“Act so as to elicit the best in others and thereby in thyself.”
— Felix Adler
If you are into postings about inspiration, self-improvement or resiliency, Brian Kim does a good job with his posts at BrianKim.Net. It is one of the blogs that I track in this category and he has written a variety of interesting pieces such as the one on How to Find What You Love to Do.
As you may have noticed in some of my posts, I am a Karma fan. Good deeds and helping others creates a virtuous cycle. One of his more recent posts, The Power in Serving Others, has a simple message. It is not just the act, but the intent that counts. Random, selfless acts of kindness oil the wheels.
"You can call this whatever you want – helping others, going the extra mile, caring, but what it all boils down to is really serving others because you genuinely want to without expecting anything in return.
Serving others in it of itself is a powerful opportunity to help and when you start to serve others, you’ll realize the simple fact that we all need help and because you realize that, you’ll start to get in the habit of serving others even more. Imagine the avalanche of opportunities that fall into your lap then.
Develop the habit of serving because you genuinely want to, follow through, and you’ll be amazed at the opportunities that come into your life."
Too many of us get stuck in the trap of trying to dish out our help based on what we can expect back in return. The pure opportunities are those where you are not even thinking about yourself and you are helping others that can, in no likely way, return the favor. Help the poor, help the child, help the entrepreneur, pay the toll for the person behind you…you get the idea. It just gets banked in the Karma account. So, "Practice random kindness and senseless acts of beauty", as coined by Anne Herbert…
Good post! I am a big believer in Karma and I think it works both ways. Example – two days ago I was playing golf with two cousins. On the 17th hole, we waited for the foursome ahead of us to leave the green, get in their carts and leave. We then hit up to the green. One of my cousins hit his shot to the right where the foursome had parked their carts (out of our sight) for the 18th tee (it was right next to the 17th green so they didn’t move their carts far). The ball landed near their carts but did not come close to hitting anyone. My other cousin, walking up to the green, noticed one of the players in this foursome walk over to my cousin’s ball and hit it about 15 yards as he walked up to the 18th tee, thinking we were out of sight. They teed off on 18 and we finished 17. As we were standing on the 18th tee waiting for them to hit their second shots, we heard a scream and saw the man who had hit my cousins ball fall to his knees. I ran to the cart and drove down to the fairway. When I got there the man was walking toward me dazed, blood gushing from his head. He had hit his second shot into a tree and the ball ricocheted off the tree and struck him in the head. He told me he was a doctor as he pulled the towel off his head. I told him that while I was not a doctor that I was quite sure he need to get to a hospital to have the large gash in his head sewn shut.
Coincidence or bad Karma?