{"id":2289,"date":"2013-01-15T22:44:17","date_gmt":"2013-01-16T04:44:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/?p=2289"},"modified":"2013-01-15T22:44:31","modified_gmt":"2013-01-16T04:44:31","slug":"we-do-ourselves-the-most-good-doing-something-for-others","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/we-do-ourselves-the-most-good-doing-something-for-others\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cWe Do Ourselves the Most Good Doing Something For Others\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cDoing nothing for others is the undoing of one\u2019s self. We must be purposely kind and generous, or we miss the best part of existence. The heart that goes out of itself gets large and full of joy. This is the great secret of the inner life. We do ourselves the most good doing something for others.\u201d ~ Horace Mann<\/span><\/p>\n

Recently I sat with a group of amazing young women talking about how we can be our best selves in this life.\u00a0 We talked about the importance of serving others, even if all we are able to do is the small and simple acts of service.\u00a0 Several shared stories of how the smallest acts of kindness had impacted each of their own lives.\u00a0 I shared a story about an experience I had many years ago:\u00a0 I was newly divorced and had just moved myself and my two small children to our new home. At the time I was incredibly nervous about meeting the people in my neighborhood as they were all happy families and I was the newly divorced single mom.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0When Sunday came around I went to our local church, still feeling nervous about fitting in when I felt so broken at the time.\u00a0 As I sat in the back of the room a woman came up to me and introduced herself.\u00a0 She had the biggest smile and the happiest laugh.\u00a0 She gave me a huge hug and welcomed me.\u00a0 It was such a small act of kindness on her part, but to me at that point in my life it meant the whole world.\u00a0 She had no idea how broken and scared I was feeling at the time, she couldn\u2019t have.\u00a0\u00a0 She was just someone being kind to a new girl.\u00a0 But her act of kindness could not have had a bigger impact in my life.\u00a0 Her smile and hug helped me to have hope that I was going to be okay in my life, even if I was on my own as a single mom, she reminded me that I wasn\u2019t alone in my life.\u00a0<\/p>\n

So often in life what seems like the smallest, seemingly inconsequential act can change another person\u2019s entire life.\u00a0 It can provide hope to the hopeless.\u00a0 It can provide happiness to help overcome sadness.\u00a0 It can tell someone they matter when they believed they didn\u2019t matter at all.\u00a0 All it takes is a smile, a compliment, a hug, a helping hand, a kind hello, a warm plate of cookies, a handwritten note\u2026and any one of those small and simple things can change someone else\u2019s world.<\/p>\n

After I shared my story one of the other girls in the class shared an experience she had on the opposite side of my story.\u00a0 I am forever grateful to this young lady for sharing this next experience because it was a humbling story that served as an incredibly important reminder to all of us.\u00a0 Her story went like this:\u00a0 She was in school between classes when she noticed that the lunch lady at the school was trying to wipe down the counter and was struggling to reach the other side.\u00a0 The girl watched as the woman struggled and something inside of her said \u201cgo help that woman\u201d.\u00a0 But the girl herself was running late to her class and she was struggling to carry her own books while walking with crutches, so she ignored the prompting and went to her class.\u00a0 The girl shared that she had been sick about it every day since it happened as she ignored the prompting to help this lunch lady.\u00a0 Her eyes swelled with tears as she shared this story and she expressed the regret she had that she hadn\u2019t helped this other person.\u00a0 For two weeks it had haunted her.\u00a0 It was such a small and insignificant moment \u2013 it wasn\u2019t as if the lunch lady was injured or something serious like that \u2013 but it didn\u2019t matter.\u00a0 What this girl was feeling was the pain of regret she felt for not helping someone when her heart told her she should have.\u00a0 She went on to encourage the rest of us to never pass up the opportunity to help someone else in need so that we wouldn\u2019t have to feel the pain of regret she was feeling.\u00a0 WOW!\u00a0 What a deeply personal and impactful moment it was to have her share that experience with us.\u00a0 I honor her for having the humility to share her story and to help use it to teach all of us to pay more attention when we are prompted to help another.<\/p>\n

I want to do better in my life to be aware of those moments when I can help another.\u00a0 I want to be better to recognize that all it takes is a smile or a helping hand or a hug, and all of us can give that.\u00a0 All of us.\u00a0 And think how much nicer the world would be if all of us did.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.\u201d ~ Mohandas K. Gandhi<\/span><\/p>\n

Have an amazingly blessed day and keep your eyes open for the opportunities to serve others.<\/p>\n

~Amy<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cDoing nothing for others is the undoing of one\u2019s self. We must be purposely kind and generous, or we miss the best part of existence. The heart that goes out of itself gets large and full of joy. This is the great secret of the inner life. We do ourselves the most good doing something […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":70,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[453,46,60,63,163,452,41,67,83,450,244,65,55,180,451,457,144,455,454,38,458,112,145,456,459,81,149],"class_list":["post-2289","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-act-of-service","tag-attitude","tag-beautiful","tag-blessings","tag-courage","tag-doing","tag-entrepreneur","tag-entrepreneurship","tag-experience","tag-generous","tag-grateful","tag-gratitude","tag-happiness","tag-happy","tag-heart","tag-hello","tag-help","tag-helping-hand","tag-hug","tag-leadership","tag-note","tag-self-improvement","tag-service","tag-single-mom","tag-small-and-simple-things","tag-smile","tag-success"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2289","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2289"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2289\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2295,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2289\/revisions\/2295"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/70"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2289"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2289"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2289"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}