The Value of Kindness: How to Improve Your Life and The World Around You
How do you show kindness? Expressing kindness has immense benefits for your mental health. → Learn how to add more kindness to your life!
Kindness. Have you ever wondered how you show it in daily life? Practising kindness is not just for the benefit of the people you interact with. It can have a big impact on yourself and on the world!
The drive to do good is a strong human trait and has many benefits. Not only does kindness help those who it’s directed towards, but it also comes with many personal benefits. It is a simple fact that, for most of us, most of the time, being kind feels good.
Research shows that the kinder we are, the less stressed we feel and the better our general health and wellbeing.
Whether your focus is on having a positive impact in the world, making other people feel good, or improving your own wellbeing—there are no bad reasons to be kind. Here we talk about some ideas for showing more kindness in your daily life.
Kindness towards loved ones
This comes in many forms and, chances are, if you have good relationships, you’re already doing it. But sometimes it can be nice to do that little bit extra—go a little out of your way to make a loved one (or a friend or colleague) feel special. This doesn’t have to be anything elaborate—small, thoughtful acts can be powerful.
Some ideas include:
📱 Send a random text message to let someone know what they mean to you. It could be a simple “I love you” or “I appreciate you” or an honest compliment. If someone has a positive impact on you in some way, let them know!
🍝 Make your loved one’s day a little easier by doing a chore for them that they would otherwise have to do—like a cleaning job, running an errand, or cooking them dinner.
🍫 Pick up their favorite treat on your way home (for someone you live with) or drop it at their house.
💌 Leave a kind note somewhere that they will see, or post a letter in the mail—sometimes words written on paper can feel particularly meaningful.
📅 If your loved one has something important coming up, like starting a new job or an important appointment, set a reminder in your calendar. On the day, you can let them know that you’re thinking of them or check-in with how it went.
👩🏾🤝🧑 If a loved one is struggling with their mental health, understanding the best ways that you can support them can make a meaningful difference.
These are just a few suggestions—the goal is to make your loved one’s day a little easier or bring a smile to their face. The Random Acts of Kindness Foundation has some more suggestions for what you can do to show kindness each day of the week, but ultimately, you know yourself and your loved ones best!
Kindness towards strangers
There are some common examples that probably come to most of our minds when we think about being kind to strangers. These might include things like smiling at people when you walk by them, asking a service worker how their day’s going, paying for someone’s coffee, and so on. These actions can really lift your mood as well as the person you’ve interacted with..
If you want to go a little bit further, there are even more impactful ways that your kindness can improve the lives of others. You could do work (either paid or voluntary) in an area that focuses on helping people. You could also decide to dedicate some of your time, money, or effort to causes that have an impact on a much larger scale.
The ultimate act of kindness
For many of us, hearing about suffering or injustice sparks a desire to make things better in some way. There are lots of ways we can contribute to causes that aim to improve large-scale suffering—charity, volunteering, advocacy, and other changes to our behaviors and the choices we make (for example, refusing to buy products from unethical companies).
Any of these actions are admirable, but it can be helpful to be aware that not all acts of kindness are created equally. We all have limited resources for helping others (limited time, money, energy, opportunity, etc.) The same resource can have different degrees of impact depending on many factors, such as where it goes and how it’s used.
Let’s be clear: any action that helps to reduce suffering is a good thing and using your resources in a way that is personally meaningful can be important. However, many people donate to charities or advocate for a cause without being aware of how impactful their contribution really is. This is understandable—how are we supposed to know the best use of our resources in such a complex world?
The good news is that there are organizations dedicated to working out how we can do the most good in the world with the limited resources we each have.
Deciding to focus whatever time, money, and effort that we can spare towards causes that are most effective for improving life on this planet is the ultimate act of kindness.
Kindness towards yourself
It can be useful to remember to secure your own oxygen mask before assisting others—it’s often difficult to show genuine kindness towards others if we are not first kind to ourselves. Attempting to alleviate the suffering of others without taking care of yourself can result in fatigue and burnout.
You are the most important person in your life, and the person that you have to live with 24/7. So, it’s usually best to make self-kindness your priority.
This week, you might like to see if you can do at least one act of kindness every day. These could include acts of kindness towards yourself, loved ones, strangers, or even looking into how you can do the most good in the world.
Downloading Mind Ease to work on your mental wellbeing can be a good way to show self-kindness.
On behalf of our team, we hope you have a wonderful week!
