The Happiest Human Beings

Give, and you will receive. Your gift will return to you in full—pressed down, shaken together to make room for more, running over, and poured into your lap. The amount you give will determine the amount you get back.

Luke 6:38

Running back Tony Richardson has made a career out of helping other players. Over the span of seventeen pro football seasons, teams have often paired Richardson with some of the best backs in pro football. But his mission to help his peers goes beyond blocking for them. He talks to them constantly, giving advice, encouragement, and inspiration. In a Sports Illustrated interview, Richardson said, “I can’t explain it, but it just means more to me to help someone else achieve glory. There’s something about it that feels right to me.”^a

Whether he knew it or not, Richardson had a lock on a fundamental psychological law: When you help other people, you immediately receive a payoff yourself. George Burton Adams, an American educator and historian, said it nicely: “Note how good you feel after you have encouraged someone else. No other argument is necessary to suggest that you should never miss the opportunity to give encouragement.” Ralph Waldo Emerson put it this way: “You cannot sincerely help another without helping yourself.” And he could not have been more right. When we empty ourselves of our self-centered desires, when we surrender our desires to get our way, we are filled with grace. Each act of kindness, each act of self-giving love, expands our lives.

Numerous studies find that the ability to practice appreciation and love is the defining mark of the most happy of human beings. When people engage in self-giving love by doing something extraordinarily positive, they use higher-level brain functions and set off a series of neurochemical reactions that shower their systems in positive emotions.

Perhaps you are wondering if this kind of happiness is triggered just as readily by having fun as it is by an act of self-giving love. Martin Seligman, of the University of Pennsylvania, wondered the same thing. He gave his students an assignment: to engage in one pleasurable activity and one philanthropic activity and then to write about both. Turns out, the “pleasurable” activity paled in comparison with the effects of the loving action. Seligman states that “when our philanthropic acts were spontaneous . . . the whole day went better.”^b

Of course, this was God’s design: “Give, and you will receive.” And as a couple, you and your spouse have an opportunity to have your gift “return to you in full” together. Those who engage in shared service are the happiest and most satisfied couples around.

No man can sincerely try to help another without helping himself.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson

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From the book