"Have you done one good deed today?"

(Courtesy of www.garybeene.com)

Maybe you have thought of making the world a better place. When you are established and having the luxury of time and money, you figure, you want to help the unfortunate. But when would that happen? In 20, 30 years? What if you were too consumed by the responsibilities in life to do anything?

I say to you, "Just start doing something small today, everyday." As the old Chinese saying goes, "Eliminate all bad deeds, cultivate all good deeds; While a three-year-old child may understand this, an eighty-year-old senior may not even be able to observe this." Just ask yourself this simple question, "Have I done one good deed today?" The answer is often NO. People, including myself, have millions excuses to do nothing good and let the day goes by without meaning.

You'd counter, "One small good deed would not have enough effect to make a dramatic change in the society." True. But consider this: If you can do a small good deed (combining with others) and perhaps make someone life's better NOW, then that person might be able to help others to better their life, so on and so forth. It's like the golden principle in saving and investing: the snowball effect of compound interest. Look at the chart above: By doing a meaningful good deed (like a principal saving/investment), you earn an interest everyday (like having a positive impact on someone's life). This interest is compounded over time along with your principal saving/investment (like the person you've helped go on to help others, so on and so forth). By the end of the day, your one simple deed could have generated a significant change in the society, even you'd do nothing after that. The key here is TIME. If you wait until you have time and money to make the move, you would actually make an smaller impact on the issues you care than you do it now.

You'd repeat to me, "I really don't have the time and money!" But who said that you need time and money to do good deeds? And I don't mean going out and volunteering for some non-profit organizations (although this is a very good deed to do). If you have the time to finish reading this post, you have time. And a lot of things you can do for FREE without leaving where you are (your comfortable chair and computer). Everyday I will post something that will direct you to some philanthropic sites that allow you to contribute something without any cost to you. For examples, many sites have the click-to-donate campaign where you can click on buttons to generate donation to some causes. These sites are able to do so because of your visit to their sites (i.e., page views) that helps to attract advertising sponsors to their sites. In turn, these sites use the advertising revenues to donate to the philanthropic organizations or directly to the people in need. So it's a win-win situation.

Are you ready for the challenge? Subscribe to this blog and get your daily RSS/email alert.