One of the most important things anyone can learn is to delay gratification. To delay gratification is to schedule the pain and pleasure of life in such a way that you experience the difficult challenges first, before you experience the pleasurable.
Whole books have been written about what happens when we don’t learn how to delay gratification, and the trouble it causes us.
Serving others builds character by exposing us to delayed gratification, putting others needs before ours, and helping us to learn to care not just for our own needs, but of those around us. Mature people care for the needs of others, immature people do not. In fact, that is one of the ways we know a human being has reached a more mature place in life, regardless of their age. When we see someone caring for things outside of their own needs – by listening, serving, helping, and taking responsibility because it might affect others – we say they are “mature”.
That’s why you feel so much better about the world, and yourself, when you volunteer and serve others that have no way of paying you back.
What happens to you when you serve? Do you feel good about what you’re doing? What emotions do you feel? What keeps us from serving others more?