Helping others is thought to be one of the ways that people create, maintain, and strengthen their social connections. For example, volunteering and helping others can help us feel a sense of belonging, make new friends, and connect with our communities.
Kindness should be built into business decisions, government policy, and other official systems in a way that supports everyone’s mental health and also reduces discrimination and inequality. That can start with individual commitments to showing kindness in our words and our actions. This guide is written to demonstrate the positive effect that helping others can have on your own mental health, including some suggestions that will inspire you.
Helping others feels good
There is some evidence to suggest that when you help others, it can promote physiological changes in the brain linked with happiness. This heightened sense of well-being might be the byproduct of being more physically active as a result of volunteering, or because it makes us more socially active.
It creates a sense of belonging
Helping others can help us to make new friends and connect with our community. Face-to-face activities such as volunteering at a food bank can also help reduce loneliness and isolation.
Helping Others Motivates Personal Growth
The philosophies and beliefs that are so widespread in modern-day society have shifted from only being concerned with oneself to putting others first. It is possible to achieve personal growth by helping others and that is why you must help others to achieve your own goals.
Helping Builds Your Reputation as a Giver
Givers gain. It’s a phrase that is often tossed around in the workplace, and has a lot of truth to it. This philosophy is why many fortune 500 brands focus on a give back component as their ethos and culture, and it’s also at the core of every great company who’s come from an idea as simple as: what if we could make life easier for people?
It’s part of the human experience
Humans start showing altruism at a young age. This implies that it’s not necessarily something we’re socialized for, but rather something that’s part of our brains. Scientists theorize that helping others ensured the survival of the human race.
On the surface, this doesn’t make sense when considering evolution. If altruism is part of our inherent nature, shouldn’t it be limited to people who share our genes? That’s clearly not the case as people help strangers all the time, even when it’s risky. This long-standing mystery involves many types of researchers and scientists.
