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The Kindness Box

Geoff-Allen

Geoff-Allen

Resident megalomaniac
Also try - Ryan Niemiec kindness -

Character is plural. Chris Peterson coined this sentence that has become an adage in positive psychology. This expands one-dimensional thinking that character means only honesty or integrity. People are not simply kind and humble, brave and hopeful, or wise and fair. An individual’s character is better understood as a unique profile of strengths with varying highs and lows.

Ten Principles of Character Strengths

Well worth reading the whole article at least in my humble little opinion!

All the best!
 
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FineLinen

Well-Known Member
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FineLinen

Well-Known Member
What Love Is All About

It was a busy morning, approximately 8:30 am, when an elderly gentleman, in his 80’s arrived to have stitches removed from his thumb. He stated that he was in a hurry and that he had an appointment at 9:00 am. I took his vital signs, and had him take a seat, knowing it would be over an hour before someone would be able to see him. I saw him looking at his watch and decided, since I was not busy with another patient, I would evaluate his wound.

On exam it was well healed, so I talked to one of the doctors, got the needed supplies to remove his sutures and redressed his wound. While taking care of him, we began to engage in conversation. I asked him if he had a doctor’s appointment this morning, as he was in such a hurry. The gentleman told me no, that he needed to go to the nursing home to eat breakfast with his wife. I then inquired as to her health. He told me that she had been there for awhile and was a victim of Alzheimer’s Disease.

As we talked and I finished dressing his wound, I asked if she would be worried if he was a bit late. He replied that she no longer knew who he was, and hadn’t recognized him in five years. I was surprised, and asked him, “And you still go every morning, even though she doesn’t know who you are?” He smiled and patted my hand and said,

"She doesn’t know me, but I still know who she is."
 
Geoff-Allen

Geoff-Allen

Resident megalomaniac
Since the 1980s, around 25 experiments have tested whether these selfish benefits are enough to explain altruistic behavior.
Consider, for example, Selfish Benefit #1: Doing something kind reduces the tension created by our experience of empathy and inaction. Researchers have tested this explanation by putting individuals in situations where they are likely to feel empathy toward someone in need (the tension mounts) and then varying how easy it is for them to escape from that situation. If individuals were primarily motivated by a desire to reduce tension, then they would choose to escape from the situation when this was easy (e.g., nobody would know that they decided not to help). If, on the other hand, individuals were motivated by the desire to alleviate the distress of someone in trouble, then an easy escape option would do nothing to relieve this tension. Results consistently support the second explanation.

In addition, similar experiments designed to pit a "helping others" motivation against more selfish ones (e.g., avoiding social sanctions, avoiding guilty, obtaining social or personal rewards) lend support to the other-oriented motivation. For an interesting review of these social psychology experiments, I recommend Psychologist Daniel Batson's book, The Altruism Question (1991). In my book, the case for altruism is a hard one to ignore-even on my most cynical days.

Finally, take Sonja Lyubomirsky, a Professor of Psychology at Stanford and one of Positive Psychology's leading lights. Sonja has tested whether asking people to "commit" five random acts of kindness would reliably increase their level of positive emotion. The good news is that it does. (Lyubomirsky et al, 2004). And it is most effective if all five acts are carried out on the same day. Here are Sonja's instructions:

Read more here -

https://www.authentichappiness.sas.upenn.edu/newsletters/authentichappinesscoaching/kindness

All the best!
 
Geoff-Allen

Geoff-Allen

Resident megalomaniac
Happiness articles kindness?

Kindness and psychological flourishing

Further studies back up the power of kindness. In another, researchers asked members of the public to either perform acts of kindness – such as opening doors for strangers – for one month, or to perform kind acts for themselves, such as treating themselves to a new purchase.

The researchers measured the participants’ level of so-called ‘psychological flourishing’ – their emotional, psychological, and social well-
being at the start and end of the experiment. By the end, those who had carried out kind acts for others had higher levels of psychological flourishing compared to those who acted kindly towards themselves. Kindly acts also led to higher levels of positive emotions.

Comes from here -

The power of kindness (and how you can benefit from being nice)

:)
 
Geoff-Allen

Geoff-Allen

Resident megalomaniac
Put simply, the act of being kind releases a range of natural feel-good hormones in your body, including oxytocin and endorphins. So practicing kindness, compassion, and appreciation can make you happier, boost your immune system, reverse the signs of aging, relieve pain, and even help you live longer. Choosing to think and feel kindness about someone you find challenging, ahead of interacting or responding to them, is one of my favourite strategies for changing how I feel in the moment (e.g. releasing stress or anxiety), and is an excellent strategy for defusing potentially difficult situations.

Kindness is one of the core values I write about in my book Heartatude, the 9 Principles of Heart-Centered Success. This article is an extract from my book with additional tips on how to be kind in business.

Kindness: the Invisible Currency of Happiness, Health and Success

Cheers!
 
Geoff-Allen

Geoff-Allen

Resident megalomaniac
Kindness can become the norm -

Make Kindness The Norm

Without even thinking about it, I responded, “We have to make kindness the norm, not the exception.”

That has been my personal mission and the mission of RAK for a long time. Humans spend so much time and energy focusing on the negatives that affect us. When a moment of kindness appears, it’s as if a fog has been lifted... just for a moment. It’s lovely. It makes us feel good. We smile. But, then the fog rolls back in and we go back to ‘the norm’ of our daily lives. We don’t put in the effort to truly appreciate and reflect on those moments.

What is your ‘norm’? Where do those moments appear in your day and how frequent are they? My guess is that many of us will have a hard time answering that question because we don’t register those experiences when they happen. They are simply short, passing moments of delight.
 
Geoff-Allen

Geoff-Allen

Resident megalomaniac
Create a culture of kindness -

I came across a children’s book, Have You Filled a Bucket Today?, that brilliantly teaches the impact of kindness. The essence of the story is that everyone carries an imaginary bucket. When you do something kind for others, the resulting good feelings fill both your bucket and theirs. Conversely, when you’re unkind to others, it empties both your bucket and theirs. What a wonderful way for all of us—adults as well as kids—to appreciate the power of kindness!

At work, it’s not always easy to exhibit kindness when you’re stressed. And if your organizational culture is characterized by meanness and nastiness (and if you’re unable to quit and go someplace where people treat each other with respect), developing a thick skin understandably takes priority over kindness.

Fortunately, in most organizations, employees don’t deliberately withhold kindness; they just get caught up in the demands of the day and, in the process, sometimes behave in an unkind manner. Furthermore, employees tend to follow the model set from above, treating each other and their customers the way they’re treated by their superiors. Leaders set the tone for the entire organization, and that means that kindness starts at the top.

Creating a Culture of Kindness

:)
 
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FineLinen

Well-Known Member
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The Homing Instinct

A hundred years ago, a pair of English ornithologists took birds from their mother’s nest on the island of Skokholm off the coast of Wales. They tagged those birds and transported them to various far-off places, then released them to see whether the birds could find their way home to Wales.

One of those birds was released in Venice. Despite the tremendous distance (about 1,000 miles) and despite the fact that this species wasn’t native to the region, the bird found its way back home by a path it had never flown — in just over 14 days!

That experiment was repeated with even greater distances.

Two birds were transported by train in a closed box to London, then flown by airplane to Boston. Only one of the two survived that trip. The lone surviving bird flew all the way across the Atlantic Ocean and found its way back to its mother’s nest in 12 days and 12 hours!

Pretty impressive, right? Even ornithologists are amazed by this inbuilt capacity called the homing instinct. It’s the inherent ability to find their way home across great distances, despite unfamiliar terrain.

There’s a similar instinct hardwired into the human soul — the longing to be blessed by God. In the words of Saint Augustine,

“You have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.”

The 17th-century French philosopher Blaise Pascal called it the

“God-shaped hole.”

Pope Francis called it

“nostalgia for God.”

Yet despite our innate nature to long for God’s blessings, they don’t always come in our timing.
 
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FineLinen

Well-Known Member
“Always show kindness and love to others. Your words might be filling the empty places in someone's heart.” - Mandy Hale-

“Sometimes you only get one chance to rewrite the qualities of the character you played in a person's life story. Always take it. Never let the world read the wrong version of you.” - Shannon L. Alder-

“The most important part of religion isn't in any church. It's down in your own heart. Religion is in your thoughts, and in the way you act from day to day, in the way you treat other people. It's honesty, and unselfishness, and kindness. Especially kindness.” - Maud Hart Lovelace-


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FineLinen

Well-Known Member
“One of the nicest things you can do is to speak kind words about someone behind his or her back.” - Molly Friedenfeld-

“Certainly I believe that God gave us life for happiness, not misery. Humanity, I am sure, will never be made lazy or indifferent by an excess of happiness. Many persons have a wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness. It is not attained through self-gratification but through fidelity to a worthy purpose. Happiness should be a means of accomplishment, like health, not an end in itself.” - Helen Keller-

“If someone is facing a difficult time, one of the kindest things you can do for him or her is to say, “I’m just going to love you through this.” - Molly Friedenfeld-

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FineLinen

Well-Known Member
"Kind words can be short and easy to speak, but their echoes are truly endless." - Mother Teresa-

"What do we live for, if it is not to make life less difficult for each other?" - George Eliot-

"Deal with the faults of others as gently as with your own." - Chinese proverb-
 
Geoff-Allen

Geoff-Allen

Resident megalomaniac
Just found this site - looks wonderful on first impressions -

Whether you’re doing 100 Acts of Kindness or just looking for a random act of kindness to brighten someone’s day, a little inspiration can help. You’ll find something that’s sure to inspire you in these kindness videos. I’ll start with a couple of videos for young children first and then go on to videos that work for a variety of ages … adults, too!

Free Inspirational Kindness Videos for a Variety of Ages

Many more articles here -

kindness Archives - Bits of Positivity

:)
 
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