One question I hear a lot of people asking
regularly (and one I used to frequently ask myself) is how to make a new year
different from previous ones. Well,
after a long career spent studying and teaching the foundations of happiness
and success, one of the best ways I’ve found to start making positive changes right
away is to start giving, whether it’s time, money, or simply of yourself. Giving is a sure-fire way to guarantee that
things will begin to look very different in your life… I can’t tell you exactly
how, but the universe has a way of noticing and responding to generosity!
Here are two amazing examples of young people
who were big inspirations to me coming into 2015…
Rahat, a young magician best known for his
hidden-camera prank videos, did something a bit different last Spring: he played a joke with a happy ending. He went to a local convenience store and
asked the cashier to play along with what he was about to do, then handed the
cashier a thousand dollars. Afterwards,
he went out into the neighborhood looking for Eric, a homeless individual in
the area who was always friendly and respectful despite his difficult circumstances.
Rahat told Eric that he wanted to help him,
but that he didn’t have any money to offer.
He did, however, have a winning lottery ticket he wanted to give
Eric. He said he didn’t know how much
the prize was, but that he’d go with Eric to cash it in and see.
The two men walked to the convenience store
and presented the ticket. Eric was in
utter disbelief when the cashier counted out ten hundred dollar bills for a
total of a thousand dollars. At first,
he simply didn’t believe it, then tried to share the money with Rahat. Rahat politely declined, and Eric, in tears,
said he had been on the streets a long time, and that no one had ever done
anything like that for him.
News of Rahat’s generous act and Eric’s
attempt to share the money soon spread across the Internet, and moved thousands
of strangers to help Eric even more.
Within weeks, nearly $60,000 had been raised in a fund Rahat set up to
collect donations to help secure Eric a new home. Quick to give back, Eric began sharing the
accumulated donations with others still living on the streets.
A similar story unfolded toward the end of
the year, when a young art student named Dominique was stranded one night in
the British city of Preston after losing her bank card. As she tried to figure out what to do, a
homeless man known in the neighborhood as Robbie offered her his last three
British pounds for a taxi to get her home safely.
Dominique was so touched by the kind gesture that
she set out to learn more about him. The
more she asked, the more positive things she heard, about Robbie returning
wallets untouched to pedestrians and offering his scarf to keep people warm. She found out that he had been homeless for
seven months through no fault of his own, but couldn’t get work due to having
no address.
That’s when she decided to change Robbie’s
life. She set up a crowdfunding campaign
asking for donations of only £3 — the same amount Robbie had offered her — with
the goal of collecting 30,000 pounds to get him off the streets and into his
own place. She even spent a night on the
street to raise awareness for the campaign.
Within two weeks, Dominique had raised 32,245 British pounds for Robbie
(over $50,000 in U.S. dollars) from hundreds of caring strangers, more than
enough to help him get back on his feet.
On the surface, what these stories have in common
is how they utilized online donation platforms to help homeless individuals change
their circumstances. But those are just
superficial similarities. The most important
commonalities were the selfless giving of both Rahat and Dominique, and how their
actions sparked the generosity of countless others. When you’re thinking about what you can do to
make 2015 your best year yet, keep these stories in mind, and realize how just
beginning the process of giving can have a tremendous impact on lives all
around you, as well as increasing
your own happiness in the process!
Until next week...
Live Your Dreams!
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