The Hidden Gifts of Helping: How the Power of Giving, Compassion, and Hope Can Get Us Through Hard Times [Hardcover]

Stephen G. Post (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 22, 2011

The world's religions affirm it to be so and recent research across a number of disciplines tell us that "Helping others not only benefits those we assist but is good for us as well." The recent and astonishingly generous outpouring of help and donations in response to the earthquake in Haiti is a clear demonstration of this phenomenon, but what if we could be convinced to make helping others a way of life, even when times are hard?

• Post is author of the widely praised Why Good Things Happen to Good People
• Filled with inspirational anecdotes about the transformative power of doing good
• The author is a leader in the study of altruism, compassion, and love as well as the President of the Institute for Research on Unlimited Love
• Beautiful packaging, ideal for gift giving

The Hidden Gifts of Helping Others will leave you with the unshakable feeling that the world is an essentially good place.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Post (When Good Things Happen to Good People), president of the Institute for Research on Unlimited Love, pens a hopeful text for hopeless times. His own job loss forced him and his family to relocate in 2008, and he writes poignantly of what he's personally lived through. No stranger to the emotional and spiritual difficulties that accompany any major life change, the author shares intimately how he put into practice the biblical principle of "giving unto others" as he worked through his own grief, sorrow, and loss during the transition that uprooted his family. The lessons Post learned make up this practical resource that urges purposeful giving, even while feeling the stings of disappointment and hardship. Post's work is more than a feel-good read. It's today's handbook for survival. (Mar.)
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Review

"Post (When Good Things Happen to Good People), president of the Institute for Research on Unlimited Love, pens a hopeful text for hopeless times. His own job loss forced him and his family to relocate in 2008, and he writes poignantly of what he's personally lived through. No stranger to the emotional and spiritual difficulties that accompany any major life change, the author shares intimately how he put into practice the biblical principle of "giving unto others" as he worked through his own grief, sorrow, and loss during the transition that uprooted his family. The lessons Post learned make up this practical resource that urges purposeful giving, even while feeling the stings of disappointment and hardship. Post's work is more than a feel-good read. It's today's handbook for survival." (Publishers Weekly, January 10, 2011

“This inspirational, motivational, and feel good book will leave you bursting with an overflowing bucket list of things you will want to do.”
Read more: http://kennedybookreviews.blogspot.com/2011/04/hidden-gifts-of-helping-how-power-of.html#ixzz1KCDvNGU0
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Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Jossey-Bass; 1 edition (February 22, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0470887818
• ISBN-13: 978-0470887813
• Product Dimensions: 5.6 x 0.8 x 7.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (25 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #692,373 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A pioneering book by a pioneer of love February 25, 2011

By Jeffrey Wattles

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

In The Hidden Gifts of Helping, Stephen Post is pioneering a new kind of book. It is dramatically compelling with its unifying thread: a revealing personal narrative of his surprisingly difficult move with his family from Cleveland to Long Island. It is frequently inspiring with stories and quotations sprinkled in every chapter. It is scientifically informative with brief and easy-to understand summaries of up-to-date research on love, healing, compassion, caring, and hope. And there are footnotes for those of us who wish to pursue the sources further.
It is hard to imagine a more effective, popular presentation of a message that should be more familiar: Helping others is good medicine for our own suffering. Post is a medical ethicist with a specialty on care for Alzheimer's patients, and his spirituality is both traditional and creative. He asks, "Why not start referring to God as Unlimited Love, being explicit about the divine nature? This would preclude people from ever thinking of God as Unlimited Hatred or Unlimited Anger."
Post writes of our society being caught up with television, computers, e-mail, text messages, and social media. "These virtual connections do not sustain themselves in the absence of real interactions." Having seen Stephen Post interact with audiences in the classroom, in church, and in an auditorium, I have seen in action his ability to minister with his very large supply of amazingly helpful knowledge. It is something he can call on in detail, without notes, whenever a human need expresses itself. This man is a treasure in our world, and this book offers the reader a chance for a virtual meeting that is remarkably faithful to the experience of the man himself.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Helps others benefits many May 27, 2011

By Connie Brown

Format:Hardcover

In his book, The Hidden Gifts of Helping: How the Power of Giving, Compassion and Hope Can Get Us Through Hard Times, Stephen G. Post weaves personal experiences with scientific research, philosophy and spiritual principles in a discussion of how helping others brings benefits.

Post knows what he is talking about, personally and professionally. He has a long list of credentials, degrees, awards, and publications in the field. His personal and professional life regularly keeps him in practice teaching, advocating and modeling a helping ethic. His family members also follow his lead. Post shares the stories of how he and his family helped others during and after a difficult move from Chicago to New York in 2008, after 20 years in Chicago. Post's personal narrative serves as a thread that ties altruistic concepts together and underscore his theme.

Although the basic premise of the book is not new, this subject is timely during these recessionary times and worth repeating.

At times I found the book slow going due to scholarly information, philosophy and research findings. More anecdotes would have made concepts vivid and the narrative more lively.

Post is beyond well-qualified to write on this subject. His credentials are impressive. He is Professor of Preventive Medicine, Head of the the Division of Medicine in Society, and Director of the Center for Medical Humanities, Compassionate Care and Bioethics at Stony Brook University. Prior to that he was Professor of Bioethics, Religion and Philosophy, School of Medicine, Case Western Reserve University and Senior Research Scholar at the Becket Institute of St. Hugh's College, Oxford University.... Post is president of the Institute for Research on Unlimited Love, supported in part by the Templeton Foundation, for which he also serves as Trustee. And the list goes on. Read more here.

Disclosure: B&B Media Group provided me a free copy of this book for review. There were no requirements for a favorable review. Read more ›

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars The Hidden Gifts of Helping May 17, 2011

By Lollipops

Format:Hardcover

"Everyone stumbles on hard times. After all, mo one gets out of life alive. Today, even those who had considered themselves protected from hardship are being touched and their lives changed by volatile economic markets, job uncertainty, and the increasing isolation ad loneliness of modern life..."

Researchers have discovered that when we show concern for others, such as empathizing with a friend who lost a loved one or has been diagnosed with a potentially fatal disease, doing yard work for an elderly neighbor, or volunteering to mentor a child, we improve our own health and well-being and embrace and give voice to our deeper identity and dignity as human beings.

Stephen Post takes the time in THE HIDDEN GIFTS OF HELPING to show us how we can make "helping" a lifetime activity. The book shares Post's personal story and his family's experience with how helping people changed their lives.

The book is filled with personal stories, supporting scientific research, and spiritual understanding. THE HIDDEN GIFTS OF HELPING includes questionnaires, scripture, and applications for you to find your own gifts, as well as other things. Invaluable resource for pastors and lay members alike. If more people learned from the ideas in this book, not only would their lives improve, but so would society as a whole.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars '...with a little help from my friends..' May 3, 2011

By Grady Harp HALL OF FAMETOP 50 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

Stephen G. Post makes us pause, reexamine our response to our private and our global world, look inside at the seed of joy, and shares by personal experience one of the most simple ways to make a difference: helping which in turn rewards not only those whom we help but also results in finding deep happiness. This little book is not meant to be a profound philosophical dissertation or a self help manual. Instead Post suggests that the changes in the world we all long for and often find evasive can be at least be partially ameliorated by a fundamentally easy act - that of helping other people.

Post's formula for Deep Happiness is '1. Foremost, love others!; 2. Cultivate moral integrity; 3. Enjoy thankful simplicity; 4. Stay true to your higher purposes.' The manner in which the author leads the reader to breathe in his quiet doctrines is his sharing of his family's change - moving from a place of belonging (Cleveland) to a place of strangeness but a place that offered the author an opportunity to elevate his gifts of teaching humanitarianism in Long Island (he is currently a professor of preventive medicine and director if the Center for Medical Humanities, Compassionate Care and Bioethics at Stony Brook University). Post transfers his personal responses to change to nearly everyone today who because of the recession or aging or lack of funds or illness - suggesting ways of coping by overcoming stress and trauma by performing little acts of kindness to those less fortunate than us. He also deals with the topic of those most in need and spends a chapter discussing Alzheimer's Disease and how we can reach out and help those with advanced aging and at the same time how we can care for ourselves so as not to become a 'wounded healer'.... Drug and alcohol dependency issues fall into his realm of helping those afflicted. The extensions of his help and compassion find outlets in every form of life problems which tend to paralyze those who want to be of help but instead protect ourselves by avoiding.

But where Stephen G. Post hits his mark is the gently insidious manner in which he introduces how we can repair a broken world. ' Being concerned with the welfare of others simply has every kind of evolutionary advantage. Children do not thrive unless they feel cared for and experience empathy and loyalty. People in a particular group will prosper to the extent that altruistic emotions and behaviors like compassion and cooperation operate effectively.' And where he takes this discussion is to a circle where world peace is more than a dream but a possibility. Simple ideas, but concepts that make a tremendous impact on the reader and hopefully on everyone with whom the reader relates and helps! Grady Harp, May 11 Read more ›