World Kindness Week might seem incredibly annoying to a lot of you, and/or hopelessly naive. After all, the headlines have been much bleaker than usual lately, especially with wars raging in the Middle East and Europe.

However, World Kindness Week is here again - whether we like it or not, and I would argue that against a dark backdrop of global events, it is more important than ever to focus attention and energy on kindness. But why? Isn’t kindness just for milk and cookies and grandma and random saints shuffling around in their robes?

The answer is a resounding NO, because it turns out that unassuming little old kindness is actually incredibly kick-ass!

There are two huge reasons to be kind. First of all - you will be directly helping other people, and as we discussed in previous posts, our social networks are tightly bound, and Karma is not just a bitch, Karma can be exponentially abundant when infused with premium doses of kindness.

The second benefit to being kind is that being kind has an immediate and empirically proven impact on your own happiness. Researchers at Kindness.org have dug into the topic, and the answer is more than conclusive…

A meta-analysis research project found that across more than 20 different studies, kindness uniformly made the kindness giver more happy!

You can read all the details at Kindess.org.

For those of you not overly familiar with meta-analysis infographics - all those green dots heading to the right hand side are data points from multiple studies all correlating the relationship between kindness and happiness.

How to Get Started?

The team at Kindness.org has identified more than 1,000 different ways to be kind - so there is no shortage of ways for you to get started. They even have training on how to be more kind. Kindness - like any habit, is a skill that you can practice. However, if you are stuck, here are some ideas to get kinding! The site RandomActsofKindness.org has additional resources and ideas!

As we celebrate World Kindness Week - remember that Kindness is a ZERO COST renewable resource that brings immediate and long term benefits to you and everyone around you - and even people you’ll never meet!

So, what are you waiting for?
Get out there, and get kind!