Altruism is suboptimal malarkey: helping myself by helping you

Sometimes people wonder why one would help others for free, aside from supposed altruistic benefits. I personally believe altruism is a myth. There’s no way to help others without helping yourself. Maybe you consider the help to yourself as a deficit to the value you provide to another person, but I think that’s also just puritanical hogwash.

There’s no way to qualify how much you help yourself by helping others. And you shouldn’t downplay what you get out of the process. In fact, you should seek to maximize what you get out of it. Why? Because why waste the opportunity and what not a better way to incentivize yourself to help others in the future. What kind of world could we create if we all capitalize on the benefits of helping others to also help ourselves?

One great example of how I improve by helping others: when I review and provide feedback to others, I marinate in how I can share that advice here on this blog. In other words, helping others gives me ideas to write about and share with you. What a beautiful thing. Makes me want to help others more, so I have more to share with you.

What opportunities do you have to help others? How can you maximize helping yourself in the process? How can you re-invest what you gain to help others in the future and create a spiral of ever greater levels of prosperity?