Welcome to the Listening Time Podcast.
Hey everybody, this is Connor and you're listening to episode 220 of the Listening Time Podcast.
I hope you're doing great and that you're having fun with your English learning, and that these episodes have been helpful for you to help you practice your listening, your comprehension in English.
And in today's episode, we're going to talk about helping others.
In other words, Being selfless, the opposite of being selfish.
So I want to talk about some different situations in which it's good to help others, even if if it doesn't necessarily benefit you when you do so, so you are just being selfless.
You're not helping others so that you benefit, you're just being selfless.
So i want to talk about this today because i think it's a really important topic, And I also want to give some help to my French tutor by mentioning his French YouTube channel right now, before we move on.
Because I have a really good French tutor who's helped me a lot with my French and And he makes content just like I do for listening practice.
And it's really good.
I actually use it as well.
And so I want to mention that here.
If any of you are learning French and you need good content, then please check out his YouTube channel.
I'm going to put the link down below so you can go down and click on that.
And he has a Patreon page as well.
And so go check out his content.
It's really good for anyone learning French.
And, of course, check out my advanced podcast episodes in which I speak fast by becoming a Listening Time family member.
That link is down below.
And remember that you can use my U.S.
Conversations podcast in which I talk to people from all all over the country about different topics.
It's really fun and educational.
You can use that to practice your listening, listening to more than one person talking.
So that link is also down below.
All right, let's get started.
Are your ears ready?
You know what time it is.
It's listening time.
Okay, let's talk about helping others and being selfless.
So the first thing I want to talk about is helping other people succeed, even though it might not actually help you personally.
Oftentimes people aren't interested in helping other people succeed, because it almost feels like we're all competing against each other.
Sometimes, when people see others succeed, it makes them a little jealous or insecure, or it might make them want to succeed more themselves.
And I think that it's important to just be happy when we see other people succeed rightfully.
Obviously, if they're doing it the wrong way, that's not good.
But if they're being honest and they're doing well and they deserve their success, I think it's important to actually be happy for them and not react negatively.
Of course, it's good to be inspired by other people, and when you see them succeed, you want to succeed more.
I think that's healthy, like a healthy feeling of competitiveness, competition.
There's nothing wrong with that.
But we should also just feel happy, especially when our friends and family members and people we know succeed rightfully.
And so, for example, with my French tutor, I really hope he succeeds.
If he does well with his YouTube channel and his Patreon page, it doesn't benefit me at all because there's really nothing I gain from that.
But still, I
I want him to succeed.
I want him to do well.
I hope that he gets a lot of subscribers and views on his channel, just because I want to see him succeed.
He's someone who has helped me a lot and I like him.
And so why would I be jealous or not want to help him?
Right, i want to help him out, even though it doesn't help me.
I want to be selfless in this case and just help him and give him a boost.
And so go check out his channel And, like I said, some people don't really want to help other people progress and advance in their careers or whatever it may be, if it doesn't help them.
So of course, it's great when you can help someone else else and they can help you, and it's like a mutually beneficial relationship, meaning both people benefit.
That's great.
There's nothing wrong with that, and I think that this is one of the goals of professional networking.
When you make friends or you get the contact information of other professionals, you might be doing so with the idea in mind that at some point you can work together and help each other.
Or maybe when you do a professional favor for someone, you might think that later on you can ask for a favor as well.
And there's nothing wrong with that.
That's how professional networking works.
But I also think that it's important to be able to do things to help other people without expecting them to help you, because if we're always expecting the other person to help us just because we helped them, this means that we're not really doing much just to help others and be selfless.
We always have that motive that this person will help me if I help them.
And if you have a friendship, for example, Of course you should be able to expect your friend to help you out if you need it.
But you should be willing to help the other person even if you're not going to get anything in return, and you shouldn't just do it with that expectation that you're gonna get something from them, they're gonna owe you something.
I don't think that that's the best mindset, and so I think we should be happy about our friends success and we should be willing to help other people our friends or family members or other people as well even though it might not help us in our careers and help us succeed.
Okay.
Another situation in which I think it's good to help people, even though it might not benefit us, is when we help customers or clients or people inquiring about our business or the place where we work.
Maybe we're just an employee there.
I think it's good to help customers clients, potential clients, even if there's no financial benefit for you.
Of course, some people get paid commission, meaning they get paid specifically for converting one person into a customer or selling to one person.
And that's one case.
But even if you don't get paid commission, like you just get paid by the hour or you just have a fixed salary with no commission In that case I think it's still important to make an effort to help customers and clients, even though there's no direct benefit to your pay.
And I experience this pretty often.
There are other questions that I receive that don't really benefit me in the same way when I answer them.
They might just be asking for advice or resources, or they just need help with something that I don't necessarily need to help them with.
But I want to just help them just to be helpful, even if I'm not benefiting.
So I think, even though it doesn't benefit me always to do this, it's still important to do so and to be helpful and to assist other people, just because sometimes That's a nice thing to do.
I think that it's good for your character.
It actually does kind of benefit you in a way, because I feel like it makes you a better person when you do that.
So I think that if you're an employee somewhere and a customer really needs help, I think it's great if you try to go out of your way to help them.
Meaning you really do a lot to help them and really try to make sure that they're satisfied.
I think that's good.
It benefits the business that you work for.
And I think that, of course, it benefits the customer.
And I think when you help another person like that, like a customer or a client, it makes them happier.
It helps them have a better day.
And then they will probably be in a better mood and maybe they will treat other people better better nicer, for the rest of the day, and it's kind of like a chain where they're in a better mood, they treat other people better, so those other people are in a better mood and they treat people better, and so you can start a chain of of positive events by helping people out, even when you don't benefit.
You're just helping a customer or a client with questions and issues they have.
So I think that's another thing that we can do.
And another way in which we can help other people is by keeping public places and stores and businesses open orderly, meaning don't leave a mess, and actually leave it looking like it was when you got there, or better than it was when you got there.
Of course it's tempting to just take items off shelves and leave them wherever if you decide not to buy them later or and not return them to where you got them, and it's not like you have to do this and really there's no real benefit to you as a customer, but I think that it does benefit everyone else when you The items are in their proper place.
I'm sure you've had this experience where you think an item costs a certain price, a certain amount of money, and then you realize that that someone else put it there and it doesn't belong there and it actually doesn't cost that amount of money because it doesn't go on that shelf.
And that's frustrating when you think it costs 10 but really it costs 30 something.
So I think it helps everyone out.
It helps the employees so that they don't have to do as much work finding where everything goes and returning things to where they belong.
And And actually there might be a benefit for you in the sense that some stores will be able to keep their prices lower by having fewer employees, if they don't have a messy store all the time and need to hire tons of people to clean it up.
So you might be able to benefit by by the fact that the store can keep its prices lower because it doesn't need to spend more on cleaning up the store.
So I guess it's possible that it actually does benefit you.
Who knows?
And sometimes it doesn't benefit you at all.
In many stores, this might not be the case.
It doesn't benefit you to keep everything orderly, but it's still good to do.
And Not just at stores, but at any public place.
I think even though it might not benefit you, it's good to keep it clean, keep it orderly.
For example, even if you are at a park that you're probably never going to go to again, it's still important.
Two, keep it clean, not trash it.
Throw your trash away.
You shouldn't leave it looking worse than it was when you got there, even if you're never going to go to that park again.
And I think there are people that have the mindset that, oh, I'm never going to come here again.
It doesn't matter what I do.
I don't think that's good when it comes to keeping public places clean.
I think it's important to consider other people.
There are other people that go to that park every week maybe, and they won't appreciate it if you trash the park and don't keep it clean.
And so you can imagine if someone did that to your favorite park where you go to every week.
So I think that this goes for any public place.
I think it's important to try to keep it clean and not trash it and keep it orderly.
I think that this just helps everyone, even if it doesn't seem like it's helping you in particular.
And another way in which you can help other people is by letting people go ahead of you in different situations, like when you're in a checkout line, meaning you're in line to pay for items at a store.
Sometimes it's a good thing to let another person go ahead of you.
Maybe there's someone who has a disability, or someone who's older and has trouble moving well or carrying things well.
Maybe they just have a couple items and they You have a bunch of items.
And so why not let them go ahead of you?
This is actually something common in the US that people will do at grocery stores.
They'll allow another person to go in front of them in line if that person is only buying one or two things and the other person is buying a ton of things.
Like they don't want the other person to have to wait for them.
If that person is only going to buy a couple items, they just let that other person go ahead of them, to be nice.
So I think that that's a great way of helping people.
I think that even though that doesn't benefit you, it's great to help other people like that.
And, like I said, if they have some disability or they're having trouble, I think it really is a good thing to help those people.
And if you're driving on the freeway and there are many cars and someone is really trying to get over to their exit but they're having trouble, I think it's good to allow them to go ahead of you and help not be mad.
You should just let them go and go over to their exit.
I think that's a great thing to do to let a person go ahead of you so that they can get over to their exit.
Right.
We don't like when we're trying to get over to the exit and the person to the side of us isn't letting us go.
None of us like that.
So we should think of that when other people are in that situation.
We should let them go and let them get over to reach their exit.
And one other way that might be relevant to you, depending on whether or not you live in a touristic city.
One other way that I think it's good to help people, even if it doesn't benefit you, is is to help tourists who are lost or just need help finding a destination or something like that.
This is something that you might encounter if you live in a place where tourists go for travel.
You might see someone who looks completely lost in there, trying to navigate to a certain place or find where it is on the map or whatever.
And I think it's nice to help these people.
Or if someone comes up to you and they ask you for help with directions or something.
I think it's great to help people in this case and not just uh, blow them off and keep walking.
If you blow someone off, it means that you kind of ignore them and just like dismiss what they say.
So i think it's important to take the time to help orient them, answer their questions.
I think this is good, even if it doesn't help you, like it's not benefiting you personally.
When I lived in Mexico, this was really common, not for tourists to do.
Tourists didn't come up and ask me questions, maybe once or twice, but usually it was just Mexicans, just people.
Maybe they weren't from that exact city and people would approach me, Not super frequently, but once in a while.
This happened.
They would approach me, even though I was a foreigner, and they would ask for directions to a certain place.
And I always tried to do my best to help them and show them on the map.
I pulled out my phone to help them.
And Sometimes I didn't know where something was, but I would look it up on my phone.
But I tried not to tell them that I knew how to get somewhere, even if I wasn't sure how to get there, because a lot of other people would do that.
They would just kind of make something up, they would just invent some route, even though they didn't know how to get somewhere, just because they felt mean saying that they didn't know.
Sorry, they didn't want to say that, so they just made something up.
I tried never to do that.
I always tried to explain the directions to them or show them on my map.
And so this is something nice.
If you can do this, even if you're in a hurry, you're walking and you need to go somewhere, it's nice to take a minute and help someone find their way if they're lost.
So I think that this is something you can do to help people out in your city, perhaps.
So you can probably think of many more situations in which it's important to help others, even if it doesn't benefit you.
But those are the ones that I wanted to talk about today.
And remember to check out my French Tutors YouTube channel.
It's really good.
If you're learning French or you want to learn French, please check that out.
The link is down below.
And check out my advanced podcast episodes in which I speak fast and my U.S.
Conversations podcast in which I talk to different people from around the country at normal speed and I provide the transcript with the definitions of key words and phrases that we use.
All of those links are down below.
All right, thank you so much for listening to this episode and I'll talk to you on the next episode of Listening Time.
