I have been wanting to create an episode on ‘Volunteering and helping others’, for quite some time, but I couldn’t find the right guest, and then, I came across HumanKind.

It’s an incredible book that’s filled with short stories of how kind and generous people can be, and how each act of kindness, big or small, has the potential to change thousands of lives. I chose the author of this book, Brad Aronson to be a guest for this incredibly important episode, and I was thrilled when he agreed to be a part of the conversation.

Brad is a self-made man who became an entrepreneur in high school and when he was 24, he started his first company, i-Frontier. It went on to become the 33rd largest agency in the U.S.A, but despite his entrepreneurial success, Brad identifies himself as a husband, dad, mentor and then, a volunteer and now, of course, he’s this amazing writer who created this beautiful book, HumanKind. This book makes for such a happy read which is amazing considering Brad wrote it while his wife was receiving treatment for Leukemia. He was inspired by the generosity and kindness of people who tried to support him and his family during their fight against Mia’s (Brad’s wife) illness. The proceeds from the book go to Big Brothers Big Sisters organisation. Brad donates a lot of his time and resources to help people build a successful life. He volunteers his time on nonprofit boards and teaches entrepreneurship at Hopeworks, a local nonprofit dedicated to teaching students in recovering communities. In this episode, we talk about how we can all get involved in volunteer work, do more for our communities, spread joy and kindness without internalising the loss and trauma we see around us. We also discussed why we need to get involved in volunteer work, how it changes our life, the positive impact each act of kindness has not just on the world, but also on our own emotional and mental setup.

Doing volunteer work helped me grow in so many ways; It made me more appreciative of my life and loved ones. It gave me a sense of purpose at a time when I needed it most. Volunteer work can be especially helpful to those of us who lack a sense of purpose in our life, helping others, getting involved in situations that might make us uncomfortable but ultimately count towards something bigger, can make a huge difference to your life. We all have days when we feel like we’re not good enough and we struggle with our failures, on those days, instead of drowning yourself in Netflix or drinking yourself silly, make a difference to someone else’s life and maybe you won’t feel so ineffectual anymore.

Knowing that someone is doing a little bit better because you made them feel valued, heard, or supported, it’s the most effective way to bounce back from failures and rejections. When you start doing these activities regularly, you’ll find yourself changing in the most wonderful ways.