£0.00 0 items
World Kindness Day
You cannot do a kindness too soon, for you never know how soon it will be too late...”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
World Kindness Day is celebrated annually on 13th November. On this day, participants attempt to make the world a better place by celebrating and promoting good deeds and pledging acts of kindness, either as individuals or as organisations.
The human givens approach identifies attention as one of our vital emotional needs – both giving and receiving it is a form of nutrition. Meeting our emotional needs well and in balance, defends us against mental ill health. So, by taking a brief moment out of your day to do a good deed or perform a small act of kindness you will not only bring happiness, warmth, care and compassion into someone else’s day, you will also help to meet both yours and their emotional need for attention – which is a very rewarding act of kindness in itself.
Kindness to others also reduces social anxiety
When socially anxious people are encouraged to perform little acts of kindness, they report less daily social anxiety than those socially anxious people who don’t… Learn more >
Kind words can be short and easy to speak, but their echoes are truly endless”
Mother Teresa, nun & missionary (1910-1997)
Julia Welstead
Julia Welstead wrote a fantastic article earlier this year about acts of kindness and how they can benefit us during this time of uncertainty…
Late February 1971. I was eight, and in my usual mildly anxious state whilst waiting to clamber aboard the bus, unsure if it was the right number (my short-sightedness as yet undiagnosed) to take me home after school, when I became aware that the woman in front of me was in some difficulty. She was two pence short of her bus fare and the driver was refusing to let her on, despite her plea that the recent UK decimalisation had confused her.
Something twigged: I had a spare, shiny-new, two pence piece in my pocket. With a heady mix of pride and shyness I tapped the exasperated woman on her shoulder and proffered the coin. Both she and the driver looked surprised at my offering, but nevertheless accepted it and completed the transaction. Wobbly-legged and crimson-faced I bought my own ticket and scooted into the nearest seat to hide, but as my embarrassment ebbed, new feelings flowed. I felt kind of taller, more capable, cheerful. My internal anxieties seemed to have vanished and it was the first time I got home with my bus ticket not folded into a tiny cube… read more
You may also like...
Guard well within yourself that treasure, kindness. Know how to give without hesitation, how to lose without regret, how to acquire without meanness”
George Sand