Pay It Forward With Kindness
The German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer once wrote:
“Compassion is the basis of all morality”
With World Kindness Day around the corner on November 13th, it is a good time to think about offering kindness and experiencing the positive feeling of doing good deeds.
We have been taught from a young age that being kind to one another is an important virtue of character. All the religious scriptures preach about the spirit of compassion. If you think about it, even our personal experiences may have something to say in its favor. Can you think of a situation where you went out of your way to do something seemingly insignificant yet heartfelt for someone and truly enjoyed seeing the other person’s face light up with a smile?
Guess what – it’s neither merely a lesson we picked up nor just a fuzzy feeling.
The act and rewards of kindness are backed up by science. Psychological research, particularly in the area of positive psychology, shows plenty of evidence to support the notion that not only do acts of kindness make the recipient happy, they bring joy to the doer as well!
According to a leading contemporary researcher of positive psychological concepts like kindness, psychologist Sonia Lyubomirsky has found that acts of kindness make us happier in the following ways:
Being kind to others leads us to think of others through more positive lens and fosters trust. It brings about within us a sense of community and interdependence.
Acts of kindness helps to relieve the feelings of distress and discomfort for someone, which in turn enhances our own mood.
It increases our feelings of awareness and gratitude. In other words, kindness makes us reflect upon our own good fortune.
The shift from focusing on our own troubles to considering those of others helps bring us feel connected and changes our outlook for the better.
Acts of kindness can add a sense of value and meaning to our lives, such as by volunteering for a cause. In fact, volunteering is often associated with what we call a “helper’s high”, leading to enhanced feeling of well-being and self-worth and diminished depressive symptoms.
It also adds to our feeling of agency – the feeling that while many situations and circumstances are beyond our control, there are still things we can do to make a difference. In other words, through kindness we gain a sense of mastery and an element of personal control.
Finally, but perhaps most importantly, kindness has an infectious quality about it that positively affects everyone around: the people being kind, the people on the receiving end, and the people it carries it over to as a result of the enhanced mood. Kindness can start a chain reaction of positive consequences personally and socially. Other people appreciate you for it, you feel good about it, you build social capital which ensures you may also receive help when you need it and it satisfies the fundamental human need for connection. And then the helped becomes a helper for someone else, a ripple effect we also call “paying it forward”.
Practicing kindness on a daily basis can include a variety of things ranging from spontaneous and random acts towards a stranger to a more conscious effort to be there for a loved one in need. It could include saying thank you to someone, giving compliments freely but genuinely, feeding a stray animal, volunteering for a cause, donating to charity, lending a supportive ear or helping out a friend. Don’t forget to include yourself in your practice of kindness – let yourself take breaks, say no sometimes without guilt and take the space you need.
Like gratitude, kindness remains one of the most underrated yet essential simple joys of being human. The effects are instantaneous and contagious. Don’t keep it to yourself – share your kindness and let it spread. Especially during an era filled with anxious uncertainty about the future, a drop of kindness can make an ocean of difference and bring hope into the present moment.
Author: Debanjali Saha
Debanjali Saha is a counselling psychologist who works primarily with young adults using a compassion-focused approach in therapy. She is very passionate about Self-Compassion, a topic she has been researching since 2014. She has started a wellness community called Couch of Compassion, where she tries to help people relate to themselves with kindness through her writing and workshops.
