Mental Health Awareness Kindness Series (2)

HOW GOOD ARE YOU AT RECEIVING KINDNESS?

During my first year of daily acts of kindness, I tried to be imaginative about the things I was doing. I didn’t really want to be spending much money - especially as those acts didn’t have the same feeling of importance to me. The recipients of my kindness included friends, family and colleagues - but increasingly they began to include strangers. Whether I was giving lunch to a homeless person or complimenting a lady on how beautiful the colour of her dress was on her, it started to open my world of kindness connectivity.There were 3 big things I learned about giving to strangersit takes an amount of courage to approach someone you don’t know - whoever they may be - to say or do something kindYou get better at kindness over time and it’s a skill that can be transferredWe (humans) are not very good at receiving kindnessNow I’m in my 5th year of understanding kindness, I realise that points 1 and 2 are linked. We fear rejection so what if someone rejects our kindness? Are they rejecting us? The answer is that it’s not about kindness when you think like that but it’s about you. If you’re giving for the right reason, rejection isn’t so much of an issue.The next step on from this is how much we don’t feel deserving of kindness and therefore become awkward about a) asking for help and b) receiving it gracefully. Perhaps we have become untrusting of motives? Perhaps we just need to learn to accept the love and kindness of others. Perhaps we need to realise it is not a weakness to need others and their help.My realisation has been that receiving help and kindness is also a courageous act. I’ve got much better at receiving kindness with grace.