Are you lacking inner peace and serenity? Do you feel stressed, worried, and run ragged? Sometimes the easiest way to bring about a needed change is to take the focus off yourself and put it on helping someone else. When you act as if you have an abundance, you’ll start to see that you do.
Start small. Look for one of the many opportunities to help in your community. Volunteer at a soup kitchen, donate to a food pantry, donate to a book drive, volunteer reading to the elderly, you get the idea.
Helping Others Changes You… For the Better!
When you help others, you step out of your world and into theirs. The best way to get out of your worried head is to help someone in need. This broadens your worldview and allows you to focus less on small things that might be stressing you. It also will help with any negative thoughts you might have about yourself. You're helping others and that is putting more positivity into the world.
Feel Better About Yourself
The gratitude on another’s face will cut through your inner demons. You have made mistakes, so have the people you’re helping. It’s alright. You’ll all get through it together. When we recognize the humanity in ourselves and others, it helps make the little things not quite so important. This makes the committee in your head or inner demons quiet for they have less ammunition.
Become Better Able To Regulate Your Emotions
When you empathize with others, it helps you learn to regulate your own emotions according to Kendra Cherry, a psychosocial rehabilitation specialist working with VeryWellMinded.com. Emotional regulation is important in that it allows you to manage what you are feeling, even when stressed, without becoming overwhelmed.
But how does giving to others help us regulate our emotions? It puts us into contact with others from vastly different lifestyles and backgrounds. We have put our emotions and sometimes our worldview aside for a minute to care for theirs. This experience is an exercise in empathy, and you’ll come out of it stronger.
Discover Your Strength
You may not think yourself capable of much. When you challenge yourself by getting out there and helping others, however, you will see that you are much stronger than you thought. You will also see that you have it much better than you might have realized.
It’s easy to get caught up with thoughts about what we don’t have. These thoughts will only make us bitter and sad, though. Helping others, however, will show us how fortunate we really are. Being grateful will also give us peace while feeling entitled never will.
Serenity Will Follow
There is no final step in which you will realize you have attained complete serenity. Think of it like working out. You slowly get healthier and stronger and one day you might look into the mirror and see a chiseled form, but you’ll need to keep practicing your good habits to keep it.
Helping others will teach you to be grateful for the abundance you have. It will show you the best you can be. Helping others will show you that no one is in this alone and that no one can make it alone. We need each other, so let’s stick together.
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