Ultimately you won't really know if it's a good thing until after the fact. I think just following my nose and doing what felt good in the moment was a big help. I guess it helped that I'd been trained as a youth counsellor early in my career, and I've been helping people my whole life as a by-product of who I am. A lot of people over the years have told me I should be a counsellor because apparently I'm really good at sucking the drama out of situations, calming people, soothing their nerves and helping them to get to a point that they can solve their own problems.

Like I say though, often you won't really know if what you are doing is a good thing until you look back on it and you see that the person you helped has moved forward. Some people just don't want to be helped and no matter how much effort you put it, you're not helping. But it's really difficult to see that while you're in the midst of it.

Just keep doing what you're doing while you have the motivation to do something. Get what you can out of the experience - the energy I got from helping other people even just to find their smile in the midst of something they felt they couldn't get out from under was enough to say that today I did good.

And take it day by day.