How much should you give? Remember The 100 Hour Rule

Give — But *Not* Until It Hurts. 

Giving makes us happier than receiving. In fact, it can create a feedback loop of happiness in your life.

Helping others reach their goals brings joy. Doing nice things for others today can literally make you happier for the rest of the week.

However, being a martyr stresses you out and is bad for your health.

Via Give and Take: A Revolutionary Approach to Success:

Research shows that on the job, people who engage in selfless giving end up feeling overloaded and stressed, as well as experiencing conflict between work and family.This is even true in marriages: in one study of married couples, people who failed to maintain an equilibrium between their own needs and their partner’s needs became more depressed over the next six months.

What to do? Do all your giving one day a week.

Via Give and Take: A Revolutionary Approach to Success:

The chunkers achieved gains in happiness; the sprinklers didn’t. Happiness increased when people performed all five giving acts in a single day, rather than doing one a day. Lyubomirsky and colleagues speculate that “spreading them over the course of a week might have diminished salience and power or made them less distinguishable from participants habitual kind of behavior.”

How much should you give? Remember The 100 Hour Rule. One hundred hours a year — in other words, 2 hours per week.

Via Give and Take: A Revolutionary Approach to Success:

One hundred seems to be a magical number when it comes to giving. In a study of more than two thousand Australian adults in their mid-sixties, those who volunteered between one hundred and eight hundred hours per year were happier and more satisfied with their lives than those who volunteered fewer than one hundred or more than eight hundred hours annually. In another study, American adults who volunteered at least one hundred hours in 1998 were more likely to be alive in 2000. There were no benefits of volunteering more than one hundred hours. This is the 100-hour rule of volunteering. It appears to be the range where giving is maximally energizing and minimally draining.

A hundred hours a year breaks down to just two hours a week.Research shows that if people start volunteering two hours a week, their happiness, satisfaction and self-esteem go up a year later.

(More on the power of giving here.)

Want to be a giver and be happier? Share this post with a friend and spread some happiness.

From: Barking up the Wrong Tree

The 100 Hour Rule: you can support charity PTSD Resolution's programme for Forces' Veterans suffering from military PTSD - and their families. 
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