How can helping others help you

Looking for more meaning in your day-to-day existence? With its proven commitment to supporting not only its employees but also communities in need, Wells Fargo Advisors knows a thing or two about helping others. Learn more about joining the team at joinwfadvisors. According to sociologists, teenagers who volunteer have better grades and self-image. Subscribe to our Newsletter! That single act can be powerful. People remember the positive impact you have and the nice things you do for them.

This strengthens your social ties to others. It can even strengthen social ties within your community. This is not an exaggeration, but a simple fact. When you help others, you create a sense of trust between yourself and the person you help. And if you do enough kind acts, you can even create a reputation for yourself. People will trust you more and look to you for guidance and support.

They see that you are trying to create change. So think about this the next time you want to help someone. Happiness can be hard to find in modern society. It might feel great to earn more money, to have fun with friends, and to accomplish something for yourself.

But these are generally short-term methods of achieving happiness. Furthermore, you can better understand the importance of helping others when you are able to experience the lasting happiness from choosing to help others.

Many studies have researched the effects of helping others. After repeated experiments, brain scans, and interviews, scientists have found that people can boost their own happiness when they act selflessly. Aiding others can lead to lasting happiness and lifelong growth. Altruism, and any selfless act of help, is a basic part of your biology. It is a crucial mechanism for socializing and community building. This is because kindness helps you connect better with other humans.

Clawing your way up the social ladder can seem like a great way to spend your life. And maybe for some select individuals, this brings happiness. But for the majority of individuals, they want to feel like they are a part of something.

They want to feel less alone and feel like they are making a difference. When you help others, you can achieve this. The importance of helping others goes far beyond the positive results you might experience. Helping others has a big impact, especially on the people receiving that help. It was mentioned briefly in the first section, but many people can benefit from your help and intervention. However, this only happens if you choose to help. Science shows there are strong associations between happiness and helping others.

Firstly, happiness helps helping. Happy people are more likely to be interested in or be inclined towards helping others. They are more likely to have recently performed acts of kindness or spent a greater percentage of their time or money helping others.

Volunteering is also related to increased happiness irrespective of the socio-economic situation of the volunteer. While it has long been assumed that giving also leads to greater happiness this has only recently started to be scientifically proven. For example, when participants in a study did five new acts of kindness on one day per week over a six-week period even if each act was small they experienced an increase in well-being, compared to control groups.

Interestingly the amount of money did not effect the level of happiness generated. And there is now evidence that this leads to a virtuous circle - happiness makes us give more, and giving makes us happier, which leads to a greater tendency to give and so on. This effect is consistent across different cultures. It makes sense that helping others contributes to our own happiness. Scientists are reconsidering the idea of the 'selfish gene' and are exploring the evolution of altruism, cooperation, compassion and kindness.

If people are altruistic, they are more likely to be liked and so build social connections and stronger and more supportive social networks, which leads to increased feelings of happiness and wellbeing. Giving literally feels good. In a study of over 1, women volunteers, scientists described the experience of a 'helpers' high'. This was the euphoric feeling, followed by a longer period of calm, experienced by many of the volunteers after helping.

These sensations result from the release of endorphins, and is followed by a longer-lasting period of improved emotional well-being and sense of self-worth, feelings that in turn reduce stress and improve the health of the helper.

It used to be thought that human beings only did things when they got something in return. How then could we explain people who did kind acts or donated money anonymously? Studies of the brain now show that when we give money to good causes, the same parts of the brain light up as if we were receiving money ourselves or responding to other pleasurable stimuli such as: food, money or sex! Giving to others activates the reward centres of our brains which make us feel good and so encourage us to do more of the same.

Giving money to a good cause literally feels as good as receiving it, especially if the donations are voluntary. Giving help has a stronger association with mental health than receiving it. Studies have shown that volunteers have fewer symptoms of depression and anxiety and they feel more hopeful.

It is also related to feeling good about oneself. It can serve to distract people from dwelling on their own problems and be grateful for what they have. Giving may increase how long we live. Studies of older people show that those who give support to others live longer than those who don't. This included support to friends, relatives, and neighbours and emotional support to their spouse. Volunteering also appeared to predict maintenance of cognitive functioning in a study of 2, people in their 70's who were followed in a study lasting 8 years.

Others studies have shown that amongst teenagers, volunteering has been associated with improved self-esteem, reduction in anti-social or problem behaviours and school truancy, improved attitudes to school and increased educational achievement. Whilst unpicking the benefits of volunteering from other factors can be hard, such as volunteers being more healthy in the first place and so more able to volunteer. The wealth of evidence does suggest some relationship and it may be that volunteering is one intentional activity that people can engage in as a strategy to increase wellbeing and maintain optimal cognitive functioning in old age.

Helping is associated with increased happiness and health, but feelng burdened by it can be detrimental, such as in the case of long-term carers. In one study testing this idea, participants were either allowed to choose to give money to someone else in the study, or told by the researchers how much money to give. For participants who freely chose how much to give although not for participants who were told how much to give , giving more money was related to higher well-being and to feeling that their psychological needs were met.

Importantly, that feeling accounted for the link between giving and well-being, suggesting that giving may improve well-being because it helps us meet our psychological needs. Taken together, these two studies suggest that helping others is beneficial because it fulfills basic human needs—and that altruism may be especially important for strengthening our relationships and connecting us with others.

The research described above suggests that giving helps us feel more connected to others, which imbues our lives with a sense of meaning. Do you want to live a more meaningful life? The suggestions below can help you take the first steps. For example, in a study published in Science , spending just five dollars on someone else led to boosts in happiness.

The Eliciting Altruism practice includes strategies for starting a habit of kindness and generosity, such as reminding yourself of your connections to others and identifying with individuals who may need your help. Make your helping count. It turns out that not all types of giving have the same effects on us. The Making Giving Feel Good practice offers strategies for how to help others in a way that boosts your own sense of happiness and well-being.

In particular, helping others can be especially effective when you can see the specific impact that your actions have. Take time to thank others.