“It is one of the beautiful compensations of life that no man can sincerely try to help another without helping himself.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
Studies have shown that giving and service of others can be a mental and physical health booster. It can help reduce blood pressure, lower depression, lower stress levels, increase life expectancy and increase one’s self-esteem[1]. Not only that, but it gives life a strong purpose if service of others is a part of it – further boosting happiness and general satisfaction in life. The health of relationships one has with family and friends is also extremely important for mental and physical health. Of course everyone’s for giving, charity and having great interpersonal relationships, right? Now this may seem controversial, but I believe that many people have no idea how to give properly!
Giving can be emotionally, financially and physically. It seems obvious and pretty simple. You hand someone a dollar, you help the old lady across the road and you give the troubled friend an attentive ear and emotional support. Can’t go wrong, right? The truth is, is that one’s capacity for effective and positive giving is heavily dependent on other factors aside from the simple action itself. The attitude in which it is done is one – there is a big difference between a dollar thrown into a collector’s box with a scowl to one given with a smile and even a friendly ‘have a good day’. But how does one develop that attitude? It’s a simple secret – to really give properly you first need to be willing to ‘give’ and develop yourself.
This doesn’t mean that in order to effectively give you need to go ahead and give yourself all that you crave. What I mean is how to love yourself. In other words, in order to treat others properly you first need to treat yourself properly! You love yourself by doing the real things that you want to do. It doesn’t mean sitting on a sofa surrounded by beer bottles – it means working on what you really want to be in life. If you simply give in to all the instant gratification around you all the time, eventually you will have serious issues with how you view yourself. You may even start hating yourself and how you live, as you don’t value yourself enough to get out there and do the hard things like having some self-discipline and working towards your real goals. In fact, it doesn’t really matter how you get there – you need to learn how to love yourself. Visualize your best self and work towards it financially, emotionally and physically. This is not only limited to your own personality, but also to those closest to you. One who is kind to strangers and charity causes but hateful to one’s own family and close circle is hypocritical. Learn to give properly to yourself and those closest to you lovingly before you give to strangers. Learning to give yourself properly will then allow you to give to the relationships that you truly value. Heck, it may even reveal who you truly value when you start treating yourself properly! Then, and only then, will you be able to properly give to other people in the same loving way. One of the biggest benefits of having self-discipline is your increased level of internal power – and only once you have power can you properly give of yourself to others. I’ll drive home this point and end with a nice quote from the Bible:
“Love your neighbour as you love yourself” – Leviticus
19:18. You can’t love your neighbour until you’ve learnt to love yourself
first!
[1] https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/volunteering-may-be-good-for-body-and-mind-201306266428
Gym of Self-Discipline 