The Giving Dividend's Surprising Cognitive Health Benefit

TL;DR The health benefits of personal generosity, altruism, and volunteering our time for the benefit of others are no myth. They’re the science of life as a network of relationships that support us best when we support others more.

Saturday, when I would normally spend the day writing to and for you, I was at the racetrack. Therefore today’s missive comes later than usual.

As readers who have been subscribed to BrainHealth.news and read my missives will know, I’ve been involved in amateur motorsports for over a decade now.

For most of that time I’ve enjoyed the generosity of volunteers, without whom our sport of passion would not be possible. And who doesn’t enjoy receiving what they love most?

But yesterday, I volunteered to make others' race day and lifelong core memories possible. A twelve hour endurance race at Thunderhill Raceway in Willows, CA. I played the pit marshal role for the first time. To keep teams safe and the competition fair.

There are seasons for reasons. Life is cycles. Cycles are circles. Wheels leaving their sine wave across time. Up comes down. Down goes back up. Change: A universal constant.

In Buddhist circles, embracing change instead of resisting it is a North Star principle, guiding our path to personal peace. An inner tranquility only achievable by accepting nature’s fundamental nature, instead of resisting it, and suffering from our own resistance and the hubris of assuming reality should organize itself around our self-centric self image.

Or, if you subscribe to the way of Christ, the same principal and practice is a virtue. Surrendering to unfathomable grace and emulating the example of Christ on the cross in daily life, by subordinating our individual will, our ego, our self-centric self image, to the image of Christ’s ultimate (and ultimately symbolic) sacrifice. To the believer, surrendering our personal desires to a collective one. Liberation of human kind from the cycle of suffering perpetuated by retribution for personal injury, real or perceived. Gaining a virtue through ego death.

In both spiritual (psychological) traditions and others like them, the practice is one of surrender. But behind such traditional (pre-scientific) beliefs and practices is a counterintuitive relationship between seemingly opposite behaviors and attitudes: The paradox of self-actualization through self-sacrifice.

Such sage traditional mythologies and the ecstatic experience of spiritual (psychological) liberation lent to those of us who partake in them, are not merely myths.

A 2013 study published in BMC Public Health, Is Volunteering A Public Health Intervention? found reduced depressive symptoms and increased sense of personal wellbeing, plus about 22% lower mortality risk, in observational cohorts¹

Investing our “social capital” where reciprocity and appreciation are expressed in turn also consistently predicted higher quality of life reporting among people who volunteer out of genuine care for others.

This aligns with many Blue Zone longevity studies in which social connection and community integration account for part of the reduced mortality rate benefit.

So, beautiful self-aware brain, if you want to get the most out of life, give the most you can to others alive with you. If you want to truly realize your higher or more absolute self, in activities and serve others.

Help me help you with advanced practical application and proven protocols available exclusively in the Mental Fitness Club, by upgrading now.

Until next time, eat fresh foods and stay active!
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