What is Random Acts of Kindness?
Friday 13th November 2020 is World Kindness Day which is a campaign shared by Random Acts of Kindness and Kindness UK. The campaign is celebrated worldwide annually and is a day to celebrate and promote kindness in all its forms. World Kindness Day falls on the same day and unites people in kindness globally.
Why take part?
You may recognise the expression “it is better to give than receive”, but did you know this is backed up by research? People who are kind and compassionate see clear benefits to their wellbeing and happiness. They may even live longer.Being kind to others can also help reduce stress and improve our emotional wellbeing.
Through the 5 Ways to Wellbeing it has been proven that by doing something nice for a friend, family member or a stranger can actually help to improve your own health and wellbeing. Want to know more about how helping others can help you? Click here to download the Kindness Health Factsheet! So whether you volunteer your time, help out someone in need or thank someone, the smallest action can make a difference and not only will you be helping to improve someone else’s wellbeing but you might also see improvements to your own.
What can I do?
Random Acts of Kindness have developed lots of useful ideas which you can use during the week so that you can do things that you feel comfortable with and will help you to improve your own health and wellbeing while helping others. Ideas include what you can do:
- Online
- To help protect the environment
- At work
- In school
- In your Community
- For strangers
- With your family
Whatever you do to get involved with the campaign, or if you’re carrying your kindness forward into your month or trying to integrate it into everyday, you can post about it online to let everyone know how you are helping others by posting with: #worldkindnessday #makekindnessthenorm to help your community understand the importance of doing nice things for others.
The Mental Health Foundation have developed a guide to show the positive impact helping others can have on your own mental health, including some tips and suggestions to inspire you.
Want to do more than one week?
A Random Acts of Kindness calendar has been developed so if you feel like you want to try to do good things for other people more and incorporate new activities into your daily life then why not check it out? You don’t have to complete something everyday but you may feel the benefits of completing a random act of kindness a few days a week. Click here to download the November 2020 calendar!
Check out the video below for more on making kindness the norm.
