I hope everybody had a great weekend. Unfortunately for me, my Jets lost. Aside from that, I had a great opportunity, to become acquainted with a woman by the name of Jackie Waldman. Jackie is an accomplished author of a series of books called The Courage to Give. After her diagnoses of MS, Jackie decided to take her attention off of her disease by taking initiative to learn about others who have triumphed over their own tragedy. So, just as she distracted herself by learning about others, she found out that others benefitted after their own tragedies, by reaching out to others in order to help them deal with similar situations.

Initially this concept sounded odd to me. My first thought was, “If I myself need help, how can I be brought to help others?” After some deliberation and experimenting I realized the greatness of this concept. One day I decided to perform random acts of kindness, and found the results to be amazing, even contagious. The rewards are simple; by helping others you yourself will feel good, and therefore capable of accomplishing other good things. As a result you will feel start to feel better and have a sense that perhaps you can overcome your own battles. Secondly, when we feel as though we are going through a dark period in our lives, we often feel that we are alone. If we seek to help others during our own time of need, we may start to realize that there are many people in similar situations. This is important as it can help us all to realize that we are not alone.

I encourage you all to experiment with this idea, if you haven’t already, and to please share your experience with us. If you have experienced something like this before, please feel free to share your inspiring story with us. These kinds of stories can help to inspire others in ways you might not ever fathom. If you would like some ideas or you are interested in finding out ways to help others, you can order any of the books in the series, The Courage to Give. To learn more about these stories, or the author herself, please follow this link The Courage to Give.