How Volunteering Can Make You a Better Person

There are numerous things in life that you could do to improve your self-esteem, boost your skills, and enhance your well-being, however, nothing is as enriching as volunteering. Not only do you have the unique chance to travel and explore the people, but you would be meeting dazzling like-minded people and utterly transform your view of the world. There is so much more to volunteering than simply helping someone or something. Besides making yourself “useful” to the community, organisation, or institution, you will be working on improving and altering yourself above all! Volunteering can make you become something you have never thought possible – a better person towards yourself and others! Learn how!

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  You never feel alone

When you start your first volunteering duty, very soon you will discover that volunteering will help you get out of your shelter. This means, that if you have ever felt alone or lonely, helping others heal by giving advice on how to re-discover themselves, or simply volunteering to walk a dog, will help you fight social isolation. If you have no close friends, doing some volunteer tasks will immediately help you elevate your mood and combat loneliness. The chances are that volunteering will help you step out of your comfort zone and make you a more sociable person because you never feel alone.

• You get connected to people on a whole other level (and the world)

Volunteering builds bonds, and above all, helps create new friends. No matter where you live, if you were to volunteer overseas during a gap year, you will have the chance to meet gregarious and fun individuals, share knowledge and expertise, and build better connections. With more powerful and strong attachments to people from various countries and nationalities, you will become a more open, serene, and trustworthy person.

• You acquire new skills that enhance emotional stability

By choosing to volunteer, you also choose to start a new skill. Learning something new is an amazing opportunity to relieve stress, fight off depression, and combat any negative feelings and thoughts. You will have a unique chance to gain practical and professional experience by acquiring new skills and with that notion, you will enhance emotional stability and create a great sense of purpose. So, at the same time, your life will feel more enriched and inspired while your mental side will be thriving in an educational manner.

• You feel as if you belong to a greater and tighter family

If you decide to try out volunteering, you could have so many responsibilities that utterly mimic doing family chores and duties. However, as you will be giving back to the community in one form or another, you would automatically feel better about helping people improve and change. This notion can help bring people closer together, you will have a sense of belonging and a more meaningful purpose in life.

• You learn to value resources more

If you were to volunteer in a remote and underdeveloped country, you will very soon learn that most people don’t have basic necessities. As people see the difficulties and obstacles other nationalities face, they start to value and appreciate their resources. With time, you would learn how to cope with the shorthand of those resources if you head out to volunteer in abroad programs. Hence, you would learn to value basic but vital resources such as electricity, water, food, transport, etc. Plus, you will learn how to make the most of whatever you have, and this will enhance your creativity and resourcefulness skills. Above all, you will learn the values of preserving water and electricity, you would adapt a totally new and beneficial viewpoint to recycling, saving energy, and you would respect more all the resources you are lucky to have which are not always available to other people.

• You boost up your self-esteem

You could start volunteering as a teen or as an adult, it won’t make any difference as in both cases you will develop and enhance feelings of self-worth and love. Nowadays, most young teens struggle to cope with daily pressure which tends to demeanour their self-esteem, hence if you were to start volunteering early in life, you would be fighting off all social anxiety problems and totally get rid of depressive feelings. Volunteering can be a real life-changing activity, and for people with various social problems or disorders, it can be life-saving.

• You utterly improve your physical health

It’s a common fact that volunteering demands much running around and going places, helping people, communities, and animals in need. Consequently, volunteering improves physical health because it helps lower blood pressure and promotes a longer lifespan. As you will be outside the house more often, you will be surrounded by constant stress, by joining a volunteering organization you will be able to build stronger social connections and improve physical activity while doing so. All of those items together contribute to lessening symptoms of chronic pain or heart disease. Plus, staying active means regulating stress levels, back pain, and obesity.

• You see the world from other people’s eyes

Through volunteering, you have the genuine opportunity to see and learn how other people live. When you see the world from a different perspective, you can learn new ways of living, cultivate empathy and understanding for other people. You will learn how to save money, cut costs, and appreciate small things in life. Besides that, once you break down the barriers you have built between yourself and other people, you will stop being judgemental and making up various biases and similar. What’s more, with volunteering, you might learn that someone else’s way of life is more adaptable and carefree and you wish to implement that style to improve your overall mental and physical health.

• You prolong your lifespan gracefully

In order to volunteer, you need to get out of the house, be active, be with other people, and become purposeful. All things combined are a perfect recipe for long and healthy life. When you improve your mental health and become a better person through volunteering, you will have a better outlook on life and at the same time age gracefully. You might be asked to help the elderly, people with various mental and physical illnesses, and if you continue doing that for a longer period in life, you will prolong your lifespan as you will become a more happy and fulfilled persona.

• You build tighter bonds

When you have troubles with friends and other companions, very often you don’t have anyone to whom to turn for help. People who start volunteering are all tightly connected between one another and everybody sees each other like true friends. For that matter, volunteering creates stronger bonds between like-minded people, friends, families, and acquaintances. When volunteering, you build closer relationships, establish better connections, and enhance friendships. If you strive to connect with other people more deeply, you should undoubtedly try out volunteering.

• It reduces the risks of potential diseases

Unfortunately, there are many people who suffer from some form of mental disease and illnesses such as Alzheimer’s. There’s no denying that those types of illnesses really frighten people, and if you were to start early to look after your mental health and straighten your mental capacity, you would increase your chances of not suffering from such illnesses. One of the most renowned university studies has proven that people who volunteer are at a lower risk of suffering from dementia. Doing any form of social service can improve elasticity in the brain, and later even help delay or prevent Alzheimer’s, for instance.

• You can enhance your schooling experience

Volunteering is also paramount for school-aged kids because it helps build various social skills that would be necessary for them during one of the most important stages in their lives. If people start volunteering in the early stages of their education, they would much better develop their awareness, and become more fluent and independent, plus volunteering can help them boost their college applications. Volunteering looks well on any job resume as it shows that you are hard-working, responsible, diligent, and sociable.

• It kindles happiness

Compared to people who have never experienced volunteering in their life, people who volunteer are happier, more open-minded, and more sociable. With the help of volunteering, you boost your creativity, enhance your motivation, and get energized and relaxed doing something completely new and useful. Furthermore, the more you help others, the happier you become. This is because volunteering brings fun and fulfillment to your life. You will be spending many hours outside, carrying out numerous challenging and worthwhile tasks, or helping out people or pets that eagerly need your assistance. This “needy” feeling can actually help you explore your interests and passion, making you feel content and flabbergasted.

Volunteering can teach you valuable job skills amongst all the above-mentioned things. So when you figure out how to control and lead a healthy and happy life while volunteering and helping others, you will yourself become a more meaningful and satisfied individual.