Affirmations:
I help everyone with the best I know.
I respect and have compassion for all in need.
I treat others as I want to be treated.
I choose patient listening and helpful responses.
Help Everyone!
When someone asks for help, offer your help.
When someone needs encouragement, encourage them.
When someone seems lost or afraid, offer direction and assurance.
When someone is angry and unloving, give them love and peace.
We seem to step away from those in need, because they know not what to do.
If it were you who was in trouble, angry or afraid, what would you want?
Give to others what you would want if you were in their situation.
Child or adult, stranger or family, give always the best you have to give.
If you do not have what they seem to need, direct them to the best you know.
If you do not care about what they need, give yourself what you need.
It is true that we cannot give what we do not have or what depletes us.
It is essential that we come from a place of Fullness and Gratitude to truly give.
What we give to our family is a gift to ourselves.
We always have more to give than we know.
People tend to think they need to fix.
Yet, what we really can give is our love and our faith.
Try out letting go of your own negativity, doubt and fear.
Begin by getting your whole self really clear.
Forgive, erase and undo every belief that is untrue.
Release your judgments of right and wrong.
Be willing to have respect and compassion for everyone.
People, young and old are always doing the best they know in that moment.
When adults and children are upset, hurt or angry, they express emotionally.
Each upset is a call for love, peace and compassion.
Be willing to listen patiently.
Be open to understanding compassionately.
Be trusting that everything will work our for the best.
Be helpful in allowing each person to choose their own way.
Life is an amazing circle for clarity and consciousness.
We meet and experience what we also must learn to know.
Our trust in our brothers and ourselves is the beginning of healing.
We grow with each encounter as we learn to respect and trust it all.
There are no “throw away” people or “unimportant" moments.
Each one counts in our learning, healing and growth.
We all benefit when we step into our authentic place of Love.
As we share our compassion, respect and kindness, we are fulfilled and prospered.
Love everyone today and every day.
Betty Lue
Helping, Fixing, Serving
--by Rachel Remen (May 29, 2000)
Service is not the same as helping.
Helping is based on inequality, it's not a relationship between equals. When you help, you use your own strength to help someone with less strength. It's a one up, one down relationship, and people feel this inequality. When we help, we may inadvertently take away more than we give, diminishing the person's sense of self-worth and self-esteem.
Now, when I help I am very aware of my own strength, but we don't serve with our strength, we serve with ourselves. We draw from all our experiences: our wounds serve, our limitations serve, even our darkness serves. The wholeness in us serves the wholeness in the other, and the wholeness in life. Helping incurs debt: when you help someone, they owe you. But service is mutual. When I help I have a feeling of satisfaction, but when I serve I have a feeling of gratitude.
Serving is also different from fixing. We fix broken pipes, we don't fix people. When I set about fixing another person, it's because I see them as broken. Fixing is a form of judgment that separates us from one another; it creates a distance.
So, fundamentally, helping, fixing and serving are ways of seeing life. When you help, you see life as weak; when you fix, you see life as broken; and when you serve, you see life as whole.
When we serve in this way, we understand that this person's suffering is also my suffering, that their joy is also my joy and then the impulse to serve arises naturally - our natural wisdom and compassion presents itself quite simply. A server knows that they're being used and has the willingness to be used in the service of something greater.
We may help or fix many things in our lives, but when we serve, we are always in the service of wholeness.
--Rachel Remen, from Zen Hospice
“Everybody can be great because everybody can serve.”
Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.