{"id":85,"date":"2016-10-26T10:59:42","date_gmt":"2016-10-26T10:59:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/nextsteps\/?p=85"},"modified":"2016-10-26T11:02:41","modified_gmt":"2016-10-26T11:02:41","slug":"5-ways-giving-makes-happier","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/nextsteps\/2016\/10\/5-ways-giving-makes-happier.html","title":{"rendered":"5 Ways Giving Makes You Happier"},"content":{"rendered":"
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<\/b>There’s a seemingly crazy statement of Jesus that we find in Scripture, “It is more blessed to give than to receive” (Acts 20:35). But when we dig a little deeper, Jesus’ statement isn’t crazy; it’s divine. Here are five ways that giving makes you happier.<\/p>\n

1). Giving actually makes you happier.<\/b> The Wall Street Journal, hardly a theological or pro-Christian publication, ran an intriguing article titled “Hard-Wired for Giving<\/a>.” And here\u2019s the tagline and I love this: Contrary to conventional wisdom that humans are essentially selfish, scientists are finding that the brain is built for generosity.<\/i> Now, they\u2019re not willing to come out and say who hard-wired for generosity, but I think you and I can say who: it\u2019s God. Here\u2019s what they discovered, when a person donates to a worthy cause, the mid-brain region of the brain lights up like a Christmas tree. Chemicals are released in your brain and you actually feel happier. Just for reference, it\u2019s the same region of the brain that lights up when (and they make this analogy, not me), when you eat chocolate or make babies. We\u2019re literally hard-wired to be generous and feel pleasure when we tap into how God made us. That\u2019s the first reason. It\u2019s more blessed to give than to receive. You\u2019re happier when you give.<\/p>\n

2). Giving loosens the grip of selfishness on your heart.<\/b>\u00a0Giving is the antidote to greed. You know this from experience. If you want to be miserable (which is the opposite of happy or blessed), then be selfish. Think about the most selfish, greedy person you know. They don\u2019t give anything to anyone. You know to not even ask them if you need anything, because the answer will be \u2018no.\u2019 Are they usually happy? No, usually they\u2019re the most miserable people you know. Why? Because greed is a cancer that will eat you up from the inside out and destroy everything good about you if you let it. When you give, it\u2019s literally like you\u2019re releasing the negative toxins and you\u2019re keeping a hard shell of selfishness and greed from encasing your heart. It\u2019s more blessed to give than to receive. You\u2019re happier when you give.<\/p>\n

3). Giving strengthens social bonds and deepens human relationships.<\/b> When you become a generous person, it seeps over into your relationships with other people. When you become a generous person, it doesn\u2019t just stop with money. You become generous with your time and with your talents. That\u2019s why researchers from the University of Notre Dame took did a nationwide research project and discovered that people who described their lives as \u201cvery happy\u201d volunteer an average of 5.8 hours per month and people who described their lives as \u201cunhappy\u201d volunteer an average of 0.6 hours per month. Just think about it. If you were choosing who you wanted to spend an afternoon with, a person who was known to be stingy, self-centered and greedy or a person who was generous and giving, who would you want to hang out with? The generous person. Not even with the expectation that you\u2019d get anything. They\u2019re just better people to hang around. When you develop a life of generosity, people will want to hang around you more, not because they want a hand out but because generous people are better to hang around with. You\u2019ll have more relationships and deeper friendships. If you\u2019re greedy and self-centered, people will avoid you and you\u2019ll live a life of isolation. Being generous makes you happier because it strengthens and deepens your bonds with other people. It\u2019s more blessed to give than to receive. You\u2019re happier when you give.<\/p>\n

4). When you give your heart gets caught up in something bigger<\/b>. Let\u2019s say you had $100 a week that you could do whatever you wanted with it. There are a lot of things that you could do. You could take your whole family out to a nice meal. That would make you happy. You could go on a mini-shopping spree and buy an outfit or two. That would make you happy, for a little while. You could save that $100 and in two months you could buy the new iPhone 7, which would make you happy for a year until the iPhone 7s came out. But what if you decided to invest that $100 in something bigger than yourself? What if you started contributing to a non-profit that built wells in Africa and gave clean water to underprivileged communities? 1 out of every 10 people on this planet don\u2019t have access to clean water. Which means that in Africa women spend 40 billion hours a year just walking to go get water. That\u2019s 40 billion years where they can\u2019t get an education because they spend hours a day walking to go get water. And when they get water it\u2019s dirty water that makes them sick. Diseases from dirty water kill more people every year than all forms of violence, including\u00a0war. 43% of those deaths are children under five years old. Access to clean water and basic sanitation can save around 16,000 lives\u00a0every\u00a0week. So what if you took that $100 a week and did something about that? What if after a year or two of saving you actually donated enough to build a well in a village. Let\u2019s say it\u2019s just a small village. That would still save one life a month. That well would allow dozens of women to actually go to school because they had the time, changing the trajectory of their entire lives and every generation that comes after them. Every month, you could walk around thinking, \u201cI saved someone\u2019s life this month. A little girl has an opportunity for an education because of my well.\u201d Does that seem a little bigger, a little more meaningful than another night out on the town or an outfit that you\u2019ll only wear twice? When you give, your heart gets caught up in something bigger. It\u2019s more blessed to give than to receive. You\u2019re happier when you give.<\/p>\n

5). When you give you connect with your divine identity.<\/b> This is when we begin to move from the natural to the supernatural. As the Wall Street Journal itself reports, we are hard-wired to give. When we give and begin to live a life of generosity, we tap into our divine identity. How so? When we give, we\u2019re more like God, because God at his core is a giver. What does the most famous verse in the Bible say? \u201c<\/b>For God so loved the world that he gave<\/i> his one and only son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life.\u201d<\/b> John 3:16<\/p>\n

Do you want to become like God? Become a giver. God is a giver. God is generous, and we celebrate that generosity, that grace, every time we come together. When we connect to our divine identity, we begin to unlock that blessedness, that divine happiness, that God wants all of us to experience.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There’s a seemingly crazy statement of Jesus that we find in Scripture, “It is more blessed to give than to receive” (Acts 20:35). But when we dig a little deeper, Jesus’ statement isn’t crazy; it’s divine. Here are five ways that giving makes you happier. 1). Giving actually makes you happier. The Wall Street Journal,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":607,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,46,47,48],"class_list":["post-85","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-next-steps","tag-blessed","tag-give","tag-giving","tag-happy"],"yoast_head":"\n5 Ways Giving Makes You Happier - Next Steps<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\""It's more blessed to give than to receive." 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