6 reasons why giving advice can be even better for you than getting it
At humanest, we believe helping others is a vital part of your mental health prescription. And we’re not alone. Now coined ‘The Activism Cure’, numerous researchers – including medical and mental health professionals – have found that people who volunteer are happier and experience better mental and physical health than those who don’t.
It’s one of the reasons behind the creation of our free humanest Facebook community, conceived as a space for those interested in personal growth, where we can all support each other:
Bringing together people with shared experiences to support each other
Providing a space where you feel accepted and understood
Focusing on everyone’s strengths, not weaknesses
Treating everyone’s experiences as being equally important
Striving towards an ultimate goal of wellbeing
Involving both giving and receiving support
In mental health circles, this is known as Peer Support. And similar to The Activism Cure, where volunteering makes people happy, Peer Support has been proven to have as many benefits for the supporter – if not more – as the supportee.
Here are six powerful reasons why offering support to others is so good for you, too.
1 – It helps you form powerful social bonds
Helping others – whether we do it in person or online – makes us feel part of a community. It’s a sense of belonging that, as anyone who’s ever been part of a church or social group will attest, boosts us in so many ways. We’ll elaborate on a few of them in a moment.
It doesn’t just have to be a passive sense of community, either. Helping others can also be the first step towards fantastic new friendships.
That’s because, when you help others, your positive energy makes you more attractive to others – people are drawn to you. This in itself is a great foundation for new friendships, but as you’re also likely to be genuinely interested in your new-found friends’ wellbeing, the relationships you form are likely to be deep, strong and able to stand the test of time.
Plus, helping others is contagious: people are more likely to do it themselves after seeing someone else do it. By helping others, you’ll inspire others to do the same. Your impact will go far beyond the person (or people) you directly supported yourself.
This is the power of peer support – you trigger a ‘pay it forward’ chain of positivity!
2 – It makes you a ‘glass half-full’ person
Doing a good deed releases the feelgood chemical dopamine; it’s the same rush we can get from exercise or having sex. Put another way, the satisfaction of helping others will make you happier and boost your own sense of wellbeing.
And it’s a sustained sense of feelgood, too. That’s because having a positive impact on someone else can help you change your own outlook and attitude to life, with experts confirming that performing acts of kindness can ultimately making you more optimistic and positive as a person.
And the mental health benefits don’t end there, with volunteering even able to lower depression over time. This the surprisingly wonderful finding of research from the University of Texas.
3 – It gives you a physical boost
And it isn’t just mental. You’ll reap the rewards physically, too.
First up, there’s the energy release that’s triggered by the aforementioned dopamine rush – a feeling of physical energy that comes as an added bonus alongside the sense of happiness.
But that’s not all. Researchers at Boston College found that volunteering actually reduces pain and disability in people with chronic pain. Once again proving how closely connected the brain and body are, participants named “making a connection” and “having a sense of purpose” as the sources of their improved physical health.
4 – It helps you with your own problems
Returning to the notion that helping others can positively impact your own outlook on life, let’s dive deeper into this hugely powerful benefit of peer support.
If you’re struggling with something, what does your instinct often tell you to do? You reach out to your friends and you vent to them. The problem is, while it’s good to have a support system, it’s hard to gain any distance from whatever it is that’s bothering you if venting is all you ever do.
Instead, try reaching out and focusing on someone else. By shifting the focus outside of yourself, it gives your brain a break from your own issues. Not only that, but by supporting someone who might be facing a similar problem as you, and talking them through it, you’ll often come up with wiser perspectives and solutions for yourself, too.
Certainly, reassuring others also serves to reassure ourselves. For example, when we remind a friend that social distancing measures are temporary, and this too shall pass, we are also, in effect, reminding and soothing ourselves.
You might even find that helping others – particularly those less fortunate than yourself – puts things into perspective in your own mind and makes you feel more positive about your own circumstances.
And there’s one other big benefit that falls into this category, with studies showing those who help others are also more motivated to work on themselves. Middle-school students mentoring younger students, for example, ended up spending more time on their own homework. Similarly, overweight people who counseled others on weight loss were more motivated to lose weight themselves.
5 – It gives you inner strength
Natural ‘givers’ – those who are more interested in helping than receiving, who don’t keep score, and who focus on the greater good rather than personal gain – do better socially, professionally and mentally than ‘takers’, or even those who strive for fairness.
And it all makes sense when you learn that those who volunteer have been shown to have higher self-esteem and confidence – the result of finding a purpose in life and feeling like they’re making a difference.
Dig a little deeper and you’ll discover experts explaining how a sense of powerlessness reduces our resilience. What boosts our resilience is feeling competent and in control – something helping others clearly delivers on. It’s yet another check in the box for the natural ‘givers’.
6 – It protects you from stress
Helping others – finding meaning and purpose in something bigger than ourselves – can give us a huge sense of fulfilment, reward and empowerment.
But the benefits don’t end with this feelgood factor. This same sense of purpose has also been shown to protect us from stress, improve our overall health, reduce our risk of dying prematurely – and even improve our financial health!
Looking specifically at stress reduction, a five-year study out of Detroit found that stressful life events took a greater toll on those who were less helpful to others. Meanwhile, helping others seemed to erase the detrimental physical effects of stressful experiences.
