What it means to help others?

At the end of the day, when we are where we want to be-perhaps a preferred resting place-where we are ready to reflect and look back, what is left of us and can be seen is a story. As days grow, we lug these stories, and readily allow moments in which we help others to define us. In retrospect, if not always, these moments of altruism are viewed as the hallmark of a life that is acceptable and purposeful.

But in our skewed society, many long for a place to rest and/or struggle to take a moment to look back and reflect. To help others for a moment’s satisfaction, through careful reflection, may not always make a compelling case and permit all to seek deeper appreciation for helping others in need.

As clear as it is to us that it is in the nature of our species to cause pain and suffering, we agree that we voluntarily invite trouble and incur pain for the well-being of others also by nature. Thus, the appeal of altruism goes beyond seeking appreciation for it and rests on our evolution. Acts of altruism such as to give and help others are hardwired in our genes, therefore, they are part of our nature.

Starting with people who need help and are close to us, evolutionary psychologists believe that we are genetically tuned to help members of our family, as relatives share genes. This understanding of genetics is familiar to many as the idea of same-blood. Genes influence parents to nurture their child’s interest, at times sacrificing their own, to increase its chances of survival in the world, hoping the child gets a chance to successfully extend their bloodline.

In a nuclear family, genes of parents and their children are tied together. Each has an interest in keeping the other alive and healthy. “These shared interests,” argues Harvard psychologist, Steven Pinker, “set the stage for companionate love and marital love to evolve.” Shared desire to help invokes love.

Our capacity to help others is rooted in our genes and continues to evolve for good reasons. Acts of kindness have allowed people to trust each other, improve social relationships, form communities, gain a sense of belonging, and improve our chances of survival.

But in modern communities and workplace environments, helping others is often perceived as a zero-sum game, which breeds distrust and reduces one’s capacity to help. While doing so may give an illusion of doing justice, in reality, psychologists argue, this hurts our progress.

Our success depends on our capacity to help others

To think of ways in which to help others is to cultivate ideas that are aiming for a solution. The more we help others the more we push and train our minds into encouraging solution driven thoughts and notions. And when we think of helping others as a zero-sum game, we are not scratching our heads for a solution, but trying to settle scores. We can see how the latter makes it difficult to offer help.

Sometimes visualising success that is tangible is essential in truly shifting one’s attitude from keeping scores to unconditionally helping others in need. And we have statistical evidence to do that.

Every community or a workplace has people who are reliable and willing to help. Adam Grant who is an organisational psychologist and Wharton professor calls them g ivers. Grant argues in his book Give and Take that givers are typically found at both ends of the success ladder. The two ends of the ladder signify stages of reform:

To understand what is happening with the givers at the bottom of the success ladder, Grant conducted a study, focusing on the givers in sales who bring relatively less annual sales revenue. He found that one of the reasons givers sold less was that they were eager to understand and attend to their clients’ needs and less willing to sell aggressively.

On the surface, findings of this study make givers look almost unsuitable for sales. But their conduct agrees with Patricia Fripp, a renowned sales trainer, who suggests, “to build a long-term, successful enterprise, when you don’t close a sale, open a relationship.”

These givers are set out on a path to build long-term relationships. And when compared with the givers on top of the success ladder, the givers at the bottom are a work-in-progress in their ability to better service their clients’ needs. However, by momentarily sacrificing their own benefits.

For the givers at the top of the success ladder, in the same study, Grant found that they averaged 50 percent more annual sales revenue than others. In his other study, involving the Belgian medical students, Grant found that students with the highest grades had unusually high giver score. We can deduce that helping others invigorates our overall capacity to do well.

How to effectively help others

Saying yes to every request that comes our way is allowing others to take complete control of our time. This leaves little time to execute our ideas and work on our goals. Moreover, it is impossible to do everything.

Given how important it is to help others, saying yes to all requests is not a workable solution. Therefore, to create a balance between saying yes and no, it would be helpful to consider some of the guidelines followed in rural parts of India that suggest two things:

• Having a fixed time to help others in need.
• Making helping others more accessible for oneself.

In most villages of India, there are not many professional plumbers, engineers, veterinarians, carpenters, etc. And whenever villagers have troubles with their tractors, or faulty water-pipes, or livestock health, they generally reach out to a friend or find a connection in their community who could fix it for them.

Typically, these services are perceived as favours and seldom paid for. But three things are commonly understood when asking for help: One, help is likely to arrive in the evening, as this is when villagers conclude their day’s work and are relatively free to offer help. Two, in case of an emergency (which can be rare), it is best to find a professional. Three, the person getting the help has to be mindful about returning the favour.

These guidelines allow villagers to plan better and effectively ask or deliver on help. Also, knowing that favours need to be reciprocated, villagers go out of their way to learn new skills despite knowing that they are unlikely to make a living out of them. As confidence in these skills is improved, helping others becomes more accessible.

In these villages, helping each other is a means to sustain solidarity. Every member acknowledges the schedule, and to some it serves as a motivation to hone their skills or learn a new one. Adopting this strategy, we could dedicate a few hours every day, or a day or two every week to help others, allowing our friends and colleagues to reach out to us at appropriate times.

As we make helping others a practice (this does not have to mean providing a turn-key solution to requests), we get better at navigating uncertainty-we are less overwhelmed by the unknown.

Start asking for help

To safely live in isolation, and to have the degree of individuality we have today are fairly new phenomenons. Our ancestors lived in groups-for safety, communal joy; to preserve their beliefs. And through their lifetime, individuals in a group put in a never-ending effort into understanding each other’s needs by offering and asking for help. As needs kept changing, the knowledge of change was not inherited but learned. We continue this learning by asking for help.

When we ask for help, we make a formal inquiry into our own needs, and open doors for others to do the same. Asking for help has compounding benefit:

• Asking for help allows us to learn different approaches to solutions for our problems.
• These learned approaches in return strengthen our capacity to help.

To reduce discrepancies between the help we ask and the help we need can be difficult and indispensable at the same time. And to thoroughly explain or calibrate the nature of the help, a good experience of asking for help is just as important as willingness to help others. When we ask for help we open doors to feedback that equip us with a better understanding of what we need.

When peoples’ requests are adequately understood in a community, and willingness to help each other is sustained, there is a sense of harmony. And to protect this sense of harmony, it is imperative that we continue the practice of learning people’s changing needs.

Originally published at https://isflowing.com.