How Volunteering Enhances your Life
Volunteering enhances your life by making you a better person. For a few hours of your time the world doesn’t revolve around you, it revolves around the cause that you’re supporting. In that time you learn to become a little less selfish, to think a little more about the needs, wants and plights of others and you participate a little more actively in your community. At the end of your volunteering session you will have made the world just a little bit better place.
When you volunteer you have an incredible opportunity. Again the focus isn’t on you, it’s on a cause that you and hopefully a great many other people are interested in and want to be successful. Suddenly out of the “me first” mentality that the competitive world has placed you in you’re free to see just how rewarding it is to work with others to help something else succeed.
In the process of volunteering you learn a great many things. While you may pick up new specialized skills you’ll also learn invaluable lessons about teamwork, collective creation and how to take many small actions and turn them into something big. You’ll learn a lot about people: how they are motivated, how well the respond to certain pressures and how they measure their own success. You can also learn the same things about yourself.
Volunteering enhances your life not just when you do it but when you do it more. Simply giving your time is one thing, but going above and beyond to work extra hours, take on a leadership role or handle a difficult or unpleasant situation is a special experience. Yes, the sacrifice may be greater, but so is the pay-off – you haven’t just made a difference, you’ve made THE difference and played a pivotal role in your organization’s success.
The benefits of volunteering are endless, in addition to the satisfaction of supporting a cause you are passionate about. When you volunteer you acquire job skills, people skills and life skills. You make friends. You network. You meet people you wouldn’t normally meet or who wouldn’t normally want to meet you. You stay active, and while some volunteering requires extreme physical fitness the range of volunteer opportunities are so vast that there’s something for everyone, even the disabled. When you volunteer you set a good example to your children (or your parents!) about living a good life and being a positive part of your community.
Volunteering enhances your life in every way. Take some time to volunteer and you will see that it's true.
