Week 46: Practice Kindness

This week included World Kindness Day, so it seemed the appropriate week to blog about goal number 14 on my 60-until-60 list:

Practice a mindset of kindness and gratitude and journal weekly about reflections

This is one of those goals that is more about developing a mindset than one that you can check off of a list.  However, I haven't missed a week of writing in my "reflections journal" noting the positive things that I experience on a daily basis!

Every day I have a goal of doing these four things:

1.  Exercise (Always getting in at least 10,000 steps!)
2.  Learn something (Haven't missed a day of Spanish study in over 250 days!)
3.  Have some positive social interaction
4.  Help someone in some way

The positive social interaction and helping people are pretty loosely defined. This might be as simple as smiling and giving a compliment to someone. But doing these things regularly have really helped me intentionally practice kindness. I was very pleased to see that many of my AirBnB guests have used the word, 'kind' to describe me!

And I feel so grateful to be the recipient of kindness constantly from friends, family, and even strangers.  Every text message, email, phone call, and conversation is an opportunity to be kind and to have gratitude.

I became interested in kindness and it's relationship to happiness many years ago.  I've been subscribing to a Random Acts of Kindness newsletter and  I've blogged many times about kindness including this post which included 100 ideas of ways to be kind.

A few examples of the kindnesses I've received and that I'm grateful for this week:

• The beautiful card in the mail I received with this fun article about an "80 birthday project"

• Getting invited to a delicious home-cooked dinner by a friend who's a great cook!

• Attending the Monet exhibit at the Denver Art Museum as an invited guest of a friend

What worked well 

• Practicing gratitude and kindness has become a wonderful habit that has absolutely added to my happiness.
• I feel like this goal is a lot easier for me now that I'm not working full-time. I'm much more patient and less judgmental these days.
• Kindness is very contagious. It's interesting that even the tone we use when we speak to someone makes a huge difference in their responses to us.
• Being more intentional about this has made me become a better person with stronger relationships.

What could have been better

Normally, I have at least one place at which I'm regularly volunteering. It's kind of ironic that this year, when I'm not working, I'm also not volunteering regularly anywhere. With all my travels and projects, I haven't done much that requires commitment.  

Even though I'm not a committed volunteer anywhere right now, I'm realizing that helping others is something we can all do every day, just by listening and providing words of encouragement and support.