and your ) were considered more helpful and garnered more gratitude from participants. In fact, using other-focused language not only helped the people in need, but also those who were helping. This finding suggests that when providing emotional support to others, trying to fully take on their perspective can increase reappraisal and lead to better psychological outcomes for those who are providing the support.

Next time you find yourself helping someone with regulating their emotions, consider how your efforts may be providing you with an opportunity to practice for future situations at a distance, and consequently, improving your emotional well-being. Thus, when it comes to the benefits of social emotion regulation, St. Francis of Assisi’s words ring especially poignant: For it is in the giving that we receive.

Doré, B. P., Morris, R. R., Burr, D. A., Picard, R. W., & Ochsner, K. N. (2017). Helping others regulate emotion predicts increased regulation of one’s own emotions and decreased symptoms of depression. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 43(5), 729-739.

Dunn, E. W., Aknin, L. B., & Norton, M. I. (2008). Spending money on others promotes happiness. Science, 319(5870), 1687-1688.

Ingram, R. E. (1990). Self-focused attention in clinical disorders: Review and a conceptual model. Psychological Bulletin, 107, 156-176.

Jenkinson, C. E., Dickens, A. P., Jones, K., Thompson-Coon, J., Taylor, R. S., Rogers, M., ... & Richards, S. H. (2013). Is volunteering a public health intervention? A systematic review and meta-analysis of the health and survival of volunteers. BMC Public Health, 13(1) , 773.

Moll, J., Krueger, F., Zahn, R., Pardini, M., de Oliveira-Souza, R., & Grafman, J. (2006). Human fronto–mesolimbic networks guide decisions about charitable donation. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 103(42) , 15623-15628.

Park, S. Q., Kahnt, T., Dogan, A., Strang, S., Fehr, E., & Tobler, P. N. (2017). A neural link between generosity and happiness. Nature Communications, 8 , 15964.

Post, S. G. (2005). Altruism, happiness, and health: It’s good to be good. International Journal of Behavioral Medicine, 12(2) , 66-77.

Van Tongeren, D. R., Green, J. D., Davis, D. E., Hook, J. N., & Hulsey, T. L. (2016). Prosociality enhances meaning in life. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 11(3) , 225-236.

Weinstein, N., & Ryan, R. M. (2010). When helping helps: Autonomous motivation for prosocial behavior and its influence on well-being for the helper and recipient. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 98(2), 222.

Marianna Pogosyan, Ph.D. , is a lecturer in Cultural Psychology and a consultant specialising in cross-cultural transitions.

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How helping others could make you feel less rushed, overcoming barriers to compassion and social connection could entail changing our relationship to time..

At 10:00 a.m. on December 14, 1970, a sunny day in Princeton, New Jersey, the first batch of volunteers arrived for a psychology experiment. The participants were seminary students at Princeton Theological, studying religion in preparation for a life of spiritual service.

Upon arrival at the study administrator’s office, the participants were told that the experiment would examine career paths of seminarians. Each was asked to prepare a short talk on the topic and given some reading material for inspiration. Half the participants received a sheet of paper with questions and ideas about the best use of a seminary education. The other half received a copy of the famous New Testament parable of the Good Samaritan, who stops on the road to help someone in need.

All of this, unbeknownst to the volunteers, was mere prelude.

The administrator then informed each volunteer that, due to space constraints, they would have to walk over to a different building to share their talk. The participants were handed a map outlining a route that took them through an alley to the next building. One by one, the participants set out. Entering the alley, each participant encountered a startling sight: a pile of a man, slumped and motionless in a dark doorway, moaning in distress.

Here was the experiment: Who would stop to help, like the Good Samaritan, and who would pass him by?

The groaning man, a disguised member of the research team, noted the reactions of each seminarian. Some hurried past without noticing him. Others looked or nodded but didn’t stop. Some paused briefly to ask if the man was all right. And then there were a few “superhelpers” who guided the suffering man inside, refusing to leave until care had arrived.

Who stopped? Who rushed past? What determined whether a person took the time to help another human in need? Study directors John Darley and C. Daniel Batson had hypothesized that priming the students to think about the Good Samaritan would make them more likely to help—a demonstration of the power of scripture to inspire moral behavior.

However, analysis showed no statistically significant difference. Students who hadn’t read the parable helped (or neglected to help) in similar numbers to those that had. None of the other variables Darley and Batson tested—such as what type of religious beliefs the participants held—made a difference, either.

All except one: time. Students who were told to hurry to their destination were significantly less likely to stop to help a man in pain. Students who were told they had a bit of spare time to make the walk stopped more frequently and offered more substantial forms of help.

We are hard-pressed to imagine people more likely to stay and help than seminary students. And yet, even among those who devote their lives to serving others, the perception of being short on time kept them from helping someone in obvious need.

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Decades later, with life moving faster than ever, what hope is there for the rest of us?

Time is one of the most significant barriers to social connection today. We believe ourselves to be suffering from a “time famine”: always with too much to do, and never enough time to get it done. The modern corporation enshrines this famine mindset. Workplace systems monitor how and where employees spend their days. Employees keep “time pies” to track their allocation of this scarce resource against specific projects. The perennial struggle for work-life balance often comes down to one problem: I simply don’t have enough hours in the day to do well at both work and home. Seventy percent of Americans eat lunch at their desks or don’t eat lunch at all. Lack of time—or our perception of lack of time—keeps us from connecting.

Our brains, like those of the Princeton seminary students rushing to another building, treat time as a central factor in deciding whether to spend time helping others. Hunger, fatigue, and injury are some of the other determinants of how generous we are willing to be, but time is the resource most precious today.

Ask doctors whether they have the time to interact with patients in the manner they’d most desire, and more than half —56%—will tell you they lack the time to treat them with compassion. Importantly, it’s often not objective lack of time but rather our subjective experience of a “time famine” that drives this mindset. Connecting rapidly requires addressing and overcoming that perception.

Building rapid rapport

Seminarians rushing from one building to the next didn’t stop to help a crumpled man in an alley because they had been told to hurry. That instruction—“hurry”—triggers a mental script. Our focus narrows. We move quickly, ignoring stimuli that could deter us from our goal—including social distractions. Hurrying is not inherently bad, but a never-ending time famine diminishes our quality of life and causes us to miss important opportunities. The trick is to disrupt this script to restore our sense of equilibrium. How?

Two distinct strategies can help us here. First, while we cannot add more hours to the day, we can make it feel like we did exactly that. A famous 2010 study by a trio of professors from Wharton, Yale, and Harvard examined four strategies for reducing our sense of time famine:

• Giving people time back in their day that had previously been committed to a task
• Asking people to spend that same amount of time on a task helping others
• Asking people to waste the time
• Asking people to spend that time on themselves

Only one of these interventions gave people the feeling of having time to spare—what the authors call “time affluence.” Want to guess which one?

The title of the article sums up its conclusion: “ Giving Time Gives You Time .” When we help others–for just 30 or even 15 minutes–we experience that as time added to our day, rather than lost. Helping ourselves, by comparison, does nothing.

Internalizing this lesson takes practice. Start by challenging yourself to give time to others in moments when you feel time pressure not to do so. Afterwards, reflect on the experience by noticing the increased sense of time affluence that results. Start small and build—but start. Fight through the “hurry worry,” because it’s precisely when we feel least capable of helping others that doing so can do us the most good.

The second strategy addressing time famine does so by quantifying how long it actually takes to help. We have an unfortunate tendency to overestimate the amount of time needed, and therefore not to help at all. This is a particularly intractable problem in medicine: Healthcare clinics are so understaffed that workers there feel they can’t adequately care for any one patient, let alone all of them.

A number of interventions have been tested to teach physicians how to efficiently, but effectively, show compassion. Researchers at Johns Hopkins, for example, tested a script that cancer doctors can use to bookend their patient encounters.

At the start of the appointment, the oncologists say, “I know this is a tough experience to go through and I want you to know that I am here with you. Some of the things that I say to you today may be difficult to understand, so I want you to feel comfortable stopping me if I say something that is confusing or doesn’t make sense. We are here together, and we will go through this together.”

Then, at the end of the appointment, the doctors said: “I know this is a tough time for you, and I want to emphasize again that we are in this together. I will be with you each step along the way.”

Patients whose doctors share these words with them rated their doctors as warmer, more compassionate, and more caring. Perhaps more important, these patients have demonstrably lower levels of anxiety than patients whose doctors did not say these things.

The purpose of this study was not to demonstrate that compassion matters, however. It was to show just how quickly one can display compassion to a patient. All told, the script took an average of only forty seconds to deliver. Just ninety-nine words yielded significantly less anxiety for each patient.

Several other studies have reached similar conclusions. A Netherlands study on delivering bad news to patients found it takes only thirty-eight seconds to express compassion in a way that will lower the patient’s anxiety. A 2017 study found that every compassionate statement a doctor made, in increments as short as ten seconds, reduced patient anxiety by 4.2%, with a cumulative effect for each additional statement.

It’s difficult to imagine a scenario more consequential than delivering bad medical news. If harried doctors reciting a prewritten script can move the needle in just ten seconds, it follows that managers, call center agents, hosts, and airline stewards could expect similar results.

Try it for yourself, ten seconds at a time. As time starved as we may feel, the sad truth is that we waste anywhere from thirty minutes to three hours at work each day surfing the web or in other ways. Who among us cannot actually spare a few seconds to connect with a peer or customer or neighbor, with simple words of compassion?

• Great job today. I know it’s been tough this past week. I see how hard you are working and I’m proud to be working alongside you.
• I really admire how you are rolling with the punches. I want you to know you’re not in it alone. I’m here, too, and we’ll figure it out together.

Achieving time affluence requires challenging your own perception of time famine. Remind yourself to give just a few minutes or even seconds to someone else. Then notice—and enjoy!—the sense of expanded time that results.

We need each other. We need to matter to each other. We need each other to feel well, to be well, to live well, to work well. We need each other to succeed personally and professionally.

The barriers to connection presented by the modern way of life–lack of time, chief among them–are significant and will become even more so in the decades to come.

Overcoming this barrier requires that we fight our own perception of being starved for time, so that we can pursue the social behaviors that will, in fact, help us feel that we have time to spare. The work is challenging, but it is its own reward.

About the Author

Gabriella Rosen Kellerman

Gabriella Rosen Kellerman is an author, entrepreneur, start-up executive, and Harvard-trained physician with expertise in behavioral and organizational, change, digital health, wellbeing, and AI. Her first book is Tomorrowmind , co-authored with Professor Martin Seligman. She has served as Chief Product Officer and Chief Innovation Officer at BetterUp, a transformation platform for global professionals, and as Head of BetterUp Labs, BetterUp’s research arm, which studies whole person development in partnership with labs at Harvard, University of Pennsylvania, Stanford, and many more.

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To Take Care of Others, Start by Taking Care of Yourself

• Whitney Johnson

Most of us are not on the overtaxed frontlines of the healthcare battle, but all of us can be first responders to the need for emotional support. Almost everyone needs connection to others and the opportunity to give and get support right now. So, how can you shore up your mental health and deepen your own emotional reservoir? The author offers four suggestions: 1) Start with self-care. We can’t share with others a resource that we lack ourselves. 2) Ask for help when you need it. If you don’t ask for that support, the need for it will be revealed in ways that don’t serve you. 3) Ask others “How are you?” Take time to listen to their full answer and walk through your personal rollercoaster ride. 4) Look for the positive and say it aloud. Express appreciation, give compliments, and call out triumphs, no matter how small. If you see something good, speak up.

In these difficult times, we’ve made a number of our coronavirus articles free for all readers. To get all of HBR’s content delivered to your inbox, sign up for the Daily Alert newsletter.

As businesses and schools are shuttered, economic uncertainty encroaches, and a pandemic rages worldwide, there is plenty of anxiety to go around. We’re watching our healthcare system be pushed to its limits, but the grief and trauma we’re seeing presages a second wave of need: Before long, our mental healthcare system is going to be stretched to the breaking point as well. As physical distancing continues, we need to make sure that we help alleviate the isolation, loneliness , depression, anxiety, and other mental health impacts that will result, driving a potentially system-overwhelming curve of their own. And now is the time to head off this second crisis.

• WJ Whitney Johnson is the CEO of Disruption Advisors, a tech-enabled talent-development company and author of Smart Growth: How to Grow Your People to Grow Your Company .
• AH Amy Humble  is the co-founder and  President of Disruption Advisors ,  an executive coach, and  former ly  Chief of Staff to Jim Collins .

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Our mission. Domestic Violence Survivors mentoring fellow survivors to recover, heal and rebuild their lives

• Nov 8, 2021

Serve to heal: How we help ourselves when we help others

Muhammad Ali said it best:

“Service to others is the rent you pay for your room here on earth.”

It’s no secret that helping others makes the world a better place.

However, one of the most amazing side effects of serving others is the positive repercussions that service brings for our own healing.

There is a mountain of scientific evidence that shows how helping others can have a positive effect on depression and how happy we are, right through to lowering our blood pressure and even prolonging our life expectancy!

I wanted to share my top three positive outcomes from participating in Broken to Brilliant with the hope and intention of helping others.

When I first approached Broken to Brilliant, I was looking for a way to volunteer my time to help others who had similar past experiences to myself.

What I gained was a very rare connection with a group of women from differing walks of life, coming together with the intention of helping one another, and the wider community of survivors.

Helping others where there is a common thread creates a unique and very special connection, and empowers us to move forward feeling supported and appreciated.

When I joined the Broken to Brilliant family, I was hoping to find a way to give more of what I had learned to try to help others with their own healing.

Being able to do this through writing, sharing my experiences, and reaching others has given me a great sense of purpose.

I have also learned that service to others does not have to be grand gestures. When we help others in any capacity, no matter how small, there is meaning and purpose in that.

Perspective

Helping others gives us the opportunity to have a small insight into someone else’s life.

Hearing someone else’s story – their struggles and their triumphs – can be powerful in altering our own perspective.

During the course of the GEMS program , I have found myself often feeling very grateful for my circumstances, and I was grateful for the opportunity that I had to serve.

There is no doubt that through helping others, we help ourselves. We can learn, heal, grow and find our purpose through our service to society.

All in all, to serve is a gift. I hope to keep paying the rent for my place here on earth for many years to come.

Blogging GEMS program

This Blog is a part of the Blogging GEMS program, which supports domestic violence survivors to practise the self-care strategies of G ratitude, E xercise, M indfulness, S upport, and S ervice (GEMS). As they practise the strategies, they blog about it.you can read their survivor GEMS Blogs:

G ratitude Blogs:

Rebuilding After Domestic Violence

Letting Go of the Expectations of Practicing Gratitude

Learning the Balance of Gratitude

How Practicing Gratitude Changed My Life

A Shout Out to My Ex

Be Aware of Gratitude's Evil Twin

Blessed, Thankful, Grateful

Gratitude - Game Change, Brain Changer

E xercise Blogs

Dare to find your fit

The challenge

My love-hate relationship with exercise

How exercise heals

I'm movin - I'm goov'n

Exercise for selfcare on the healing journey after abuse

M indfulness Meditation Blogs:

Flexing Old Beliefs

The Busyness of Life

Meditation - The Calm after the Storm

Connecting with Your Body can be Confronting

S ervice Blogs

Give a little

Essential Worker

Volunteer of the Year

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Home — Essay Samples — Life — Helping Others — My Purpose in Life is to Help Others

My Purpose in Life is to Help Others

• Categories: Helping Others Purpose

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Words: 688 |

Published: Aug 31, 2023

Words: 688 | Pages: 2 | 4 min read

Table of contents

Defining personal purpose and its significance, empathy and compassion as the driving forces, choosing the path of service and impact, personal growth through helping others, overcoming challenges and sustaining motivation, influence on relationships and community, collaboration and collective impact, conclusion: embracing the journey of helping others.

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In disasters and emergencies, we must help people help themselves

It's time to rethink how we deliver aid Image:  REUTERS/Damir Sagolj

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.chakra .wef-9dduvl{margin-top:16px;margin-bottom:16px;line-height:1.388;font-size:1.25rem;}@media screen and (min-width:56.5rem){.chakra .wef-9dduvl{font-size:1.125rem;}} Explore and monitor how .chakra .wef-15eoq1r{margin-top:16px;margin-bottom:16px;line-height:1.388;font-size:1.25rem;color:#F7DB5E;}@media screen and (min-width:56.5rem){.chakra .wef-15eoq1r{font-size:1.125rem;}} Humanitarian Action is affecting economies, industries and global issues

.chakra .wef-1nk5u5d{margin-top:16px;margin-bottom:16px;line-height:1.388;color:#2846F8;font-size:1.25rem;}@media screen and (min-width:56.5rem){.chakra .wef-1nk5u5d{font-size:1.125rem;}} Get involved with our crowdsourced digital platform to deliver impact at scale

Stay up to date:, humanitarian action.

Before we can begin to address long-term recovery issues and bridging the gap between relief and development, we, as a global society, must first recommit to the principles of humanitarian action: humanity, impartiality, neutrality and independence.

We must affirm the right of affected people to receive assistance and protection with dignity and without discrimination in times of disaster, calamity and civil strife. Actions, based only on need, should be taken to prevent or alleviate human suffering that arises out of disaster and conflict.

We must advocate for those who are providing assistance as well. Far too many people are dying in the name of helping others, and we must return to a sense of certainty that those who are committed to humanitarian responses after a disaster will be safe as they seek to offer aid.

Then we must think about what aid looks like.

Rethinking aid

Devastating events like the recent earthquakes in Japan and Ecuador propel many people and organizations into immediate response mode, with most resources going towards short-term relief. Often those plans do not take into account long-term recovery. The humanitarian and development sectors have worked with an artificial, sequential construct in mind for too long. We need to think more carefully from the start about preparing for what comes next.

Anyone who has been in a community when a disaster strikes knows that reconstruction begins almost immediately, as families salvage what they can to secure a place to sleep that first night. Therefore, humanitarian and development organizations must learn to coordinate better, developing plans to jumpstart recovery efforts that can keep pace with local initiatives.

We owe it to those impacted by disaster, and we owe it to those entrusting us with their donations to think long-term from day one. As early as possible, we should be creating plans to empower affected families to rebuild their lives, their business and their communities. With exit plans in place, INGOs should be setting local residents up for lasting success.

Barriers to success

Unfortunately, over the years we have created barriers to that success. One of the challenges lies within the way our humanitarian work is funded. Many divides exist in the process, such as fragmentation between humanitarian aid and development funding. There are also gaps related to relief and recovery activities and recovery and reconstruction plans.

All this contributes to potential long delays that hinder individuals and communities from rebuilding. The funding model that creates these gaps must be changed. Those affected by crises need recovery assistance sooner rather than later, so it is crucial that development donors and actors respond more quickly. It is also critical for everyone to think about next steps and what the ultimate goals are.

Something as simple as definitions can also contribute to the problem. For example, some use the term “shelter” when talking about immediate relief but use the term “housing” when speaking of recovery or development. Technically, “sheltering” starts when someone is pulled from the destruction and wrapped in a blanket or jacket for protection. The sheltering process does not end until he or she is in a permanent home. How we go from a blanket to a permanent home is far from a well-defined protocol and varies by situation and context. We need funding models that can vary and flex as well.

As Habitat for Humanity began assembling and distributing emergency shelter kits in Haiti after the January 2010 earthquake, the response team started looking to the next set of interventions. In coordination with the Shelter Cluster, the Habitat response team decided that transitional shelter solutions were needed by a significant number of families who were facing the upcoming hurricane season. The unavoidable question arose: Transitional shelters … transition to what?

We had an end goal in mind: a safe, decent place to live. We also focused on the understanding that shelter programmes are more than houses. We looked at future vulnerabilities and sought to ensure that communities, settlements and social fabrics were built into our response.

Creating stability is a vital consideration. Realizing that relocation is disruptive, difficult and an obstacle to recovery, those offering humanitarian aid must focus on restoring communities and helping people get back to their normal routines as soon as possible rather than isolating them from their familiar surroundings and coping mechanisms.

Lastly, given ownership of recovery can also be a barrier to success. We must clarify who owns the recovery process. The job of INGOs is to empower community members to be the drivers of their own recovery. Local residents should lead policy-making and reconstruction efforts, which must tie into the plans and strategies of the host government. As has often been repeated in conversations leading up to the World Humanitarian Summit, our work should be “as local as possible, as international as necessary”.

Helping people help themselves

Habitat has adopted a strategy called Pathways to Permanence that seeks to support disaster-affected families and communities using a holistic approach and incremental housing solutions. Led by our local partners, we look to use local resources and employ local workers in efforts to rebuild communities – and entire regions. In our everyday work around the world, we have adopted a hand up, not a handout mentality. That is true in our disaster response as well.

Collectively, those of us offering humanitarian aid should leverage our efforts and precious resources to bridge the gap between relief and development so we can help families create permanent solutions to the challenges they face. We must continue to bring together private, public and people partnerships to develop the most efficient and impactful solutions.

What can we do to remove barriers to recovery? How can we help families as they begin to repair and improve their own housing? Can we help with land tenure issues? Can we provide technical assistance? Can we help families access microloans? Can we support entrepreneurs who provide essential goods and services for housing? Knowing that mitigation is seven times cheaper than rebuilding, can we invest in preventing destruction before disasters strike? I think the answer to all of those questions is yes, and we need to start thinking of those options, and others, as we envision the best way to provide humanitarian assistance.

Given the scale of need, only collaborative efforts by all actors will enable us to accomplish our goals. We must begin recovery work as soon as possible, set in motion a plan to address long-term needs and place ownership of the recovery process into the hands of affected families , their communities and leaders.

This is part of a series of articles linked to the 2016 World Humanitarian Summit, including:

Six smart ways to educate refugee children Rethinking emergency aid and development funding 1.5 billion people live in fragile societies – we all have a responsibility to help them

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Essay About Helping Others. Always Do Good

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Two Secrets

There are two simple secrets about which people always forget or don’t know them at all. The first is: when you are giving something, you will most likely get something back! People will notice your generosity and maybe the will be also generous according to you. It is like a pleasant bonus, but you don’t need to do good things just hoping to get something back. Only kindness with the true motives are describes in this secret. In the Bible we can read the next statement: practice giving and people will give to you. And the next one is: for with the measure that you are measuring out, they will measure out to you in return.

And the second secret is that helping others, you help yourself. Remember that it is much better to give than to get. It is simple law but it gives people the great satisfaction and feeling of happiness. It would be wonderful if you will find the person for the example. You can take the Jesus Christ life for the great example, or the mother Teresa or somebody who you know personally. You are wrong if you think that there are no kindness and good people in the modern world. Of course, they are, maybe in minority, but they still are. I wish you be always above all the circumstances and always do the right things.

Trifles are very important

Listening to the problems of other people without making judgments is one of the best deeds that you can do. Most people know the answers on the questions they have encountered. They just did not realize it yet. Allowing them to talk about their problems, you help them find their way and understand what they should do. Sometimes they may need support and help to start a new life. You can help them avoid the mistakes you made yourself, and also help them to start learning from the mistakes that they will inevitably do in the future. In your life, you will often see that with someone has acted unfairly. Be ready to help such people. In this cruel modern world it I really very difficult to find the justice and don’t try to find it. Just do not despair and do not let others do it. If something can save this world it will be the unselfish kindness.

And always bring the matter to the end. If you have started helping someone, as a mentor or defending the rights of others and do not stop halfway. Never, after all, you will surrender yourself and at the same time disappoint those, who wanted to help.

From the personal experience

Sometimes when I tired or just want to have a rest, sitting in front of the TV or computer, I think that soon my mom will come back from her job and she will be more tired than I am. At such moments I stand up and go to the kitchen to prepare the hot supper for my mom and something she can take for the dinner at work. I also tried to control that the flat should be clean at the evening. It seems such a trifle, but my mom will be really happy and satisfied after the difficult busy day to sit at the warm kitchen and drink a hot cup of tea. No matter how tired my mother was, she will always notice what I did for her and she will smile and say thanks my dear. And for the sake of her smile, for the sake of the expressing joy in her eyes, I am ready to do this every evening, even if my own day was not very easy. Mother’s happiness always motivates me to do something good. And I think that the same should be in everyone’s life. We always get satisfaction if we helped someone to be a little happier. Let's do good everywhere and always and this world will change for the better!

I also think that if children grow up and have the well-paid job they can support their parents financially. Is this not showing kindness? You can buy your mother a new phone, and maybe the computer of your father is rather old? Always remember that time, when your parents were young they did everything for you and maybe it is the high time to answer them in the same way?

5 reasons why to help others

We help different people for different reasons. There is some category of people who can’t live if they don’t help others. Others can help just to be thankful for something. Mostly it all depends on the person and her/his wishes ( https://livecustomwriting.com/blog/habits-that-will-be-useful-in-your-life ). Sometimes we help other people as we want to think that we are a kind person. Sometimes we need to improve our mood, to feel ourselves nobler, be sure that somebody needs us. But the interesting fact is that helping others, we can improve our health.

1) Helping others? You will live longer. Different scientists from different countries made special researches and in 2013 they came to the same conclusion: we can really live longer if we start to help other disinterestedly. According to this statistical data, we can reduce mortality by 22%. Many people ask how many we should help others. According to the researches 100 hours will be enough, but it is not the standard, you can help just 50-75 hours and it also will be useful for you. But you need remember about the main thing, your helping should be regularly and systematic. 

2) Improving mood and well-being. Helping others, we improve our mood. The scientists are sure that it’s enough five little acts of kindness during the week (do it for 6 weeks) and you will notice that your well-being is much better. It is very important to know that one-off help doesn’t matter. And the positive results after helping can quickly disappear. That’s why it is important often to help and gladly and derive benefit from it. If you like to help others it seems to me that you will never suffer from depression.

3) More communication. When you help other people you need to communicate with them. Who knows, maybe you will find new friend or the twin soul. Loneliness can badly influence on your health. Those, who are surrounded with kind people, have a long and happy life.

4) You will have lower blood pressure. In 1998 were organized interesting scientist researches. As a result, older people (over 50 years old), who decided to spend about 4 hours per week helping others, had a 40% less chance of developing hypertension in the next four years. The scientists consider that the positive effect of helping can be connected with stress reduction. Volunteering can motivate you to become better and better, positively adjusts and gives support to cope with daily troubles.

5) Less pain. If you are suffering from the chronic illness, you feel the discomfort from time to time but you can avoid this feeling. Just start to help those people, who have the same disease as you have. Even in a hospital, if you’ll help others, you will feel much better, become more confidence, receive positive energy and be able to control the situation.

It is also very interesting that all the described advantages for your health are impossible if you help by the way or just give money to beggars. The main thing is your personal participation and systematic.

How can I help other people

In our helping others essay we want to give you some simple ideas. After reading them, you can start making kind acts right now. You can help your family:

• vacuuming the apartment, wash dishes, clean the floor if nobody asks you to do it;
• cook something for dinner;
• give your parents a card with the words how you love and appreciate them;
• help your brother or sister to cope with the home tasks.

You can also help others:

• visit somebody in the hospital;
• help your old neighbor to do something about the house;
• give present to those persons, who has great difficulties now.

In this help others essay we just gave you some simple examples ( https://livecustomwriting.com/blog/avoid-doing-this-thing-to-become-confident ), and I am sure that if you stop and think a little, you will create the dozens way to help others. Set the goal to help one person this week and be ready to see the miracles. Remember, that we can also help you. The company can write essay for you but for the nominal fee, of course. In fact, we can all help each other, we can be part of a mechanism that promotes cooperation and, finally, we ourselves can create better conditions for our lives.

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clock This article was published more than  4 years ago

If we’re all caught in a dangerous pandemic, where does the impulse to help others come from?

My husband is a registered nurse. On the evenings that he works until 7, I usually have dinner waiting for him. One recent Friday, however, he came home already full. An unnamed donor had bought the hospital staff takeout from a local burger shack.

It was a two-birds-one-stone kind of thing: an anonymous thank you to front-line workers (although, luckily, covid-19 hasn’t yet hit our town) and a boost to a small business. It was also an example of the many ways people have recently stepped up, all over the country: sewing homemade masks, stocking free lending libraries, creating seed banks for neighborhood gardeners or scouring stores to purchase toilet paper for the elderly.

These are heartwarming examples. But they raise an interesting question. Why, when their own welfare is so clearly at stake, do people share resources or risk exposure to the virus to help others? 

Today's woolly mammoth

It comes down to the term “prosocial.” According to Craig Parks, a professor of social psychology and a vice provost at Washington State University, “ ‘Prosocial’ means that when you have a choice between acting in your personal best interests or acting in the best interest of the collective, that you opt for the latter.”

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While looking out only for ourselves is sometimes extremely important, we have evolved to be concerned with the greater good. “Humans are naturally prosocial,” says Parks. “They had to be in order to survive.”

Imagine being a prehistoric man, hunting woolly mammoth. Alone, you might manage to kill the beast, but it would be difficult to protect the carcass from other predators. Form a multi-person hunting party, though, and “you’re not going to get nearly as much meat as if you hunted by yourself, but you’ve got a much greater chance of success and a much greater chance of living to see another day,” Parks says.

Today, the “beast” isn’t a huge, tusked animal but a microscopic, ruthless virus. And it’s not something you can battle on your own.

 Nature vs. nurture

In pre-covid-19 life, examples of how we’re prosocial abound. We donate blood, give money to charity. If we see someone with a flat tire and can offer aid, we stop and lend a hand. We help someone in a wheelchair get unstuck from a rut.

One possible reason for this behavior is because society expects it of us. “In most cultures, there is a norm that if you see somebody who is truly struggling, clearly worse off than you, then you should try to help if you’re at all able,” says Parks.

Those who deliver supplies to isolated or quarantined households during the pandemic, therefore, may be doing so because they’ve been raised to think: “Let’s pitch in and try to get something to them.”

But there may also be selfish reasons to deliver goods. If we’re enabling others to stay home and thereby slowing the spread of the virus, we’re ultimately protecting ourselves. A principle called generalized reciprocity also might be at work: “I will help somebody now, because eventually somebody will provide help for me.”

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Then again, prosocial behaviors may be driven by emotions other than selfishness or societal pressures. One study looked at 36 2-year-old children. The researchers measured the dilation of the children’s pupils, which increases when a person sees an emotionally arousing event, including someone needing help. In this experiment, an adult couldn’t reach an item like a crayon. When seeing the adult in distress, the children’s pupils generally expanded. If no one aided the adult, the pupils remained large. If the children were allowed to hand over the crayon, the pupils contracted. Interestingly, the children’s pupils also contracted if someone else aided the adult. It seems the children weren’t motivated by wanting praise, and were too young to be bowing to cultural demands. They simply wanted the adult’s need to be met.

All hands on board

When it comes to giving, Parks said there are three types of people overall.

The first are already actively prosocial; they will continue to be so during this crisis.

The second focus more on themselves, while caring little about what happens to others. In today’s unprecedented circumstances, however, even they would likely act prosocial, Parks says. This comes back to that idea of generalized reciprocity, plus slowing the spread of the virus to protect themselves.

The final are competitive; they care how they’re doing in relation to others and want to come out on top. However, there are situations “when even a really competitive person will set aside their competitive urge because they know if they behave competitively, they will really be opening themselves up for a lot of social scorn,” Parks says.

Even professional sports teams have canceled their seasons, he adds. “This not the time to be emphasizing winners and losers. This is the time for all of us to pull together.”

 Pro-social pros

In addition to survival, there are many other reasons to give.

Lara Aknin is an associate professor of social psychology at Canada’s Simon Fraser University and director of its Helping and Happiness Lab. As indicated by the name of the lab, research shows that helping and happiness go hand in hand.

“Around the world,” she says, “people who engage in generous actions report higher levels of life satisfaction.” The World Happiness Report , for example, looks at the state of happiness in 156 countries; it has found that generosity is one of the top six predictors of happiness.

This could be because happier people do more prosocial acts, but Aknin’s own studies show it also works the other way around. “Humans derive pleasure from helping others,” she says.

One of her studies looked at 20 toddlers. It found that, even before age 2, the children expressed more happiness when handing over treats to others (in this case, a puppet) than when receiving treats themselves; researchers noted that a “warm glow” often followed this prosocial act.

In another of her studies, to be published later this year, researchers gave more than 700 university students money to buy a goody bag of treats and drinks. They were randomly assigned to keep the goody bags for themselves or to donate them to sick children at a children’s hospital. Afterward, they reported on their levels of happiness. “Those who bought the goody bag for the sick child were significantly happier,” she says.

Parks add that at this nerve-racking time, being prosocial can also help you alleviate anxiety, tension and fear. It can boost your feelings of pride — for the way people in your community are pulling together and for yourself.  He says, “It might lead you to see yourself as a somewhat better person than perhaps you did.” 

Contributing by doing nothing

No matter your motivations, there are myriad ways to help others over the coming weeks or months: drop off a “self-isolation survival kit” to a family , play an instrument for others to enjoy , purchase gift cards to support a restaurant , donate to food banks , decorate your yard to lift moods or clap for the efforts of health care workers .

Parks says, “You should engage in behaviors to the best of your ability.” If you feel you could be participating, but aren’t, however, don’t feel too guilty. Aknin emphasizes this is an extraordinary situation.  

“This is one of those unique times in which just staying off the streets is actually a prosocial act.”

Galadriel Watson is a freelance writer and author of many books for kids, including “ Extreme Abilities ” and the upcoming “ Running Wild .”

Coronavirus: What you need to know

Covid isolation guidelines: Americans who test positive for the coronavirus no longer need to routinely stay home from work and school for five days under new guidance planned by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The change has raised concerns among medically vulnerable people .

New coronavirus variant: The United States is in the throes of another covid-19 uptick and coronavirus samples detected in wastewater suggests infections could be as rampant as they were last winter. JN.1, the new dominant variant , appears to be especially adept at infecting those who have been vaccinated or previously infected. Here’s how this covid surge compares with earlier spikes .

Latest coronavirus booster: The CDC recommends that anyone 6 months or older gets an updated coronavirus shot , but the vaccine rollout has seen some hiccups , especially for children . Here’s what you need to know about the latest coronavirus vaccines , including when you should get it.