5 in 5 Part 4, Give to others

Research suggests that acts of giving and kindness can help improve your mental wellbeing by:

• creating positive feelings and a sense of reward
• giving you a feeling of purpose and self-worth
• helping you connect with other people

It could be small acts of kindness towards other people, or larger ones like volunteering in your local community.

Some examples of the things you could try include:

• saying thank you to someone for something they have done for you
• asking friends, family or colleagues how they are and really listening to their answer
• spending time with friends or relatives who need support or company
• offering to help someone you know with DIY or a work project
• volunteering in your community, such as helping at a school, hospital or care home

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Transcript

Carl Fessenden: 1:19

Welcome to the drunken worm podcast. Each week, I will be bringing you dynamic content that will educate and inspire. This podcast was created to talk to mental health professionals about addiction recovery and their own personal stories that can help inspire us to become better people and live healthier lives. Welcome to the drunken Warren podcast. My name is Carl, the host and creator of this show, and you're listening to the five in five, part four. This is where we are taking five episodes and releasing them in five days. And I hope that you guys are having a great Sunday. I hope you're having a great weekend. And on today's episode, we're going to be talking about giving to others as we explore five steps to our mental well being. Research suggests the acts of giving and kindness can help improve your mental well being creating positive feelings and a sense of reward, giving you a feeling of purpose and self worth helping you connect with others. It can be small acts of kindness towards other people, and larger ones like volunteering at a local community. So guys, welcome to the episode, we're gonna dive into these topics. And I hope that you guys are having a really great day today. The last episode that we published yesterday, we talked about learning a new skill. So if you guys are following along, I hope that you guys have started learning a new skill that you can put into practice, we talked about being confident with those skills, and the ways that it can help our lives improve. And so now we're going to dive into giving to others. And, you know, this is really a way that I've experienced, since I've come into recovery, that giving to somebody else, it brings me so much satisfaction and so much joy. It really does. Like I get such a high off of it. It's weird. But it really like I get this like crazy high off of giving people gifts, and giving them compliments, and telling them that I'm proud of them. And I acknowledge them, right, acknowledging somebody that's such a gift that you can give to somebody. Because our world is so locked into technology. And we're all on our phones all the time. And we're not acknowledging each other. We're not saying hello to each other on the street, saying hello to somebody is a gift. That's a gift to us an act of kindness. So how are we creating positive feelings in our lives, and giving us a sense of reward. So what does reward mean? A reward means that we're getting something in return. Now, it might not be monetary, it might not be tangible, right? The reward that I get when I give somebody a compliment, or I give somebody a hello, or I recognize them. And I say that I see you and I appreciate what you're doing. And I'm proud of you. The reward I get is the reward of knowing that I am doing something good. I'm hopefully I hopefully feel that I am helping that person's day even more. Because a lot of times we go through life unacknowledged. We don't have anybody acknowledging what we're doing. We don't have anybody giving us those positive vibes. Let's say hey, man, you're doing a great job. And I see what you're doing brother. This is gonna give us a purpose, guys. It gives us self worth. It makes us feel like all the hard work that we're doing is worth something, all the effort that we've put into something, and we get that compliment from a boss or a friend or a family member or a loved one. Or even a stranger where they come up and they say to you, you I see what you're doing. And I appreciate what you're doing. Thank you. Man. That's just so cool. Man, it just makes my heart full when I when I think about stuff like that. It is helping us connect with other people. I want you to try that today. I want you to tell two people in your life, that you acknowledge them, you see what they're doing, and you appreciate what they're doing for you. And I want you to thank them. And then I want you to think about how do you feel afterwards? What did that feel like? What was their reaction like? Right? This could be small acts of kindness towards other people like we just talked about, or even larger ones like volunteering in your local community. I consider myself work on these podcasts because I don't make any money off of them. As a community service, it's a volunteer work that I do putting these episodes for you guys out. Man, I get so much pleasure out of seeing the downloads come in and seeing that people are connecting with this podcast. And that you guys are actually getting something out of these is so rewarding. And it makes everything that I do all the hours for each episode that I spend, you know, deciding what the episode is going to be about recording the episode doing post production on the episode getting advertising ready for the episodes, posting the episodes, getting the script written for the episodes, you know, all of these things, man, when I see that that podcast is starting to download, and I see all the people that it's starting to reach 345 600 people on one episode, man, it's amazing. It's amazing to know that you know that this app podcast that I started, not even eight months ago, is reaching so many people now. Say thank you to somebody today, please go out there and say thank you to somebody for something they have done for you. Thank you goes such a long way with communication to others. Ask friends, family or colleagues how they are and really listening to their answer. I asked people how they're doing and a lot of times we get this generic response. Oh, I'm doing great man. And a lot of times I like to stop them. And I say, Man, I heard what you just said, but how are you really doing? And the look on their face is like, Oh, shit. He sees me. He heard what I said. But he actually wants to know, he didn't want to get the generic answer that Yeah. Oh, I'm doing great today. Thanks for asking me. You know, and I'm, I'm I do that to people. I do that because it's such an automatic response. And maybe there's some fear, maybe there's some shame that goes along with that, right? Because maybe we feel like if we actually told people how we really were doing at that time, if it wasn't fine and dandy, then maybe we would be judged, or maybe there would be some concern for us. Or maybe there's some embarrassment on our end. But I think that we need to start getting into the habit of expressing ourselves. And we don't have to go into great detail when we tell somebody how we're doing. You know, if somebody says, Hey, Carl, how you're doing? And you know, I'm not just gonna go off and say, Well, let me tell you about my day. Dude, my cat died, my dog died. Man, I ran over my big toe with the car. And my bank account got drained today. I don't know why I'm putting an accent on there people. But, you know, we don't have to go into a lot of detail about it. But I think the fact that somebody asks us and they show the genuineness of their intent, and they show us that they're paying attention. Maybe it's up to us to be courteous enough to actually give them a real answer instead of just say, you know, hey, I'm doing great, thanks for asking. How much time are you spending with your friends, your relatives who need support, or company? Sometimes it's hard for me to get into that, you know, space where I know somebody is going through something. And I want to be supportive. So I'll put that out there. And I'll be like, Hey, I hope you're doing okay, let me know if I can help you. And you know, a lot of times I'm keeping my fingers crossed, and I'm saying, oh, man, I hope this person doesn't reach out because I won't know what to say to them. I won't know what to do. That's okay. That's okay. If you don't know what to say it's okay. If you don't know what to do. A lot of times when people reach out to us and they need that comfort, and they need that space to to vent and they need all of that. A lot of times us just being on the other end of the phone or sitting with that person and just being there is going to give them a lot of comfort. Just listening to them is going to give them a lot of comfort. They aren't necessarily looking for you to answer their questions. They just want somebody to vent to, they want somebody to say Man, this is how my day is going, my dog died, my friend died, you know, what have you or, you know, breaking up with my with my girlfriend or something like that, you know? A lot of times people just need an ear that will listen. And I've learned that working in the counseling field. You know, a lot of times when I have a client sitting across For me, and they're going through things. It's okay just to listen, and let them know that you hear them. Give empathy, give that support to that person. We talked about doing DIY projects in our last episode. But maybe it's not you that starting the DIY project. Maybe it's somebody that you know, and you want to help them. An act of kindness can go so far in somebody's lives, that we have a responsibility to be kind to each other so that others can pay it forward. I hope that you guys have enjoyed today's episode, and I look forward to seeing you guys tomorrow on Part Five, thank you