xuenay | Help and you’ll be helped is the law

I like reading self-help books of the “how to become rich and famous and successful at everything you want to do” genre. They don’t necessarily always provide much in the way of actually useful tips, but they do provide nice motivational boosts as well as helping foster a growth mindset.

Recently, I’ve been glad to find that there seems to be a common theme in the advice given by many such books. This theme can found in different forms in books like Ikigai by Sebastian Marshall, Never Eat Alone by Keith Ferrazzi, and Your First 1000 Copies by Tim Grahl. Probably many others too, but these are the ones that I’ve happened to come across.

The specifics vary, but the general theme can be summed up as “help and you’ll be helped”. Your First 1000 Copies tells aspiring authors to provide regular updates of free but valuable content to anyone who wants it, as well as to error on the side of giving too much content away. Never Eat Alone says that the key to success in generosity, and that real networking is about finding ways to make other people more successful. Ikigai says that one of the reasons why success is heritable is that high born people learn that they can afford to make people favors without an expectation of getting paid back right away, which benefits them in the long run.

All of them say to be generous about helping people, give as many people as much value as you can, and to not keep score or think about who owes you what. They say that this is something that will make you successful, for there will be enough people who’ll return the favor to you, one day.

Maybe these are just feel-good stories. But the advice rings true to my ear and fits my experience, and the same advice is coming from a bunch of different authors. This makes me happy, to know that to some extent at least, those who help others to have better lives are those who are also more likely to succeed.

Although the “help and you will be helped” advice has doubtless been valid even before, I feel that its even more true in the Internet Age. Someone can write an article that shares a piece of good advice and be read by millions of people. Finding people who you might be useful to, or reaching out to ask for help from someone, is now possible even if the people in question are separated by thousands of kilometers.

There has been a lot of talk about the Internet having dynamics that contribute to antisocial behavior and outright harassment campaigns. This is true, and worrying. But it is also good to see that the Internet also reinforces dynamics that are a power for good, and help makes us all better off.

Let’s make the world a better place, both to ourselves and to others.

Originally published at Kaj Sotala. You can comment here or there.