Although people do not know what goodness is, they possess it within themselves.
Confucius
We continue to examine the topic of inflicting good, of the desire to forcibly make a person happy.
How often do you feel disappointment and resentment, along with dissatisfaction, after unsolicitedly rushing to inflict good on your loved ones?
It seems to you that thanks to your help, people must inevitably become at least a little happier. You expect that they will be grateful for your help.
And what is the result? They make claims against you, they take offense at you, and they show their anger. What gratitude for your involvement can be discussed with such a turn of events?
Who is to blame in such cases and why this happens, you will learn from the article “Forcibly Inflicting Good or Why the Role of a Rescuer Is Dangerous.”
And today we will consider the questions:
- What to do if you often find yourself in such situations?
- How to avoid trouble when helping loved ones?
- What features need to be considered to harm neither yourself nor your neighbor?
Where does the desire to play the role of a rescuer come from
If a person feels a desire to make the world better, more harmonious, happier, and rushes to help everyone, even to their own detriment, the cause may be unfulfilled needs:
- The need for approval
Every person needs confirmation that they are acting correctly and living correctly.
- The need to be needed, useful
Every person needs to feel that they are bringing benefit and that there is demand for their activity.
- The need for recognition
Every person needs to understand that they are valued and cherished.
- Need for attention
Every person needs to be noticed and listened to.
- Need for sympathy
Every person wants to be caressed, hugged, and told warm words or a compliment.
When a person feels unrecognized, unappreciated, or disapproved of, they lose themselves because their attention is directed outward, toward others and the external world, rather than inward.
If basic needs are not met, a person experiences dissatisfaction with life. This affects their self-esteem, which they try to boost at the expense of others.
When these states are internalized, and a person encourages, values, and accepts themselves, the need to interfere in others’ lives by doing good deeds disappears.
Why the rescuer role is dangerous for you
- Your interference in others’ lives destroys relationships with loved ones.
- You feel like a victim of circumstances, which plunges you into heavy, negative emotions: resentment, anger, disappointment.
- If you are unable to provide quality help, you experience guilt.
- Loved ones may simply sit on your neck and dangle their legs, because it is convenient for them when someone else solves their problems. And no matter how much you do for them, they will demand more and more.
- You take on others’ responsibilities. Most often, someone else’s burden is unbearable, so you spend a lot of energy on others.
- You have no strength left for yourself, your beloved. You forget that you are the most important thing you have.
Read about how to give up self-sacrifice in the article “How to Stop Sacrificing Yourself Without Being an Egoist.”
How to help someone without imposing your beliefs
Follow these rules when doing good:
1. Don’t help if you’re not asked
People often don’t even realize that kindness should only be shown with permission from the person it’s directed at. This is a culture of relationships and tact that should be observed.
If you want to help, ask what exactly the person needs. You have an idea of how to help, but no idea what the person themselves needs.
By intruding into someone else’s situation, you violate their boundaries with your kindness. This way, you do more harm than good to the person.
Don’t inflict kindness and impose benefits based on your own point of view. Ask the opinion of the person you wish to help. What do they need? Find out from the person what they want.
Ask if your help is needed and in what form the person would like to receive it. When a person doesn’t ask but acts as they see fit, thinking it’s virtuous, the action can be offensive and tactless.
Everyone’s idea of help is different, and it’s important to respect boundaries.
You will learn how to define personal boundaries by reading the article “Personal Boundaries — How Not to Lose Yourself.”
2. Don’t rush to help when you’re asked
Even when you are asked to help, it is not always appropriate to rush to save a person and solve their problems. Resolving a difficult life situation is a lesson not for you, but for another person.
By interfering in other people’s problems, you deprive a person of their strength. Our gifts are embedded in difficult circumstances. And only by solving this issue independently does a person receive their gift, which fills them with strength.
When you take on other people’s problems out of mercy, you harm yourself. This will manifest in your life in the form of resentment, claims, dissatisfaction, and anger towards the person you yourself have deprived of their gifts.
You can often hear this phrase: “Oh, how ungrateful, and I did so much for them!”
And indeed, they are un-grateful; the person does not have that blessed gift. By your actions, you have deprived them of this gift.
Situations are specially laid out by the soul before incarnation to gather all one’s gifts and move to a new level of development.
And until a person resolves the situation independently, they will not receive their strength, and they will continue to go in circles and live through the same situations.
See also: Who and when you can help. Motives and principles of helping other people from a spiritual perspective
3. Help ecologically to harm neither yourself nor your neighbor
How to provide help and support to a person without causing harm?
Express your point of view, your perspective on the situation. Explain how you would act if you were in such circumstances.
But the best option is when you direct the person’s view of their difficulties from a different angle. And they themselves gain insights thanks to a new perspective on their position in the current situation.
Ask yourself questions that will help you act ecologically:
- Does your care add joy to a person’s life?
- Does your interference in someone’s life make them happier?
- Will this action add love and joy to your life? Or not?
And when you begin to measure your actions by these criteria, it turns out that everything looks completely different from how you perceive it.
See also Empowering others as a way to serve and gain your own strength
4. Uncover the best qualities in people
Every person has something good in them. Highlight those positive qualities of their personality that, when expressed, can help them change.
Emphasize how caring, attentive, and kind a person is. Or say that you like their smile, or that you like how stylishly they dress.
Don’t make anything up, tell the truth, praise only the qualities that the person truly possesses.
Don’t deceive or flatter, name a specific fact — something the person genuinely knows how to do.
What we focus our attention on becomes filled with energy and flourishes.
This is what quality help looks like
A wise person who truly possesses the quality of helping others does not impose their views. They know that everyone has the right to make mistakes — it is their path of growth.
That a person needs to walk their own path independently. That people need to step on rakes and get bruised.
Wise people do not hinder others from going their own way. They understand that only through their own experience can a person gain invaluable lessons that will help them grow.
See also Sense of belonging as a criterion for intervening in someone else’s situation
The soul values all experiences, both positive and negative.
A wise person stands aside and observes, offering help only with advice if asked.
And never imposes their opinion or asserts themselves in this way.