Real wealth is helping others discover their hidden riches – Part 2

The purpose of real wealth is not to feed our egos, but to feed the hungry and to help people find meaning in life. Charbel Tadros said: “A truly successful person is not one who achieves his highest ambitions, but one who enjoys helping others reach theirs.”

A group of 50 people attended a seminar. Suddenly, the speaker stopped and started giving each person a balloon. Each one was asked to write his/her name on it using a marker. Then all the balloons were collected and put in another room.

These delegates were let into that room and asked to find the balloon that had their respective names written on within five minutes. Everyone was frantically searching for their names, pushing and colliding with one another and there was utter chaos. At the end of five minutes, no one could find his/her own balloons.

Each one was asked to randomly collect a balloon and give it to the person whose name was written on it. Within minutes, every one had his or her own balloons. The speaker began: “This is exactly what is happening in our lives. Everyone is frantically looking for happiness all over the place, not knowing where it is. It is literally true that you can succeed best and quickest by helping others to succeed.”

Mahatma Gandhi said: “The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.” Like the case of Joseph in the Bible, it was not until he started helping others interpret their dreams that his own became clearer. All the time, he was dreaming and interpreting it and only succeeded in attracting envy, hatred, and vituperations from his brothers.

When he helped the Chief Baker and the Chief Cupbearer interpret their dreams, he got the necessary connections needed for his destiny fulfillment. When he helped Pharaoh interpret his dreams, his own longtime dream became a reality. It is a tested and confirmed truth that when you help others interpret their dreams, your own would become clearer.

Our happiness lies in the happiness of other people. Happiness is a by-product of an effort to make someone else happy. Help them find their happiness and you would get your own happiness too. And this is the purpose of human life- to help others by helping them find their joy. Learn to put a smile on someone’s face and you would also smile in due course.​ When you are making others to succeed in life, you also become a huge success. When you dig another out of their troubles, you find a place to bury your own.

Nelson Henderson said: “The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit.” What we have done for ourselves alone dies with us; what we have done for others and the world remains immortal. To have and not to give is often worse than to steal.

A distinguished member of the British Parliament travelled to Scotland to give a speech in 1890. There, his carriage was hopelessly mired in the thick mud of a rural road. A young Scottish farm boy helped the man to move his carriage out of the mud with large draft horses and was ready to resume his journey.

The lawmaker insisted on paying the young man, but the lad refused. “Are you sure I can’t pay you for your time and effort?” the gentleman asked. “Thank you sir” said the young lad. “It is a privilege to help such an important person like you.” “What do you want to become in life?” asked the lawmaker. “I want to become a doctor, but I doubt that will happen since my family does not have the money for such education,” replied the young lad.

The young politician promised to help the young man become a doctor and he held onto his promise. Fifty years later, a man called Winston Churchill was the prime minister of Britain during Adolph Hitler’s insurgence and he was seriously down and close to death due to pneumonia. The whole of Britain was threatened by the health of their leader.

Churchill miraculously recovered because his physician gave him an injection of a new wonder drug called penicillin, which had recently been discovered by the brilliant medical doctor, Alexander Fleming.

Fleming was the young boy that had pulled the stalled carriage from the mud. And the man who promised to return the favour by sending him to a medical school was Winston Churchill’s father, Sir Randolph Churchill. By saving the life of Churchill, he might have saved the whole of England and probably the then whole world from Hitler’s reign of terror. What a monumental blessing that would have eluded the world if Churchill was unable to see a medical doctor in the young farm boy. One man helped one little boy and this little boy saved the whole world from the ravaging scourge of pneumonia.

Brian Tracy said: “Successful people are always looking for opportunities to help others. Unsuccessful people are always asking, “what’s in it for me?”

William Penn said: “I expect to pass through life but once. If, therefore, there be any kindness I can show or any good thing I can do to any fellow being, let me do it now and not defer or neglect it, as I shall not pass this way again.”

Never underestimate the difference you can make in the lives of others. Step forward, reach out and help. You have not lived today until you have done something for someone who can never repay you. This coming week, reach someone that might need a lift. In about the same degree as you are helpful, you would be happy. Focus on building up others and your own sense of self-worth would improve. Make a conscious, concerted effort to make the world better by making someone else’s life better. The bonus: You would be happier by doing it.

Edmund Burke said: “Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could only do a little.” You may not be able to help everybody, but there is someone out there whose next level is totally hinged on your help. If you cannot feed a hundred people, then feed just one. Nobody can do everything, but everyone can do something.

John Holmes said: “There is no exercise better for the heart than reaching down and lifting people up.”