As part of my New Year's Resolutions, I said I wanted to be the best person I can be. That is a very generic statement but also allows for a lot to be included within that statement. One of the ways one can be the best person they can be is through random acts of kindness. This again is a generic idea but with many options that can fall within the concept.
My dad told me of this story back in December. He was in the skyway in downtown St. Paul and saw a family of four walking through and stopped them to ask if they by chance were going to a certain museum that was nearby. The mom with some hesitation said, "Yeeessss....." and my dad handed the family four tickets for free admission to the museum. The family was very appreciative and one of the little girls exclaimed, "It's my birthday!" The family went on their way as my dad did the same and the little girl waved to my dad and said, "Thank you!". I know my dad doesn't want credit for this on my blog but I thought it was a great example of a random act of kindness. What may seem as not a big deal to you may turn out to mean the world to someone else. And it might happen to be their birthday, which may make it even more special.
From Thanksgiving to January 3rd, my company participated in an activity called Healthy Habits. Employees could sign up to play bingo. I signed up and received my electronic bingo card and each day, I would get an email with a healthy habit attached. If I participated in the healthy habit within 48 hours, I could mark that activity off of my bingo card. If I got bingo, I could turn my card in for $20. I didn't care about the $20, I just wanted to do healthy habits each day. The healthy habits were not just for diet or exercise related but healthy for your mind, body, spirit, etc. Here are a couple examples:
- Eat whole grains today
- Watch a classic movie with family or a friend
- Spend one hour helping someone else
- Read a fiction book for 20 minutes
- Have a "no TV" night at home
- Tune out the world and breathe deeply for 10 minutes
- Recycle unneeded papers
You get the idea. One of the activities was "Do a random act of kindness". I wasn't sure what I wanted to do with this one and I thought about going through some type of drive-thru either food or coffee and order something and then tell the employee that I wanted to pay for the car behind me also. That way the person behind me would come up to the window and expect to pay but be told that the car in front of them already paid for them. I would be gone by that point and they would hopefully be thankful and appreciative by the gesture of a stranger. I didn't do that though but it's a great idea and I do plan to do that at least once this year. I instead decided to write an email to a coworker. I happened to be going through some old work related writings that were three years old. (We have to write a monthly narrative each month and submit to our manager.) I found that I gave some nice compliments to one of my coworkers, who still works there, however we are on opposite sides of the suite and do not work within the same department nor do we even see each other that often. I thought it would be nice to email her and let her know of the compliments and kind words I said about her in one of my narratives from 2007. She responded that I had made her day and that she missed me being in the department. It wasn't until after I sent the email and received her response that I thought that was a perfect random act of kindness and used that to complete my bingo card square.
I was the recipient of a random act of kindness this past week. I wrote that one of my resolutions was to write hand-written letters and notes. I received a package in the mail and received a lovely homemade stationery kit from my blogging friend,
Ang. Ang and I have only met once but since I read her blog, I feel like I really know her and she probably feels the same about me. She said she wanted to help me with my resolution as well as helping one of her friends by purchasing her stationery for me to use. Thank you, Ang! Your kindness to me has and will go a long way. Here are some pictures of the stationery I received. Ang, if you haven't already received my hand-written thank you note in the mail on of course the stationery you gave me, you will be receiving it very shortly.
We shouldn't need a bingo card or a $20 incentive to do these sorts of activities and I'd like to challenge you to do a random act of kindness at least once this year. We all probably do random acts of kindness frequently because it's part of our nature, however try and think about something you want to do for someone else. To give you some help, I found a website that gives you kindness ideas.
Some are better than others and many of them do not require any money. It's worth it to go through the whole list (there are 210 suggestions) to see what is right for you. I do not want to push any of these ideas or concepts on you and I only tell them to you as I think you will find happiness within yourself as well as onto others. We can always use more happiness in our lives.
