Doing Good Deeds Delivers Health Benefits
Every day, you work hard to fulfill your passion — whether it’s successfully building your business, making lots of money or making the next big discovery that changes the world. You may spend hours coding a new website to perfection or rewriting a blog until it sings. Working hard brings significant rewards. If it didn’t, you wouldn’t spend so much energy on it.
Most things in life have at their core a selfish nature. If it doesn’t give you some sort of reward, then it’s difficult to muster up the will power to finish … or even start. The same concept applies to doing good deeds. When you do good things for others, you feel good. You receive a ton of benefits that are measurable, from physical health benefits to a greater sense of mental well-being and a sense of purpose.
Yeah, But…
As an internet entrepreneur or a website developer, you’re under an enormous amount of pressure to beat the competition, stay on top of pressing projects and keep up with all the changes that come to the industry at lightning speed. All that takes time.
So … when you’re presented with the opportunity to do a little good for someone else, it’s easy to agree with the concept, but even easier to slough it off with excuses, such as:
- I’m too busy.
- There aren’t enough hours in the day.
- I’ve done enough already.
- I need more me-time.
- No one gave me anything.
The “yeah, but” tendency grows and multiplies until you find yourself not only missing out on the health benefits that altruism affords, but actually creating more stress in your life. Guilt builds, leading to a lack of empathy and compassion. The next thing you know, you’re dealing with hoarding and isolation in a lifestyle of greed.
Selfish and Good
In actuality, you can be selfish and still do plenty of good in the world. Researchers hold that being selfish may be one of the most important ingredients in a life filled with random acts of kindness. Being selfish and doing good are not exclusive. When you start reaping all the health benefits of being a giving, altruistic human being, you want more of that good stuff — and the cycle continues.
Consider some of the proven health benefits of living with an intention to do good deeds and treat others with kindness every day:
- Physiological health benefits occur when your brain senses that you’re happy. Witnessing a smile on another’s face or receiving gratitude for a small kindness makes your brain pop with happiness — guaranteed.
- Stress is greatly reduced when you put things into perspective. Helping someone less fortunate than yourself fills you with a sense of gratitude, and you get no greater health benefits than when you reduce stress, a major cause of most diseases.
- Work flows much better when you aren’t caught up in the stress caused by focusing on the negative aspects of your day. A positive state of mind begets positive outcomes. This is yet another selfish motive for going good.
- Happiness and optimism are contagious. So if you have any influence over employees or clients, you can expect to receive a whole lot more cooperation when you’re all feeling good.
- Live longer. Health benefits extend far beyond today. A life spent doing good for others means that you can continue doing those things that you love to do for much longer.
Leave it to Oprah to sum it up:
“If you want to feel good, you have to go out and do some good.
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