World Kindness Day

• 08/11/2024

On Wednesday, 13th November it is World Kindness Day.   It seems a shame that we have to have a specific day to promote being kind. 

In a world where things are ever changing, where our daily lives are becoming more busy and challenging  both at home and at work (and don’t mention the daily commute!), where it’s increasingly hard to get our work-life balance right and the world news is increasingly more depressing wouldn’t it be great if we all felt respected, cared for and included?  Where our world felt like a safe place for us all to feel courageous, valued and have a sense of purpose?  Where we showed integrity and responsibility in everything that we did?

Imagine a world where we all pay it forward.  Where people look out for each other.  It only takes one little act of kindness a day – from all of us. 

From a young age we’re often told to be kind – to other people and ourselves – but it’s not always that easy is it?  When you’re feeling stressed, upset or annoyed with friends, family or colleagues, it can sometimes feel hard to be as kind as you’d like to be.  But being kind can actually have a positive effect on your mental wellbeing.

Neuroscience shows us that kindness activates the ‘reward-system’ of the brain – the same part that lights up if you eat something tasty or get a nice suprise.  It’s sometimes called the ‘warm glow’ feeling.  And we get this warm glow both when we receive an act of kindness AND when we offer kindness to others.  And even though we often do kind things to help other people without any intention to make ourselves feel good, that is a happy extra benefit!

One study even showed that just reflecting on the times we’ve been kind in the past can give us this feeling and make us feel more connected with people.

And kindness spreads!  It has a ripple effect.  If someone has been kind to you it makes you feel great and makes you want to pay it forward and be kind to someone else.

We tend to spend so much time and energy focusing on the negatives that affect us that when a moment of kindness appears, it’s as if a fog has been lifted – just for a moment.  It’s lovely.  It makes us feel good.  It makes us smile.  But then the fog rolls back in and we go back to the norm of our daily lives and forget about that short, passing moment of delight.

But what if we started being intentional about not only noticing and absorbing them when they happen to us, but we created those moments for others too?  What if we made it a point to go slightly outside of our comfort zone at least once a day to make someone smile?  What if we stopped thinking about them as random acts of kindness and started thinking about them as intentional acts of kindness?

There are things we do every day with intention, yet we don’t even think about them – wake up, brush our teeth, get dressed, drive to work – all part of our invisible routine.  What if we added a moment of kindness to our invisible routine?  What if we woke up and as we turned off the alarm, we immediately send an uplifting message to a friend?  Made our other half a cup of tea? Or during the morning commute what if we let the guy merge into traffic with a wave and a smile instead of feeling upset or slighted?

As we acknowledge World Kindness Day why don’t you look for ways to make kindness the norm in your daily life?  It’s a great day to begin building a new routine which means including intentional moments of kindness, laughter and delight.  It also means taking a moment to enjoy and recognise when those things are happening.

Kindness starts with one. One smile.  One compliment.  One cup of coffee.  One conversation.

Why not smile at someone on the train or give up your seat on the tram?  Thank someone for doing something for you at work?  Make the team a coffee? Stick a nice message on a post it note on someone’s desk?  Pick up some litter?  Write a positive review for a favourite local business? Or even let someone goes first in the queue?

Your one small action can change someone’s day or week.  So let’s get the kindness ripple spreading throughout our fabulous legal community, one small act at a time.

And don’t forget to be a little kinder to yourself too!