“You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours…” Sound familiar? Intentionally helping others with an expectation for favors in return is now the business norm. People only want to extend a hand if they can leverage it into a new opportunity or leverage - even charity work is trumpeted for PR purposes.
It’s true lending a hand is a strategy that makes sense and can give your business a boost. You only have a limited amount of time, energy, and money and focusing on helping those who can do something for you in return can be beneficial. You’re getting the most out of your investment.
However, you're missing out on something more meaningful that can organically change your life. Help someone else and expect nothing in return and see how it impacts your life with the fulfillment it brings. And something interesting will happen - you’ll end up seeing benefits in your personal and professional life anyway. Here are four ways helping will change your life.
You’ll Attract Better People
Whether you’re a company looking to recruit, someone looking for a solid personal network or a person who’s just hoping to lend a hand and give back, you attract phenomenal people when you give. On a personal level, honing a giving attitude and shrugging off the “who owes who” mentality helps draw valuable people into your circle. You’ll forge deeper connections and relationships instead of attracting a network of people who just want to leverage your relationship or take advantage of you.
Businesses can entice a different caliber and quality of employees by offering a variety of volunteer opportunities. Managing and retaining millennial talent can be challenging, but most seek out meaningful work like no other generation before. A study by
You’ll Build Relationships in Your Community
As someone who helps others without keeping track of who can help you and how, you’ll build invaluable relationships in your community. You never know which of these connections from the manager of the food bank, a fellow volunteer at a soup kitchen, or the woman running beside you in a fundraising 5k will become a major influence in your personal or professional life. Whether it’s meeting your next business partner, a lifelong friend, or a new client, giving builds relationships throughout your community.
For example, I just started hosting and coordinating free Growth Chat dinners, sponsored by When I Work, for marketers in cities all around the world as a way to build relationships with other talented professionals in my industry.
And it’s inevitable that at some point you’ll need help of your own. When you spend time and money making your community a better place to live, you’ll build relationships that you may need to fall back on in the future.
You’ll See Life From a Different Perspective
Helping others means putting yourself in situations and environments you normally wouldn’t explore. By embracing a new mindset of giving, you develop a life-changing perspective on life that many people never achieve. Seeing others appreciate their lives and circumstances despite their setbacks can revolutionize your life and business.
Engage in a variety of altruistic opportunities to help others, and see what happens. You’ll find yourself connecting and engaging with the world in a totally different way. Your personal growth will skyrocket and help shape every aspect of your life.
You’ll Experience Deeper Gratitude for What You Have
Helping those who can’t do anything for you in return shows you how much you really have. You’ll probably complain less and reduce stress for a significantly happier mindset. You’ll become incredibly grateful as you realize that the things you took for granted in your life are things that many other people long to have.
Multiple studies show the dramatic difference that gratitude can make in a person’s life. Not only do grateful people feel better about their life overall, they tend to be healthier, more attentive, less depressed, and less stressed. When you help people without an expectation for anything in return, your eyes will open to how much you have to be grateful for.
Here’s How to Do It
On the surface, helping people you know can’t help you seems like a relatively straightforward pursuit, but this simple suggestion alone isn’t enough to go off of. Just like “grow a business you can be proud of” or “raise your children to love others” aren’t as simple as they sound, helping others can take some practice.
- Put yourself in positions where you have exposure to a diverse assortment of people. For a lot of you, this will take the shape of a volunteer opportunity, but that’s not the only option that exists. If you aren’t big on organized charity, you can achieve the same exposure by joining clubs in your area (particularly those that don’t revolve around business networking), being active in a religion or signing up for a sports team.
- Ask others out to lunch. I’m a big fan of the book Never Eat Alone, and I try to put its principles into practice as often as my work schedule allows. The basic concept is pretty simple - have lunch with different people everyday. If your current company has a break room, hang out with the people you find there. If you can afford it, make different restaurant reservations each day with new people within your community. To get more connections, simply ask your current dining partner for introductions to anyone they think you might find interesting.
- Start small, work big. I’m a naturally outgoing person, but if you’re not, making these initial introductions can seem overwhelming. That’s why I recommend starting small. Instead of staying silent in the grocery line, commit to making one comment to the person behind you. Try to go one step beyond “how are you?” in the conversations you have daily. As you get more comfortable, deepen your interactions, when appropriate. In time, you’ll find that you’re comfortable striking up a chat with anyone, anywhere.
As you’re working the steps in this system, keep the golden rule of these exchanges in mind: don’t seek value initially. Don’t immediately turn every new conversation you have into a business proposition; instead, allow the time and space needed to see what grows organically from your new relationships. And don’t get discouraged if you find that somebody isn’t able to offer you anything in return - and may never be able to do so. You never know where the relationship might lead in the future.
Helping others makes a big impact that organically changes our lives for the better, as we end up attracting amazing people into our lives and companies, building stronger relationships, changing our perspective, and increasing our gratitude. Whether or not anything comes from these relationships, those are tremendous benefits that are worth celebrating.
Who can you help today without expecting anything in return? Share what you’ll do by leaving a comment below:
