Mental Health Awareness Kindness Series (1)

WHAT IS KINDNESS?

Each day this week I'm taking a straightforward question, that I had to face when I started my research into kindness, and exploring it.

When I started the kindness experiment on 1st January 2016, I thought I knew what kindness was. I was set to complete a month of daily acts. Two weeks into the experiment something happened and I realised I had more to understand. 

I was driving along and had already done “an act” of kindness earlier in the morning. I was running a little later that I wanted and the traffic was heavy. As I crawled along on the bumper of the car in front, I spotted a car looking to edge themselves into our queueing traffic. As their eyes locked with mine I nudged my car a little further forward so they couldn’t possibly fit in. 

Then, right at that moment, the realisation hit me that doing an act of kindness isn’t what kindness is about to me. I couldn’t do one thing and think that was good enough to excuse my judgement and intolerance of others. I stopped in that moment and beckoned the driver to enter the queue in front of me. I instantly calmed and realised they wouldn’t get anywhere much quicker than I was going to and perhaps they had something more important than me to get to.

That was the start of my journey of over 1500 days of kindness - and still counting. 

So what exactly is kindness to you and how do you welcome it into your life?

Are you like I was and do “good deeds” and then judge who receives them and when - based on whether you feel like it or not?

Having shared this story with thousands of children between the ages of 5 and 16 (as acts of kindness), I realised I needed a definition. This was what I arrived at and follow every day: 

To give without exception or expectation starting with yourself