What’s The Most Potent Form of Happiness?
A runner’s high without the run.
There is a strange phenomenon linked to helping others that may be the key to universal happiness.
It’s what I like to call “sacrificial euphoria.”
I’m not talking about giving money to your favorite charity, volunteering at a soup kitchen, or picking up garbage in your neighborhood. While those are all commendable ways to serve your community, there’s a whole different realm of giving that’s rarely talked about.
I’m talking about sacrificing basic human needs — food, comfort level, sleep — to help others who cannot do basic things for themselves.
When you give your time and energy to this extreme, the payoff is so strong, it’s as if nothing else matters. Not money, not appearance, not even your “journey of personal growth” that self-help writers like to endorse.
Personal growth is an afterthought when people participate in this level of giving.
When I was a nurse, I was paid to perform a service, so I’ve experienced only a lower level version of this kind of altruism. It was extremely powerful all the same.
There’s a reason so many people work in service-based roles despite the low pay and extreme working conditions.
That reason is sacrificial euphoria.
It’s why so many firemen disregard the praise lavished upon them by the press when they save babies from burning buildings. They’re riding their own wave of personal euphoria. This reward overrides everything else.
Humans have an incredible ability to adapt and adjust their expectations. We have the ability to come up with powerful coping mechanisms. We can continue to give, give, give in this fashion as long as we are given adequate rest and recovery.
Nurses like to crack jokes about ignoring their basic needs. When you have 3–5 very sick patients and staff members depending on you, things like sleep, water, and food tend to go on the backburner.
Unfortunately, it’s also why so many of us end up with urinary tract infections, back injuries, and chronic pain issues.
I wouldn’t be where I am today had I not overdosed on sacrificial euphoria.
I worked through extreme leg varicosities while pregnant, causing permanent, mostly irreversible damage that prevents me from working on a hospital floor ever again.
At the end of the day, people in service roles like feeling needed. We have the urge to fix things. It’s why we pursued those jobs in the first place.
We had a taste of the euphoria, and we wanted more.
Just think about all the good we could do as a whole if everyone wanted to achieve sacrificial euphoria.
It would be a whole different path of self-discovery. In a way, it would be selfishly sacrificial.
If we were giving as much as we were taking, we would be sacrificing a lot of self-defeating habits and negative emotions that prevent us from becoming better people.
Want an easy way to achieve this level of sacrifice?
Become a parent.
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