Kindness is a trait that is undervalued in today’s society. Everyone is too busy pursuing their own aspirations to lend a warm smile or helping hand to someone right in front of them. However, the world becomes a sad and dismal place without kindness.
This quote reminds me of a complete meltdown I had in my car years ago because someone was kind to me. The truth is, sometimes the power of kindness can make all the difference in someone’s life. So, what is kindness?
What is Kindness?
Kindness is showing compassion, love, friendship, and generosity to another person, yourself, or the world around you. It involves using or giving what you have to help someone else. This includes giving your time, talents, resources, and/or connections.
Benefits of Being Kind
Being Kind Makes You Happy
Sharing pieces of yourself with others is a very rewarding experience. Kindness helps you see how your actions positively impact another person’s life and seeing your impact can give you a greater sense of purpose. In fact, it has been found that kindness releases happy chemicals in the brain like serotonin, dopamine, oxytocin, and endorphins.
Being Kind Makes Others Happy
When you help someone else, you ease their burdens and make their lives better. Showing kindness to other people reminds them of the good that exists in the world and can give them a more positive outlook on life.
Being Kind Reduces Stress
Kindness has been shown to decrease cortisol, which is a stress hormone. Fewer stress hormones mean less stress on the body and mind.
Being Kind Improves Your Relationships
When you share what you have with others and treat them with kindness, you build stronger relationships. When showing kindness to people you do not know, you also open yourself up to forming a new relationship with that individual.
Being Kind Increases Optimism
When you practice kindness or when someone is kind to you, you feel better about the world in general. Kindness makes you more optimistic towards your relationships, your pursuits, and your goals.
Random Acts of Kindness
We can all use more kindness in our lives, and a simple way to practice kindness every day is by implementing random acts of kindness. Random acts of kindness are small actions you can perform randomly throughout the day to spread kindness to other people. These small actions send a ripple of kindness through your community because kindness only sparks more kindness.
You don’t need to plan out your random acts of kindness, but it can be helpful to have a few ideas to get started. Below, are 15 random acts of kindness that you can easily include in your daily life.
- Give someone a compliment.
- Leave a positive comment on someone’s social media or blog post.
- Tip extra when you go out for coffee or dinner.
- Write a thank-you note to someone.
- Talk to the new person at your company.
- Smile at someone who looks like they are having a bad day.
- Clean up the house for your significant other.
- Call your parents to ask them how they have been.
- Make or buy a treat to share at work or school.
- Buy a coffee for the person behind you in line.
- Volunteer at a local non-profit.
- Send flowers to a friend.
- Hold the door for a stranger.
- Tell someone why they are important to you.
- Leave money in a vending machine.
Find one way to spread kindness every day and see what a difference it makes in your life and in the lives of the people around you. You never know…your one act of being nice to someone else may give them the hope they were looking for.
