Service: how to make sure you are more ready

Being there for someone when they have problems, or being of service, is something that doesn't make sense to everyone. Being more of a servant can be a goal in your life because you just want more connection with other people.

Service meaning

Service means that you can serve other people's interests or subordinate yourself to a greater interest[1]. So you help other people with their goals and jobs or do something for society.

Servanthood is not to be confused with slavishness, because even a servant can set boundaries and not do something.

You can think of service as the characteristic that you enjoy helping other people.

Benefits of being of service

In other countries, conscription exists for the military or for social services[2], such as bringing coffee to the old people's home. The idea of community service is that it improves social skills and shows young people what society needs. The skills they gain can also come in handy later in their jobs.

The idea is also that people are more aware of what is socially responsible and more aware of what is socially just[3].

Helping people has all kinds of benefits. For example, there are those in healthcare who want to help young people with problems. This does not only benefit those young people. For example, if you have had a difficult childhood yourself, helping young people who also had a difficult childhood can help you work through your own problems.

In doing so, helping people can also ensure you have a clear purpose in your life, helps you feel like you can do something, and makes you feel more socially connected to people[4].

Being of service to other people does require that you keep an eye on your boundaries. For example, with groups such as Alcoholics Anonymous, helping others is an important part of getting "better" again, but helping too much can again have adverse effects[5].

Helping people at work is also good for your mood, but then this helping should not come at the expense of the business goals you need to meet[6].

In addition, helping people can also help you gain better social status, as long as you know who to be of service to[7].

Research also shows that helping people takes energy on the one hand, but if you are socially minded it is also honor a source of energy[8].

It can also take energy because people often have a bias in that they think their help represents less than it actually does. This can leave you as a helper feeling that you are helping too little, when you are helping enough.

You can also get the feeling that the receiver of help is getting a lot of value, while the giver of help only has to put in a little effort. So this feeling need not be true.

In addition, helping someone else can also help you strengthen your bond with that person. For example, you might realize that you don’t actually think so differently about certain issues when you help each other, even though those differences may still very well exist[9].

Feelings that don't match reality can cause you to be less helpful than you want to be because, for example, you don't feel that what you do for the other person matters.

Making yourself more serviceable with hypnosis

You may have grown up in a family where it was “every man for himself” and where you were constantly reminded of your own responsibility, which might make it difficult for you to help others. However, this can come across to others as disinterest, which doesn’t always help the situation.

If you've realized it's time for more service after all, but you don't really know where to start, hypnosis can play a role in shaping service for you.

You can then find out, for example, your beliefs about service and why you may think this is not helpful for you. For this, you can repeat the why question several times in a conversation, for example, and then eventually get to your deepest beliefs and find out that those beliefs don't actually make sense.

If you just have no idea what being of service to family or colleagues, for example, looks like, a hypnotherapist can help with a guided visualization. This can strengthen your sense that you can actually help other people, which also makes you more likely to take the step to be more service-minded.

In addition, you can also increase the value of your help in a mental sense. You may think that doing something for another person doesn't mean much, but for another person, a little help can make a world of difference. A hypnotherapist can help you empathize with people who can receive your help, after which you will find it easier to offer help.

Setting limits on your service

Being of service is a lot of fun and can be incredibly rewarding, but you have to be careful not to become too subservient and that it doesn't end up being at your expense.

So it's helpful to consider in advance how far you want your service to go. For example, do you only want to do something for someone for a day on the weekend, or do you want people to be able to call you and then you take immediate action to help someone?

So what will you do when someone calls you beyond your weekend to ask for your help?

Or, and this can certainly happen as a hypnotherapist, what do you do when someone calls you at night to have a nice chat about their problems? Because how you do then can have a lot of impact on the outcome of treatment[10]. So how do you handle that smartly?

Then you also have the problem of power in the therapist-client relationship. The trust you have in each other can develop into something more personal (source 8) and then how do you make sure you also maintain your professional boundaries.

Some guidelines of a no-go in a professional relationship as a therapist to your client are:

1. Fulfilling your personal needs with clients;
2. Giving personalized information to clients;
3. Business partnerships with clients;
4. Taking the client to lunch;
5. Visiting the client at home if this is not part of the treatment;
6. Hire the client as a babysitter or secretary(s);
7. Giving client gifts;
8. Hugging and kissing the client (source 8).

It is important for you as a therapist to keep an eye on these boundaries, because a client may become insecure about this and may think they are being held accountable if everything gets out of hand. Then again, these boundaries are not always super black and white. For example, sometimes sharing personal information can help the client with the idea that he/she is not the only one who has problems in his/her life and that even as a hypnotherapist you run into things.

So it also depends on the client themselves and to what extent they understand that something is meant to be therapeutic or friendly.

If you need to state a boundary, it is helpful to do so kindly, but still be firm about that the boundary is necessary for a good therapeutic relationship.

Setting your boundaries, for example, is important to avoid becoming too subservient. With hypnotherapy, this can be done with visualizations in which you accomplished something or by repeating hypnotic suggestions aloud such as:

"I help people on my terms."

"It's okay to choose for myself."

"I get to say "no."

These are just a few examples. Depending on your goals regarding service and how far you want to take it, you may receive other suggestions.

So hypnosis can help you improve your perception of what help is worth and what it does for others, allowing you to be more service-oriented.

On the other hand, hypnosis can also help you set limits on that service, whether it is to your service as a therapist or as an ordinary person who often does the shopping for the neighbor.

Would you like to learn more about how hypnosis works? Then join the free online masterclass on hypnosis.

Or sign up for one of our seminars or training programs so you can help others with hypnosis.

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