When I am walking down the street, I hold my body with my heart exposed and when I see a passerby, I look deep into their eyes and smile :-). For me such smiling is an act of kindness, and I am on an active pursuit to make as many people smile as I can :-)!
If smiling at strangers doesn't seem like your kind of thing, how about sending out a quite prayer for the tiered or worried looking stranger?
A study published in December 2011 showed that when doctors quietly preformed a loving-kindness meditation for their patients, their patients felt better even though the patients had no idea that their doctor had preformed the meditation for them! (The patients were given a health form to fill out, and while they were filling out the forms, the doctors pretended to be reading something, while actually doing the meditation!)
Besides the study I mentioned above, there is a lot more scientific evidence proving that when you perform acts of kindness you will be happier! Research has demonstrated that engaging in acts of kindness daily contributes to the happiness of the individuals performing the acts, as well as helps them to develop into kind people. As long as they do not feel overwhelmed by their activities, they will become more positive over all, and experience increased physical health and well-being!
In 2006, for instance, a study about how happy people become happier was written up in the Journal of Happiness Studies. That study found that if people become more conscious of their kind behavior in daily life through a counting kindnesses intervention they will experience benefits toward developing sustainable happiness. A counting kindness intervention is where you perform acts of kindness and count how many you perform. I usually prescribe five acts of kindness a day for my happiness coaching clients.
This research shows that people who perform acts of kindness may experience, “(a) an increasing wish to be kind to others (b) more strongly recognize themselves as kind people and/or (c) more frequently enact kind behaviors towards others.” (Otake, Shimai, Tanaka-Matsumi, Otsui, & Frederickson, 2006).
In short, being kind to others has the potential to make people’s motivations, thoughts and actions more positive, and consequently contribute to their sustainable happiness.
If even science is telling us that our sustainable happiness is likely to be positively impacted by being kind to others, what do we have to lose?
In real life, as the California Chapter President for the Happiness Club, I decided to devote a meeting to performing Random Acts of Kindness. Molly is a member of our Happiness Club. When she first joined us she never thought she would be happy. Yet she took a leap of faith and made the happiness decision. Well after that happiness decision she needed tools to help her maintain that decision so she volunteered to do five random acts of kindness every day for 30 days!
When I checked in with her a few weeks after the meeting, she said, “I feel like an angel on Earth! I continually look for things to do to help people every chance I get. And now, when I need help there is ALWAYS someone there to help me which was never the case before I started performing the random acts of kindness.”
She recommends EVERY PERSON perform such Random Acts of Kindness because the positive change that occurs in your life is unbelievable! Molly has been happy every day since she realized that HAPPINESS IS A DECISION. Random Acts of Kindness is only one of her tools to help her live her sustainable happy life, yet it is a key tool!
So go on, make the commitment to preform random acts of kindness everyday :). Just imagine, soon you too can begin feeling like an angel on earth!
Need more help or inspiration to to start feeling like an angel on earth?
Visit my self-help store for some great tools!
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Dr. Aymee Coget, a widely-known happiness expert, has more than 15 years of experience in positive psychology. Through the Happiness Makeover™, a program developed by Coget, she teaches people how to achieve happiness and handle life's challenges. She also serves as CEO and founder of the American Happiness Association, a science-backed nonprofit designed to educate individuals and organizations about how to be happier, and was nominated for CNN Hero of the Year in 2011.
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