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

 To be helpful is truly a gift some people have.  They seem to be there when needed, without fail and ready to help.  Another way to look at helpfulness if to call it by its biblical name – service.  Those who are helpful know how to serve others.  They are Success-Minded People who know that you look to serve others first before you seek your own gain.  Truth is, the more you help others the more you help yourself.  Elbert Hubbard said “Down in their hearts, wise men know this truth: the only way to help yourself is to help others.”

 ZIG’S SECRET

It is the awareness that you must help others that shows us the main enemy of helpfulness and that is selfishness.  Success-Minded People know that you cannot be looking out for yourself and helping others at the same time.  You must be willing to not only be helpful but to seek out ways to serve.  Zig Ziglar is known for a statement that I have made one of the foundational principles of my life.  Zig always says, “I can have any thing in life that I want, as long as I help enough people get what they want.”  Friends, that is profound.  Write it down and read it every day.  It is the one truth you need to know to find success.

FREE SERVICE

Success-Minded People are willing to offer help to others without promise of payment or reward.  Every day they will look for opportunities to help someone who could not pay them back for their service.  This may be as simple as opening a door for someone or picking up something that was dropped and as complex as caring for a sick friend or family member or helping with a major project.  The task is less important as the heart that performs it.  Christian counselor Alan Lay McGinnis said “There is no more noble occupation in the world than to assist another human being – to help someone succeed.”

 SERVICE AS A CAREER

Even if you have the honor of working at a job of service where you help people for a living you can find ways the serve beyond what you are paid for.  Please understand there is no shame in being paid for you help.  Success-Minded People build their careers on service to others.  It is good and right to be paid for your work.  However, we all need to be able to serve and help others just for the joy it brings.  Free service is important to who we are as people.  Marianne Williamson said “Nothing liberates our greatness like the desire to help, the desire to serve.” 

I am paid as a life coach and trainer.  People pay money to have me help they learn to succeed.  I have also made it a practice to have one or two people I mentor on my own.  The Lord points them out to me and I offer them my services for one year free of charge.  I find great joy and satisfaction in this.  In the many years I have been doing this, I have not had one refuse me, I have also not have one who failed to succeed.

© 2011 John Patrick Hickey