Today I want to talk about helping people. What does that have to do with health and fitness? Think about the last time you really helped someone? How did it make you feel? I bet you felt awesome. It is a great way to reduce stress, improve your mental outlook on life, and when you feel good you feel like you can take on the world. It's what gets me out of bed in the morning every day fired up and in a great mood.
So I thought I would pass on a little story I heard from Zig Ziglar about how a little help can make a huge change. Little Annie was locked in a dungeon in a mental institution in Boston. She was labeled "hopelessly insane" and the doctors thought a dungeon was the only place for her. She was destined to live in a cage with hardly any light and no hope.
Annie was like an animal who would either attack or completely ignore anyone that came to see her. Despite that, an elderly nurse decided she would try to show the girl love and compassion and began simply eating her lunch outside of Annie's cage. Annie showed no indication she recognized the company.
One day the nurse brought some brownies and left them outside the girl's cage, when she came back the next day they were gone. The nurse decided to bring brownies every Thursday from then on. A strange thing began to happen. Annie's doctors started to notice her starting to change. She was eventually brought upstairs with the patients who doctors thought could be helped. She kept getting better and better, until one day the "hopeless" case was told she was free to leave the mental institution.
Great story huh? Well it doesn't end there. Annie decided since that nurse had shown such compassion and love to her she wanted to stay there and help someone in the same way.
Many years after that decision the Queen of England asked Helen Keller "How do you account for your remarkable accomplishment in life?" "How do you explain the fact that even though you were both blind and deaf, you were able to accomplish so much?" Helen Keller replied, "If it had not been for Anne Sullivan (Little Annie), the name of Helen Keller would have remained unknown."
Just a little bit of help or kindness can make a huge difference in someone else's life. And yours.