The Importance of Giving Back, and Its Impact on You and The Community

John: You’re listening to The Present Professional. Where we explore the intersections of personal and professional development. To change your experience of life and work with every episode. So tune in, grab your notebook, and let’s go.

Tony: Let’s go.

John: Welcome to another episode of The Present Professional. Today, we’re here to talk about the importance of giving, and not giving transactionally, like giving for something in return, but the importance of volunteer work, of giving unconditionally, and not just for society and community and your relationships, But also for yourself, for your own physical, emotional, and mental health, the best thing for you is to give your time and resources if you have them available to further something greater than yourself, to help others, to do something that just comes from the kindness of your heart can be the most healing and uplifting thing that you can do for yourself, your community, and your family. So this is something that’s really near and dear to Tony and I. It’s how we met in the first place and something that we’re committed to throughout our lives, careers, and we want to be able to plug different organizations and ways that you guys can give back here on the podcast. we want to do this episode to really amplify the power of it and how important it is to include something like this, activities like this in your life and your planning moving forward.

Tony: Yeah. John, thanks for saying all that. I think that, you know, you talked about just the importance of giving back. I think it’s a privilege to give back. Honestly, if you’re in a position to help other people, man, it’s, it’s nothing greater. Um, especially if you’ve ever been through anything in your life or you know people around you that have been through things, when you can reconnect and repurpose that and make a difference in someone else’s life and see the joy on their face. You know, I like giving back in a way where you can actually see the people that are the recipients. There are different ways to give back, all different types. But that face-to-face interaction, that human-to-human interaction, you know, for example, like a food pantry where you’re able to actually help someone, giving them groceries that they’re going to be able to cook that night, there’s nothing greater than and handing them something tangible that you know that people are gonna use and knowing that they need it. And there’s so many other ways to give back too, but my favorite way is when you can see the people and even if it’s like a family or there’s children involved and knowing that you were able to actually do something greater than yourself. So I’m a big proponent of giving back. I’ve been in the space of community giving back, volunteerism service for a long time. Wow, does that calculate? I think it’s like at least 15 years of just being in the space. So you’re right. It is near and dear. And you’re right. That is how we met. was coming up with ways to collectively organize people to do things greater than us. So before we get into story time and all that, do you have some science for the people, for people who may be skeptical of giving back? Can you give us some insight to how giving back actually makes a difference neurotically, emotionally, and how it impacts people’s well-being? You got anything for the people?

John: Yeah, man, you know, there’s always comes down to brain science and some, you know, real tangible impacts to your health and not just your health, but your mood and how you can experience every day. Also, what you said, it brought up this quote for me that I love. It’s a Toni Morrison quote, and it’s, if you are free, you need to free somebody else. If you have some power, then your job is to empower somebody else. So even if it’s, you know, just a privilege to be able to give, if you have the means and resources, you know, it’s, it’s also, if you’re in a place of being able to share your time and being able to share your emotional and mental wellbeing, like you can share that to empower somebody else, to help free someone else. And that might just be volunteering your time. and no resources, and that’s good too. So yeah, I wanted to voice that quote. As soon as you said that, I was like, wow, that came flying back to my mind.

Tony: That’s a good one.

John: So the research, the research shows, I mean the psychology behind giving and you know it’s typically our brains process things what’s through what’s called hedonic adaptation and through hedonic adaptation what that really means is it’s how your brain is responding to these unique events that occur throughout your life. And so say you get a promotion and then like you’re fired up, you’re so excited, you’re experiencing that flood of oxytocin and other and dopamine and other uplifting chemicals to your brain. And then slowly it gets into life as it is. You know, you’re really excited about the promotion, but could you imagine if someone carried that excitement into every day over the following year until there was another promotion? And that’s the process of a Donnick adaptation is where you start to come into steady state. You start to come into, okay, this is my new life. This is my new role. And then you start having the ups and downs of that particular experience, right? that happens with a lot of things, a gift from your significant other, a, you know, anything that’s really external and, or a sur, circumstantial, but then whenever it comes to yourself and giving when it comes to, giving your time, resources, energy, without looking for something in return, like when it’s not a transactional relationship. So this psychology behind giving, it actually makes your brain process these good feelings in a completely different way. So when you give in a selfless way, this feeling actually may not diminish at all. And, you know, when it comes to, you know, most cases, the majority of cases, it will diminish at a much slower rate. So the glow, the afterglow that you’ll have after a volunteer event, after just doing a random act of kindness, helping someone carry something to their car, holding a door for someone a little bit longer, just telling someone what you see in them. even if it’s unsolicited, giving that positive feedback, even giving, giving words can help that glow diminish at a much slower rate. So if you’re, if you’re experiencing a bad day anxiety you know some symptoms of even depression like looking through what you can do throughout your day to just give back something to just do something that is Not looking for anything in return, but it will help make someone else’s life easier. It will help someone feel better. It will help someone be in a better place. And through that, you will be in a better place for longer. So it’s, you know, specific to the brain. There’s, they found that these, the charity and another study that’s increased activity in the portion of the brain called the anterior prefrontal cortex. So this, just to speak that down, it’s kind of your evolved part of your brain, the brain that sets us apart from primates, the brain that’s kind of developed latest in evolution. And you’re like moving up to the cortex and the front part of the brain. It’s like the executive decision maker. And also it’s the part of the brain that, you know, that we talk about like planning, evaluating social cognition, that social awareness piece that we’ve spoken about on the podcast. and the pleasure centers. So that encourage us to seek out these like more pleasurable activities and uplifting activities and behaviors. So it’s this part of the brain that’s more like associated with these higher order social and uplifting activities. So they see that that lights up during charitable activities as well. So that’s kind of the neuroscience part of it. But really the tangible thing is that that glow lasts longer. And that glow can be sustained throughout your life if you’re in a chronic state of giving.

Tony: You know, as you were saying that, it made me think about you know, why people don’t give, it made me think about the opposite. And what I’ve learned is that a lot of people don’t give or won’t give because they feel like they aren’t in position to give. You may feel like you don’t have the time to give. You may feel like you don’t have the resources. Maybe it’s money, maybe it’s financial. Maybe you feel like you need more than you are actually able to give. And similar to what you were just talking about for the health benefits of giving back, think about your mood when you give back. So let’s say you’re a person that you’ve been maybe a little moody lately, or maybe you’ve been moody for a while. Maybe people are hinting to you that something’s going on, like you’re different, or you have an attitude. I mean, whatever it may be. My point is maybe you need a perspective change. And let me tell you from working in the community, there is no greater perspective change than being around people who actually need help. So if you feel that you are having, or maybe you recognize, and maybe you actually recognize that you have some kind of thing going on, maybe it’s an ego thing, go to a homeless shelter. just go to a homeless shelter and serve food to the homeless population for just a few hours. And I guarantee you, whatever you’ve been feeling or this ego, this high horse, this whatever it may be, you will see it diminish so quickly because There is no population that needs to help more than people who don’t have anything, don’t have a place to rest their head at night, don’t have steady flow of income, don’t have a paycheck, don’t have clothes, don’t even have a place to bathe. On the flip side, I implore you, if you’re somebody who is dealing with, maybe it’s a teenager, or maybe it’s a family member or someone who you’re witnessing that in them, and you wanna figure out what to do, like therapy and counseling is great, but volunteerism works too. Pull them into your local homeless shelter and see what happens. They may not wanna go, because it is scary if you’ve never done anything like that emotionally, I mean, there’s nothing more humbling, period.

John: Yep. And, you know, everyone’s human. You know, everyone wants the same things. I found that, you know, as you immerse yourself in those spaces, it becomes safe. Your mind gets used to it. There’s a lot of protections in place by the organizations that you go to volunteer at. A lot that goes into planning those events and setting things up to get volunteers to come help. And, you know, it’s like really trusting the work of those organizations to get you set up in a place for success. And, you know, that’s if you want to do more of a structured approach to giving back and You know, you can do it just randomly, randomly on the street to randomly with your friends, family, coworkers, and it doesn’t have to be structured. And I mean, with the way that it reduces stress with the way that it just. contributes to the human condition. I feel that, and I’ve said this for a long time, even when we were doing millennial community stuff, Tony, it’s, you know, I was, I was really on a mission then it felt like to bring in a responsibility for service in the world and I genuinely feel that, you know, as human beings, we have a responsibility to uplift one another, that we have a responsibility to give back, to contribute to our communities. And I think a lot of that has been lost over the years. Like I interviewed my grandfather back, I don’t know, 2015 or 16 or something like that. And I was asking him about as we went through the different decades, you know, I brought up highlights from each decade throughout his life. And then we got to the point of, you know, what do you miss from back then? What do you feel like that our generations today are missing that you had in the 40s, 50s, 60s? And he immediately said this sense of community. He said, you know, when I was a kid, you know, just as simple as you’re walking down the street, everyone, everyone knew who’s whose kid you were, everyone knew who you were. And even if they didn’t, and it started raining or something, they wouldn’t just bring you into the porch to You know, to dry off, they’d bring you onto the porch and bring you in for dinner too. And then, you know, then take you home and send you on your way. And that, that was just like the normal course of business and the way things were. And, you know, when I’m looking at him and. He’s describing this situation like it was just that was just the way things were You just you just did that for people in your community. Mm-hmm if they’re walking on your street, then they’re likely a part of your community and it was this sense of being held by something bigger than just your nuclear family and you know, it was just a whole different energy. And that’s like, that’s the part that, you know, I would love to contribute to and start to bring back more of a sense of that. And, you know, that comes outside of structured volunteering. And I think it can also come from bringing people with you to structurally volunteer as well. you know, when you’re thinking about the stress reduction properties and this afterglow effect of giving back and being a part of your community, what better to do with your family? You know, what better to do in like a, in a relationship where there’s some stress, there’s some tension going on, you know, take your significant other and go give back, you know, do something other than, you know, talk about a date night. I have a, have a volunteer day. Yeah. Uplift your relationship there. Maybe that’s why you and Chris Laurel are flying so high.

Tony: Man, that’s funny and true. It’s possible because we definitely dig ourselves in the projects and try to figure out how to do something good together. It’s a good point. Yeah, I love that idea. A volunteer date day, a date night and volunteering. People do not talk about that. That’s not even like an option. If you Google or type in top 10 date ideas, volunteering probably doesn’t come up. It should though. Then you really get to see someone in a different image, in a real element, like a family dynamic almost. Because really you think about it, a relationship is designed to hopefully one day create something fruitful where you will have to involve other people. Seeing how another person interacts with a stranger is very telling. Besides a waiter, you know, someone else.

John: Right. And the, you know, thinking about that sense of a sense of community and, and just, I’m just thinking about the energy of a place where it is just second nature. to lift each other up, to give unconditionally, like what kind of environment that would create. And some might say, well, that’s utopian. That’s a utopian view. And, you know, we can’t have everything be positive and everyone give back. And I’m like, I don’t know, man. Is it really that utopian to think that we can set our egos aside for a moment and just offer our time, our resources to help someone out? Hmm. I don’t know. I don’t think it’s that utopian. I think like you said, you know, you were starting with what makes people not volunteer and like thinking I don’t have enough. I don’t have enough resources. I don’t have enough time enough enough. Like it’s so simple. It is. One day. Yeah, it is. One moment. What do you think would be the first step to creating a community like that, Tony?

Tony: Well, you know. Bringing that back, yeah. The first thing I was thinking about when you were talking about the enough factor, it made me think about a book, The Psychology of Money. And in that book, you know, it just talks about how human nature and in our current given society, people are always going to be chasing after a certain level of income. Well, what you have to realize is that you need to decide how much you want. and what is enough, because if you don’t know what enough is, then you will never feel fulfilled, basically, because you will always be chasing after. It gave a great point of view. Even the richest baseball players, who we know get huge contracts, they still could be chasing hedge fund managers or Jeff Bezos. There’s always somebody above somebody else to chase when it comes to the wealth distribution. So you really, if you make a million dollars, you’re gonna wanna make two. If you make two, you’re gonna make four. So basically, you have to decide what is enough. And I say that because when it comes to the enough factor why people don’t volunteer, I think that is parallel because when you think about it, if you say, I don’t have time or I don’t have the right income to actually pause and go volunteer right now, I’m too busy on the grind or I’m too busy chasing money or making money or whatever it may be, because I hear that a lot. Well, what is your enough? So when you can decide that in real life, like, okay, well, I’m actually doing pretty good. In comparison to what i could be doing let me just kind of receive this is. A blessing like receive this amount of money i make is something good for me now i actually am able to recognize that i do have the time to give back and that’s just like a human. like a personal decision that someone has to make, they have to get into their head or get into their reality that they do actually have enough in their personal life to where they can go and give. And then I think that, and that’s the first step to answering your question, I think the second is actually realizing that if you give, you are unlocking the opportunity to receive more. And that’s something that’s more of a spiritual awakening. And when you realize that, you will understand that that is real life, like that is how it goes. When you open up your heart for other people, the universe or God, whatever you decide to say is the reason, you will realize that that is the transfer of more. It’s so much harder to receive more if your heart is blocked. Because in reality, you probably are getting more every day, but when your heart is blocked with feeling that you don’t have enough, or you don’t even have the time to help other people, or give to someone on the street, or pour into the next generation, to children, to kids, then you won’t make room for more. because your perspective is blocked as well. So I think to answer your question, those are two things that I think that people have to individually realize before we can create that utopian society. One, that you have enough, and two, that the gateway to getting more is to give. Wow.

John: I agree. I can’t really think of anything to add to that. That’s, you know, that’s, that’s perfect. I mean, there’s, there really is something about having that belief, right? Integrating that belief into your life. And, you know, I want to just take a moment to even reiterate that is understanding you already have enough and to get more is to give. to give is to receive and the steps to creating this society. Now, what are some of the things that, what are the, some of the ways that you remind yourself of those two things and keep them integrated into your life? Tony is, I feel like if there’s anyone to ask that question to in the world, it’s, it’s you.

Tony: I mean, it’s kind of just a lifestyle now. I don’t go physically volunteer and give as much as I used to. I do plan on doing it again soon. I’m kind of tied up with a few different things in terms of school, as well as, and that’s on weekends. And then also, you know, have Logan, who is under two, so you can imagine my… Am I getting used to that lifestyle? It definitely has been an adjustment in a great way. He’s growing fast, so I don’t wanna miss anything. So as much as I can help it, I’m trying to be present with him. But I think there are other ways that you can give and other ways to keep that at the forefront of your mind. And I think number one for me and what I would share for others is to recognize the human experience. Recognize that we are on a human experience and and keeping that at the forefront as far as. How you engage with people remember in their words matters so when you talk to someone or someone wants to spend time with you even ask your opinion on something like really try to be present. And give them your best effort to listen, and to listen with open ears and open heart, and not just transactionally listen, even if it is work-related. I’m also huge on putting my phone away when I’m talking to people. So I can really lock in with them and give them what they’re looking for in terms of a conversation and a potential relationship. Being a gentleman, man, holding the door for people. I had an event a couple of days ago where I was hosting a panel and I held the lady’s hand as they walked up the stairs and down the stairs. So it’s like little things like that. just reminding people that gentlemen and chivalry still exists. That is something that you can do that has potential to exponentially impact others because when people see you doing what’s right, holding door for people, helping old ladies cross the street, all those are minor ways to give back. Even if you don’t have the time to go out and and feed a thousand people or a hundred people at a volunteer event or do a book drive or just literally being a good human can do that because the more people that we have that are just treating each other well, the more our society brightens up. like one person at a time. Like for example, I may not have the time right now to volunteer as much as I want to, but raising a good, raising a human being to be a good person is going to turn that light on for him. And then maybe he’ll be someone that has time as he goes into school and he’s in the kids are able to see someone who like has their light bulb fully turned on. And it’s like, man, this kid is very nice and gives back and does the right thing. So, I mean, there’s so many ways to do it, but I just think that for you individually, even if you’re like at work and maybe you do customer service, maybe you talk to people, maybe you’re in retail, you know, that’s why Chick-fil-A is so good. Like where other place tells you my pleasure, right? Like I go there sometimes, cause I know I’m just gonna get good service or I hope that I’m gonna get good service. It’s not always just the chicken, you know? How many chicken places exist, right? So, yeah.

John: Seriously, though. Yeah. We could do a whole episode on chicken places. And bread, the bread aisle.

Tony: I always bring that up. For y’all who don’t know what I’m saying, I just real pivot real quick. If you are ever afraid to start a business or start an idea or even start a podcast, go down the bread aisle and see how much bread and different bread vendors are in the bread aisle, all right? And then realize that it’s room for you.

John: Oh, okay. My friends, we digress. The, no, I love what you said there in just kind of keeping that glow in just the way that you approach your day to day. So the best thing that you can do, my friends, is just be an example. Be an example for the people in your community and the people in your life and step into your giving. Step into your unconditional time, resources, energy, like the things that you can just offer. things that you can bring into your community and to your people and You know through that you’ll change your community. You’ll change all the folks that come into contact with you. So again, thank you guys for listening go get back and through that You give to yourself, physically, emotionally, mentally, and hey, maybe even monetarily. You give to receive. Take care, my friends.