23/05/2023
How Does Kindness Affect Your Mental Health?
The effects of kindness and mental health care are connected. Mental health happens on a continuum that ranges from mental illness and languishing to mental wellness and flourishing. No matter where you sit on that continuum, kindness and compassion have the ability to lift you toward flourishing- a state that is commonly described as one where you feel happy, engaged, energized, and satisfied with life. This might be why volunteering and philanthropy feel so good. Being kind helps you to feel good and boosts your mood.
The Ripple Effect
Kindness begins with you! Then it involves another which turns the “me” to “we.” Soon the "we’s" affect the community.
When kindness is authentically given and received it lifts the well-being and mood of everyone involved. There’s no downside or side effect of positive feelings. Kindness is good.
How to Show Kindness
The great thing about kindness is that you have a free lifetime unlimited supply. The more you give, the more you have.
Here are a few ways to get you started:
* Listen
* Smile
* Hug (with a mask on)
* Hold a door for someone
* Pick up litter
* Let someone into your lane while driving
* Pay for the order behind you in the drive-thru
* Take a neighbor’s garbage bins to and from the curb
* Compliment a friend, co-worker, or family member
* Clean up after yourself
* Send a text to a loved one
* Learn your partner’s “love language,”, and then use it
* Notice someone who seems lonely and invite them along with you
* Let someone who wants to help you, help
* Don’t offer advice unless asked
* Share silence with someone
* Engage in random acts of kindness
* Engage in kind acts that are not random at all
Receiving Kindness
If you are like most people, you probably find it easier to be kind than to be on the receiving act of a kind act. When someone compliments you, do you reply, “it was nothing” or “no problem”? Many people have adopted this learned behavior as a way of being humble, but what this actually does is constrict the flow of the energy of giving and receiving. If someone gives you a compliment, not receiving it stops its power for both the giver and the receiver.
Sometimes receiving kindness and compassion can feel threatening, as though the one being kind is somehow superior. If you notice you have trouble receiving gifts, compliments, or acts of generosity and love, spend some time reflecting on why. Who taught you to behave this way? Is it serving you and those around you?
I’ve learnt to say:
“That’s a nice thing to do or say… Thank you”
Lift you mental health today and everyday and show a little kindness!
