Episode 1069: Why Is Giving Good for You

[00:00:00] Scott Maderer: Thanks for joining me on episode 1069 of the inspired stewardship podcast. Hey,

[00:00:07] Matt Ham: I'm Matt Ham, author of redefined rich, and I challenge you to live richly by listening to the inspired stewardship podcast with my friend Scott made.

[00:00:16] Scott Maderer: the ripples that spread out into the world. That's why I asked that question. When I'm interviewing people about what do you hope your impact has been? Because the ripples that we put out into the world are so incredibly massive, and yet we underestimate what they are, and that is the real benefits of giving.

[00:00:38] Welcome and thank you for joining us on the inspired stewardship podcast. If you truly desire to become the person who God wants you to be, then you must learn to use your time, your talent and your treasures for your true calling and the inspired stewardship podcast. You will learn to invest in yourself, invest in others and develop [00:01:00] your influence so that you can impact the world.

[00:01:04] in today's episode about developing your influence through stewarding your talent. I talk with you about why giving is beneficial to your physical health. I also share why giving is beneficial to your psychological. And I talk about why you should do it, even if it had no benefit like that at all.

[00:01:23] You've heard me talk about developing your talent and one of the best ways to do that is through books. But if you're like most people today, it's hard to find the time to read. And that's why today's podcast is brought to you by audible. Go to inspired stewardship.com/audible to sign. And you can get a 30 day free trial.

[00:01:45] There's over 180,000 titles to choose from, and you can pick one and listen your way to developing your talents via audible. That's inspired stewardship.com/audible. To get your [00:02:00] free trial and listen to great books the same way you're listening to this podcast. Let's talk about giving. Let's talk a little bit about the psychology and the benefits, both physically and mentally of giving as well.

[00:02:16] The truth is that there's been tons of studies and research done on why we give, and then if we do what happens to us in response, what is our mental, physical, emotional response to. And the truth is that they found things like there are health benefits, physical health benefits, people who volunteer their time or give money to charity and do it in a conscious way with a lot of intentionality end up with lower bred blood pressure.

[00:02:49] They test as having lower incidences of depression. They have more self-esteem they have lower stress levels. They actually end up [00:03:00] living long. And then on studies that show happiness and satisfaction, they score higher on those studies as well. In fact, this is about conscious giving. This is about intentional giving.

[00:03:16] It turns out that giving and just like being able to give actually has some of these benefits, but when you're doing it in alignment with your priorities and your values and you're giving. Of your time and have your money to organizations that align with what you feel is important in the world. Those benefits actually in crease, we all know that warm glow that we get, whatever we give that, that feeling of pleasure and enjoyment and excitement.

[00:03:47] When you give a gift to someone else that they value. We get a very similar sort of feeling from volunteering and giving to charity. It turns out that these gift giving [00:04:00] behaviors are hardwired into us. For some reason where we get dopamine and serotonin and oxytocin and other good chemicals released into our body and into our brain.

[00:04:11] The funny thing is we don't really know why this happens and works this way. We don't really have ways to explain it. You can find study after study of people who give in ways that seem nonsensical. They seem to not make any sense at all. People running into fires to save a rabbit or a dog people running into a fire to save a complete stranger.

[00:04:39] We have people that give sacrificially to people that they never even meet and don't even know. And so we've been researching, why does this happen? So usually that research, that means they look at things like money as an example. And there's one example experiment where they call it the [00:05:00] dictator game, where one person, the dictator is getting.

[00:05:05] And a certain amount of money and said, you can split it up any way you want to, with this anonymous person, there's another person in the other room. You can give them zero, you can give them all of it. What would you like to do? And the truth is what happens in most cases is the dictator will actually give some of that money.

[00:05:25] Sometimes a significant amount of that money to this total stranger who they'll never meet. They used to explain this as the idea that we have a feeling that inequity imbalance is something that we're against. There's a social preference to bringing about balance, but as they've looked at it deeper, there, there is a motivation around that, but it's not because of economic.

[00:05:51] Consequences. It's not because of monetary consequences. It seems that they're actually motivated by some sort [00:06:00] of feeling of rightness that this is the morally right thing to do. And there's further studies that have been done that says whatever they are, somebody who has a viewpoint of charity and giving somebody who's been giving already somebody who maybe has that outlook and make sure that giving us something they always do actually is more likely to give in that sort of dictator situation.

[00:06:30] It correlates strongly with how we feel about. This is one of the reasons that building the habit of volunteering and giving is so important is because it develops those quote mental muscles of making us behave in ways that help those around us. It does actually lead to a sort of feeling of giving is the right [00:07:00] thing to do.

[00:07:00] It reinforces itself. That's why even if giving had no health benefits, even if there was no mental or physical benefits to yourself, even if you got absolutely nothing from giving, it would still be beneficial because it builds the siren of society that actually begins to care about each other. It helps all of us.

[00:07:28] When all of us begin to look for ways to give. And yet we often don't think of it that way. We don't think of the larger implications on the world as a whole. Because remember the people that you help today are going to be helping someone else tomorrow, the ripples that spread out into the world. That's why I asked that question when I'm interviewing people about what do you hope your impact has been?

[00:07:55] Because the ripples that we put out into the world are so incredibly [00:08:00] massive, and yet we underestimate what they are. And that is the real benefit of. Thanks for listening.

[00:08:10] Thanks so much for listening to the inspired stewardship podcast as a subscriber and listener, we challenge you to not just sit back and passively listen, but act on what you've heard and find a way to live your. If you liked this episode on the stewardship of talent, you can go over to inspired stewardship.com/talent and sign up for our five week series on the stewardship of talent.

[00:08:41] Or if you're in the U S you can text 4, 4, 2, 2, 2 talent tips. That's talent tips to 4 4, 2, 2, 2, and get those tips until next time. Invest your time. Your talent and your treasures develop your [00:09:00] influence and impact the world.