About 15 years ago I, Bob, experienced a lesson that forever changed my way of thinking and living in the world. My dearest and closest friend Peter, was diagnosed with terminal cancer that would take his life within a period of 9 months. During our 10 years of friendship, Peter taught me many lessons, the most important being that we are all inherently designed to serve and to give to others. He was a living example of this principle. I witnessed and experienced first- hand, his selflessness time and again, spending endless hours devoted to helping others without expectation of reward or profit.

As Peter’s cancer worsened, a few friends and myself decided to organize a silent auction to raise money for he and his family. This undertaking took months of commitment and planning to bring to fruition. So off we went in pursuit of donations, finding a hall for the auction, setting up a drop off place for the donations, and dispersing announcements and fliers throughout the community to inform people about the fundraiser. We had endless preparation meetings as the time moved closer and closer towards the auction. The auction itself involved setting up a treasury account, tracking money, providing drinks and snacks and informing the winners of the auction items.

Although I knew my best friend was dying, this was one of the most satisfying and gratifying experiences of my life. I got so engrossed in being of service, of focusing my energy on Peter and what I could give, that I was happy, as well as disengaged from my own self centeredness. I was participating in this fundraiser out of love and gratitude, in the knowing that Peter and his family would breathe just a little bit easier as a result of our efforts.

The fundraiser was a huge success and the good feeling inside of me lasted for weeks afterwards. In June, 1993 Peter passed away and the loss is too significant to begin to speak about here. However, a part of Peter lives on inside of me that I will take with me to my grave. His modeling of how to live in service to others, taught me as much about living as it did about dying with dignity and grace.
In this day and age we live in increasingly fast paced stressful times, faced with a multitude of challenges. Few of us are insulated from the pressures and demands that come with life.

Whether it’s the need to earn a living in order to support our families, illness of a friend or loved one, aging parents, or stressful relationships, we are continuously attempting to deal with these realities of our lives. Proportionately to the level of stress and demands we are faced with come the challenges of negotiating our internal landscape, with the worry and sometimes accompanying depression that comes along with it.

Stephen Post, a research professor at Case Western Reserve University and Co-Author of “Why Good Things Happen to Good People”, found that since depression, anxiety and stress place a high degree of focus on the self, focusing on the needs of others helps to shift our thinking. He goes on to say that when you are expressing compassion, benevolence, and kindness they push aside the negative emotions. One of the best ways to overcome stress is to do something to help someone else.

Bill Wilson, the founder of Alcoholics Anonymous understood this giving principle as an inescapable, non-negotiable action that serves to keep the alcoholic sober. Once going through a series of steps that involves rigorous self honesty and clearing away the wreckage of the alcoholics past, the alcoholic is taught through example, to carry the message of recovery to others who suffer from the same affliction. Bill Wilson’s discovery and understanding of this need to be of service to others opened up a door that has resulted in millions of alcoholics, drug addicts, food addicts, gamblers and sex addicts finding recovery. All of these individuals have come to discover in the recovery process a common thread that keeps them abstaining.

They get to keep their recovery by giving it away in love and service.
With this understanding it is now imperative to mention a couple of exceptions to this principle. There are some who live in constant overwhelm as a result of giving, giving and more giving, that can often result in mental, emotional and physical exhaustion. It would be far more beneficial for these caregivers to get some support and help from others, as a way to find some balance and ability to care for themselves more effectively. To equal measure, an individual who is suffering from severe depression should seek out professional help and not attempt to just use the principle of service as an antidote to the depression. Where giving in service can be a useful adjunct, depression must be treated with the help of professionals.

In summation, we are generally much happier when giving and being of service to others. The result is a positive feeling of self worth, motivating us to give and be of service even more. This looping effect feeds on itself, thus creating an increased level of desire to share of ourselves. This whole paradigm is very counter intuitive since we live in a culture that focuses on getting. With fear as the culprit, our society feeds on the need to get and acquire. If we really slow down and strive to ingest the antidote to fear, there can be no denying that living in the world practicing kindness, compassion, consideration and caring, in service to others, would disprove the belief that we have to get and have more in order to be happy or feel secure.

There certainly are no shortages of volunteer programs within our communities that can always use the help of individuals desiring to be of service. Below are a few suggestions where we can channel ourselves in the name of love and service.
Donate time to a local museum.

Contribute money to a program that you believe in

Give some food, clothing or money to a homeless person

Sit down with a friend in need, and be a good listener

Go to a local hospital and volunteer to be a baby holder

Get a group of friends together and start a fundraiser for a charity of your choice
When we give for fun and for free amazing things happen. The greatest paradox of all is: “It is in the giving that we receive and it is in the loosing of self that we find our true nature”.

On the other hand, there is evidence that the active process involved in feeling better, less depressed, happier etc, is the development of a change in the relationship with your thoughts. That is, seeing thoughts as passing phenomena that come and go, as fleeting events that do not determine who we are, or the nature of our lives. Really, stepping outside of the stream of thought and reacting, or being in the situation as it is in the moment. This process probably sounds familiar to most people reading this blog.

From the western scientific understanding of human cognition I would say that exercises such as the gratitude practices mentioned allow an alternative view. A sort of stepping out of the rut of our ruminations which provides a broader perspective. The method used, compassion, gratitude etc is not that important. Using those positive pro-social methods can be useful of course once behavioural changes take place (changes in habits of reacting emotionally, behaviorally etc). They provide a framework and a rationale for our new behaviour. As the great Russian psychologist Vygotsky said “thoughts are the scaffolding that hold behaviour in place.” His meaning at the time was that thoughts come after behaviour, and then help to cement it, or reinforce it.

Exercises like that described won’t work all the time though. I suggest that you investigate this for yourself. They won’t always make you grateful, or compassionate. They won’t work when things are really bad, and they won’t get rid of the old habits of thinking/reacting. When we persist with these practices in times of difficulty, or when they are not “working” we set up a struggle. This is a large part of my discomfort with this type of exercise. They can often set up an additional layer of expectations of how to be, and divert us into an area of unnecessary of struggle around this.

Despite the nice feeling that exercises around gratitude or compassion can generate I do feel an antipathy towards them. The Song of Mind (Xin Ming) says a one point

“Using the mind to maintain quietude,
You still fail to leave the sickness.”

This is what they remind me of, although I am aware that the original author may well have had another situation in mind.

He goes on to say

“Birth and death forgotten–
This is original nature.”

These are all great ideas. If you don’t mind, I’d like to share another idea.

If you help others who are less fortunate, a side effect is likely to be an enhanced feeling of gratitude for what you already have. Now obviously, there are many other, more important, reasons to help others that are altruistic in nature, but this is a beneficial side effect that some people realize.

-Mike

This week I have been experimenting with gratitude. What I’ve been noticing is that when I am anxious my face and body feel tight. If I switch the focus of my mind to thoughts of gratitude – the tightness melts away and I find myself smiling.