welcome to The CODES of Momentum

THE IMPORTANCE OF SELF-KINDNESS IN ACTION

FROM A SMALL EXPERIMENT TO THE GLOBAL CASE FOR
SELF-KINDNESS

Following a 2 day company retreat in late 2015, Dani Saveker was deep in thought as she travelled home. The event has raised an interesting area for her around ‘judgement’. Judgement is something, through years of research and the GLAS methodology, Dani knew was connected to a lack of kindness.

No matter how much we want to live a fulfilled and happy life, how amazing we want our relationships to be or how much success we crave in our careers; if we keep behaving as we are, we will keep on getting what we’re getting; soaring mental illness statistics, addiction, toxic behaviour and a general feeling of being stuck and overwhelmed.

Dani Saveker set out on 1st January 2016 to run a 31-day experiment to - through a lived experience – understand more about kindness and judgement, which were fundamental components of the framework she had designed, called the Global Life Alignment System (GLAS). This experiment turned out to be a much more significant journey than she expected, eventually running over 5 ½ years, bringing her to 2000 consecutive daily acts of kindness on 23rd June 2021.

As she approached this milestone, she processed the many lessons that she had gained during this time – time which also included: working with thousands of clients, a year-long assessment and data collection, reading a book a week, and several significant events that happened along the way – including Coronavirus, a hip replacement and the loss of two people to suicide.

The result was to be an investigation into the area that she felt was most challenging, to shine a light on self-kindness.

The GLAS Group team set about researching this as a specific topic to ascertain what self-kindness is, how it shows up, what gets in the way and how we can overcome barriers to it.

Visit "inspire kindness" for Dani's past videos

infographic for coping strategies and behaviours
infographic for those in positions of responsibility
overall infographic for areas of concern

Define it

Let’s start with the word ‘kind’. It originates from Old English :cynde" meaning ‘natural, native’ and suggests that it is the ‘with the feeling of relatives for each other’ (hence, ‘kin’).
When we add ‘ness’ to the word, we are denoting action, quality, or state.
For this initiative, we are saying that kindness means to act and consider with the feeling of a positive relationship.
As we particularly focus on ‘self-kindness’ - it highlights the need to view - and treat - ourselves as positively as we do those that we treasure the most and who we love, protect and support.
QUESTION IT

We have been researching what self-kindness is, and how this translates into people’s everyday experience - what gets in the way, what prevents us from living with self-kindness, and how we can perhaps create habits and strategies to improve this.
We have interviewed hundreds of people with varying backgrounds.
We have run an ‘Understanding” assessment for over 12 months.
Most recently we asked people specifically about their view of self-kindness.
We created what is now called ‘CODES’ of Momentum
HIGHLIGHT it
Our research highlighted a number of key themes:
- Perception
- Language and Jargon
- How We Treat Ourselves
- What We Are Taught
- Valuing Ourselves
- Interaction With The World
- Comparisons and Expectations
- Roles, Generations and Society
- Banter and Bitching
- Leadership and Responsibility
- Impact & Events
- Drifting and Treading Water
CHANGE it

Talking about self-kindness conjures up images of fluffiness, flowers, and bubble baths for many people – the ‘sandals and candles’ image as it were. It goes way deeper, and people shouldn’t feel guilty about investing in their own well-being and being kind to themselves. Through our research we’ve tried to tackle the image of self-kindness, to make people understand why looking after themselves isn’t simply a ‘nice-to-have’ but key to living a happy, fulfilled life.