Motivation Monday: Service

How did you do on your Gratitude last week?  Did it help.  It was ironic that after I posted the post about Gratitude that I went to a Deepak Chopra lecture and this was one of the slides:

Yes, Gratitude can change your brain but you have to have it!  So if you haven’t yet, remember to go on your Gratitude walk and what better day than today to do it!

Today’s message is about SERVICE.  As we celebrate Memorial Day and remember all of the people who died SERVING their country, let us think about what SERVICE means.

Noun:  an act of helpful activity

Verb:  of service; useful

Who can you be of service to?  Often times when we feel abundance, it is nice to help others that do not have as much.  Or maybe you are feeling depressed and helping others will make you feel better because you are making their life richer.  When I feel my best is when I am helping others.  How about you?  A few ideas on how you can be of SERVICE to others:

Volunteer to help animals:

• Animal Shelter or Humane Society
• Rescue Group, there are a lot of them!
• Foster a dog
• Help your neighbor with their dogs
• At a rescue organization:  Lions, Tigers & Bears, The Wolf Center, the Zoo, etc.
• A fund raising organization:  Morris Animal Foundation, Face Foundation, etc.
• Be a puppy raiser for Canine Companions for Independence!

Volunteer to help people:

• Get your dog certified to be a therapy dog with Love on a Leash
• Visit Elder Care facilities
• Read to the kids at the library
• Help a friend who has an aging parent or an ill spouse
• Help a friend with a disabled child
• Visit a neighbor that needs company
• Take an older person to run errands
• Cut your neighbors lawn

There are so many ways that you can help others.  What is your profession?  Maybe you can use it to help others that can’t afford your services.  Maybe you can do a fund raiser or offer your services pro bono to someone.  At Leash Your Fitness, we have done many fundraisers.  We even set the World Record for the most dogs in a Dog Yoga  class to benefit the Humane Society so GET CREATIVE!!

I guarantee that you will feel better after helping others.  You will forget about what is troubling you and feel good about what you just did to help someone else.  My favorite volunteer “job” was helping Eddie.  We used to go on “field trips” to the beach, the pool and to the record shop.  He was one of a kind and I loved helping him and helping his wife feel better about what he was doing during the day so she didn’t have to worry.  Eddie had early onset dementia but he was a blast to hang out with and so was his dog, Belle.

So your homework for today is to find some way that you can be of SERVICE to someone else.  It can be something as small as pulling in their trash cans from the curb or something bigger like becoming a puppy raiser!  Whatever you choose to do, it will be the RIGHT THING and it will put a smile on your face!