What the World Needs Now is Love… and Kindness

As we enter the month of pink hearts and red ros­es, it may seem a lit­tle hard­er than usu­al to get into the spir­it of love. There is so much we can’t seem to agree on right now. No mat­ter your beliefs, I think we all know more than a few peo­ple who feel bogged down by the seem­ing­ly con­stant stream of neg­a­tive and con­fronta­tion­al mes­sages and news con­fronting us each and every day. How can we stay pos­i­tive, sane, and healthy in the midst of such exter­nal stressors? 

Being kind to one anoth­er is a great place to start. Acts of kind­ness towards friends, loved ones, and even strangers, can help turn both our indi­vid­ual and col­lec­tive out­look around. Think small, like hold­ing the door for some­one or smil­ing and say­ing hel­lo. These small every­day acts will add up, and we will all reap the phys­i­cal and emo­tion­al health ben­e­fits of a more pos­i­tive world. Kind­ness does­n’t take sides, and it knows no lan­guage nor dis­crim­i­na­tion. Kind­ness is a gift we can all unwrap equally.

With this in mind, we are going to hatch our newest ini­tia­tive: a kind­ness cam­paign! For each of the next 30 days, we are encour­ag­ing peo­ple to do a small act of kind­ness for some­one and post it to our Face­book page. Let’s see how much pos­i­tive ener­gy we can put into the uni­verse, and how much health­i­er we’ll all be as a result!

The Power of a Four Letter Word

We can all think of a few four let­ter words that pack quite a punch, but few spread their impact as much as this one: kind. Research from uni­ver­si­ties far and wide has shown how ben­e­fi­cial acts of kind­ness are, with boosts for both the giv­er and the receiv­er. So we did a lit­tle research on our own to find out how we can all ben­e­fit from this four-let­ter word.

Researchers in the Psy­chol­o­gy Depart­ment of Toko­hu Gakuin Uni­ver­si­ty in Tokyo, Japan, found that you can be hap­pi­er if you just count the num­ber of acts of kind­ness you per­form. Talk about get­ting more bang for your buck–just cal­cu­lat­ing your kind­ness is enough to boost your hap­pi­ness level!

Much like the com­mon cold, or the flu this time of year, just being around kind­ness is con­ta­gious. A study from Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty, the Uni­ver­si­ty of Ply­mouth, and UCLA found that just see­ing some­one else do some­thing kind for anoth­er per­son was enough to make some­one feel good, and then reach out and help some­one else on their own. Where can you cause a snow­ball effect of kindness?

If you need anoth­er rea­son to put forth an extra dose of kind­ness, look no fur­ther than a study from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Michi­gan. In 2003, Dr. Stephanie Brown found that “peo­ple who reg­u­lar­ly offered prac­ti­cal help to oth­ers had a low­er risk of dying over a five-year peri­od than those who did not.”  You’d be hard-pressed to find a more pow­er­ful rea­son to be kind!

Now it’s time for you to do your own research: What hap­pens when you spread a lit­tle kind­ness today?

Source: 5 Research-Based Rea­sons to be Kind, Huff­in­g­ton Post.