“The best way to cheer yourself is to try to cheer someone else up." Mark Twain
Sometimes it feels like nothing in your life is going right. You’ve found yourself in a financial hole you’re having trouble getting out of. Things are not inspiring at work and days at home just blend one into the next. Life’s become more about facing each day than living it.
Grey on all sides
There are times in everyone’s life when everything is just another shade of grey. People try all kinds of things to find color, or cheer again. Exercise can help. So can a better diet that includes more natural foods and less processed, overly sweet ones. Meditation helps us get out of our heads and into our bodies. A good night’s sleep certainly helps things feel more manageable.
Sleep, a better diet, increased exercise and regular mediation are all great steps toward retrieving that lost joy. They are all also very self-directed.
Sometimes the best way to make ourselves feel better is to step away from ourselves altogether and focus on someone else.
What you give you get
So often life works in seemingly contradictory ways. Like the act of sharing or giving makes you feel like you have more to give. The more you love, the more love you feel you have.
In the process of focusing our energies on someone else and working to help them feel better we actually also help ourselves see the good around us.
The cheer you help someone else find reflects back on you
It’s always so much easier to find perspective in someone else’s life and circumstances than our own. Where someone else only sees darkness, you can often see some light. As you remind them of the good things they’ve lost perspective of, or simply sit with them as a sympathetic ear, without any intention on your part, all that love and advice you’re giving reflects back on you.
We are not encouraging people to help others with an ulterior motive of ultimately helping themselves. Rather we’re saying as your shadow follows you through your day, the light and color you bring into someone else’s life will of its own accord brighten your days too.
