Help someone to help yourself

Weird as it may sound…to get a step closer to your desires, consider embarking on a mission of helping someone else going through a similar situation or someone just going through a tough time in general.

Courtesy: Eblogline

Gordon B. Hinckley, an American religious leader and author wrote “the best cure for weariness is the challenge of helping someone who is even more tired”.

It sounds ridiculous thinking about it considering the fact that we can’t give what we don’t have. We are literally broken, starting to doubt our abilities and have had our self-esteems trampled on when life throws some punches at us, but wise authors say your broken state is actually the best time to step out on a limb and look for someone to assist.

Napoleon Hill, an American author and impresario also wrote: “It’s literally true that you can succeed best and quickest by helping others to succeed.

The world is filled with many ‘half empty’ people going through different tough times. ‘Half empty’ because they are so engrossed in their shortcomings and wear their challenges on their sleeves as though there is no good thing happening in their lives. While it may be difficult to be energized and enthusiastic when dealing with issues, the easiest step for drawing closer to one’s completeness is by lending a helping hand to someone else in need.

Helping others for starters helps you look away from your difficulties, it changes your perspective and makes you feel better about yourself because you put a smile on someone else’s face. This in return increases the likelihood of your next experience being a positive rather than negative one.

I read the story of Malala Yousafzai, a girl-education activist from Pakistan who was shot in the head by the Taliban for advocating that young girls should be allowed to go to school. 

Courtesy: Georgia News day

What could be more crippling than that? Such a heinous occurrence should have broken her spirit, stumped her passion and caused her to hideout in fear, but she chose to help ‘someone’ else. She actually chose to help many more young girls whom she knew were more voiceless than she could ever be despite her incident.

Does Malala wish she was never threatened or attacked? Would she rather live in fear and bite her tongue from advocacy? I do not know, but one thing is certain; she never would have felt as whole as when she saw excited young girls going to school and completing their education freely in Pakistan and around the world.

You may think you don’t have anything to offer particularly in line with what you seek, but you do. It could be your time, money, resources, counsel, shared stories and so on. Malala didn’t have political clout, financial power or even the absolute freedom to complete her own education which she desired. But in her quest to help others, she got her desires met and so much more!