True happiness derives from love, growth, and contribution to the well being of other living things. When we can meet our own basic needs for security, comfort and emotional connection we can look beyond ourselves and our own wants and desires. When we look to help others to flourish, to learn, grow and achieve their goals we gain a higher level of life satisfaction. Through gifts of effort, time, energy, knowledge, emotional support and creativity we can contribute to the progress of those around us and to the society in general.
There are many ways to give. The important thing is to develop a giving attitude. We all have self-interest by nature, a focus and concern for our own needs and desires. We innately care about how we are perceived and where we rank relative to other people. We can certainly reject social standing as a marker of success, but we do have a very sensitive subconscious ability to detect social status in others. We can easily detect those who fail to contribute to the greater good, those that cheat and take more than their fair share. We also inherited a natural tendency to mate and have children. Concern for offspring in a natural instinct, especially strong in mothers, but also among most fathers. There are variations on this behavior, but the underlying trait is strong throughout human history.
These traits developed through evolution by natural selection as a mechanism for survival and gene propagation. Understanding of evolutionary psychology helps us understand some of our innate and subconscious motivations. Social cohesion is also an important evolutionary concept and promotes fitness for survival. As we tend to the needs of others in our group, we increase overall and individual success. Often, personal sacrifice on the part of individuals benefits the group as a whole. This sacrifice can take many forms such as physical effort, emotional support, and sharing of precious resources including food, shelter, money and time. In the more extreme case, sacrifice takes the form of risking one's life for the protection and survival of the larger group. This is indeed an ultimate form of giving and high stakes sacrifice.
When we sacrifice our own narrow self interest for the benefit of other people or living things, we in fact benefit individually with a greater sense of meaning and purpose in our lives. This sense of meaning and purpose enhances the quality of life and ultimately life satisfaction immeasurably. We do not typically have to give up all of our self interest to serve others. We benefit as individuals in many ways through giving and self sacrifice, beyond a greater sense of meaning, higher purpose and emotional satisfaction. When we bring an attitude of caring and generosity to our work, we will increase our effectiveness and our value to any endeavor. Helping coworkers or employees to succeed in their roles benefits the larger group and also translates into your own economic well being over time. Gifts to benevolent charities that help people or causes in need of support improve the conditions of life for all in a community, group or society. Donating time to assist with improving the environment or living conditions similarly benefits the individual as well as the group. Similarly, if we fail to give and show concern for interests outside of our own, conditions of life will suffer for all.
There is a limit to the benefits of enhancing one's own economic and financial success. Acquisition of more and more wealth does not increase life satisfaction. Studies repeatedly show that beyond a reasonable, yet fairly modest income, happiness does not increase significantly. Once our basic human needs for food and water, shelter, safety and emotional connection are met, the greater level of happiness is achieved by contributing to the well being of other living things. The philanthropy and charitable purpose driven activities of wealthy people is admirable, but is often seen by those less fortunate as less of a sacrifice given the abundance of resources they control. In fact, the giving behaviors of the wealthy serve to illustrate the point that more meaning and satisfaction is derived from giving than from more and more individual wealth generation.
We can all start to develop this attitude and behavior of giving to enhance the well being of others, society and ourselves. It is in fact true that the more we give, the more we receive in return. Choose to exhibit an attitude of service to others in your daily life. Do not wait until you are wealthy beyond your wildest dreams. Generosity and service will start you on the true road to happiness and life satisfaction.