Altruism: A Career In Social Work

Helping others have always came natural to me throughout my whole life, even as a child. My mother would always acknowledge how generous and warm-hearted that I was. I would literally give someone the clothing off my back or the shoes off my feet and would not think twice about it because I was and still is just that generous. According to social psychology, altruism is the motive to increase another’s welfare without conscious regard for one’s self-interest or simply selfishness in reverse. Some common examples of altruism are the Good Samaritan parable, helping a homeless person by offering a hot meal, and/or the act of someone risking his or her life to save another. Mostly all of my life I have been a very generous and selfless person.
I would do good deeds for everyone and would not expect anything in return. As a result I chose to pursue a career in social work in order to continue my altruistic behaviors.
I have always known that I had a heart to help people but most importantly I never expected anything in return for my good deeds. Additionally, I have always consider these deeds to be a Good Samaritan duty until I was in social psychology where I learned about the term of altruism. In social psychology, I learned that altruism is a norm for some people, such as me, within the world today. Whether it may be a doctor saving someone’s life or helping someone who is having car trouble, there are several instances of altruism in day to day life, but I have failed to realize how prevalent it was until now. Even though I love to help people without anything in return, I still take pride in receiving an internal reward.
As mentioned, I believe that years of practicing altruistic behaviors led me to ultimately deciding to pursue a career in social work.
From my perspective, altruism and social work correlates in the sense that, as a professional, I am equipping and helping another person to achieve a good well-being without any self-interest. For this reason, I believe that altruism is a positive characteristic that every social worker should strive to have. Helping someone to be a better person is self- rewarding within itself and does not need a physical reward. Moreover, I hope that my altruistic behaviors inspire someone else to do the
same.
Consequently, I have learned that altruism is a norm that many people do unconsciously on a daily basis.
Many of these acts of kindness occur when a person values another person equally, if not more than themselves. As mentioned before, there are tons of things that I do on a daily basis that are simple acts of altruism and I feel good about doing them. For this matter, I plan to continue helping others and do what I can without expecting anything in return. As a social worker, I plan to return to a university to teach social work based course and within my teaching methods I plan to instill altruistic ideals and attitudes within the students. By doing so, I believe that this will help us to begin to value others just same, or more, than
ourselves.