Community Service Spotlight: Giving Back

One of the keys to recovery is to turn your focus outward: Rather than dwelling on your own struggles, look past yourself to the broader needs of your family, friends, and community. A particularly helpful strategy is to look for some ways to give back to the community—something that’s never too hard to do, least of all during the holiday season.

Indeed, the holidays bring many unique opportunities to serve. A few possibilities to consider include:

• Collect canned goods and donate them to a local food pantry. Raid your own kitchen shelves for some canned goods you don’t mind parting with, and consider setting up a donations bin at your school or office.
• Go through your closets, gathering up used coats and older clothing and donate them to an organization like Good Will.
• Find a local soup kitchen and volunteer to spend a few hours serving patrons, washing dishes or whatever else needs to be done. There is usually a particularly big demand for such things during the holidays.
• Bake cookies or casseroles for elderly neighbors, sick friends and family, or even the members of your local fire department or police station.
• Find a local organization that lets you adopt a family, and take that family gifts and goodies for the holidays.
• Visit a nursing home—singing carols, reading to the residents there, or simply spending time talking with some of them. If you have kids you can take along, that’s even more meaningful!
• Go out to dinner and leave an especially generous tip for your waiter or waitress—a small gesture that can make somebody’s day!
• Sign up to run in a holiday 5K.
• Tackle a cause that is near and dear to your heart, donating money to cancer research, an environmental cause or another organization you care about.

Step outside your comfort zone this holiday season; brighten somebody else’s day, and see how it brightens your own!

What are some of your favorite ways to give back? Tell us on Facebook!

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