“If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.”
Dalai Lama
You can give back in different ways, including volunteering your time and talents or making charitable gifts of money. Both involve being compassionate toward others. Often, people derive a strong sense of purpose from their volunteer work or their charitable financial gifts.
“The charitable say in effect, ‘I seem to have more than I need, and you seem to have less than you need. I would like to share my excess with you.’ Fine, if my excess is tangible, money or goods, and fine if not, for I learned that to be charitable with gestures and words can bring enormous joy and repair injured feelings.”
Maya Angelou, “Letter to My Daughter”
Giving Your Time
Volunteering your time to help others can enrich your life, and it is easy to match your interests to the volunteer work you choose. Many of my clients are retired, and they describe their volunteer work to me with enthusiasm. Some of the volunteer jobs include working as a docent at a local museum; working one day a week at a homeless shelter; helping a community after a natural disaster; participating in archaeological digs; teaching a gardening class; helping out at a local school, hospital, church or nursing home; helping mentor students in science; and helping elderly neighbors pay their bills.
A client I’ll call Jackie regularly volunteers as an assistant in a classroom at an elementary school near her home. When I talk with her, I am impressed with her enthusiasm and her commitment to helping the children. She laughs about how often kids she has worked with at the school run up to her when she is buying groceries or running errands.
Clearly, she is having a positive impact on many children’s lives, but she is also benefiting personally from giving back.
According to Robert Putnam, professor of public policy at Harvard University, communities with high rates of volunteer activity, club membership, church membership and social entertaining all had higher well being than communities that were low in these characteristics.
Try It
Think about where you may like to volunteer. Contact a charity, school, nursing home, church, synagogue or other facility. If you want to help neighbors, contact them.
Ask about how you can become involved. Talk honestly about how much time you have to give, and do not over commit. Start slowly. You will likely find that the volunteer work is very personally rewarding, and it will increase your happiness to be helping others.
Photo by: Bridges to Prosperity
