“The chief human need is to experience love.” – Chosen to be a Soldier
February is known as the month that celebrates love, but what if we practiced showing love doing the most good through acts of kindness and compassion every day?
Consider donating time or food to your local charity
Whether you donate time, money or food it helps! More people than ever are in need and it’s not just the homeless. Children make up a large percentage of those needing food. Even with so much food in America many children and adults face poverty and hunger in every county. In 2016, 41 million people struggle with hunger in the United States, including 13 million children. (FeedingAmerica.org)
Recycle your Gently Used Clothes and Items to Your Local Thrift store
When you shop, or give to a Salvation Army Family Store, you are supporting local initiatives as well as our Adult Rehabilitation centers that help those battling addictions, progress towards recovery. A gently used item that you give brings families back together and is saving lives.
Send a hand-written Thank you note
In the age of digital our email box is overflowing and our ding from text messages doesn’t ever seem to stop. When was the last time you wrote a thank you note? When someone opens a special thank you note just from you the smile you bring them might just make their day! There are also health benefits for you! According to Harvard health, gratitude is strongly and consistently associated with greater happiness. Gratitude helps people feel more positive emotions, relish good experiences, improves their health, deal with adversity, and build strong relationships.
Smile
When you smile, you will feel happier and brighten someone else’s day.
Psychology Today has found that smiling helps transform you and the world around you. Each time you smile it activates neural messaging that benefits your health and happiness. You never know if the person you smile at is having a bad day and your smile may be one thing that makes their day better. Smiling is contagious, so smile!
Focus on Being a Better Listener
Practicing better listening skills and taking an interest on how others are doing is a self-less attitude.
According to FastCompany.com, ways to be a better listener include:
1) Listen to learn, not to be polite
2) Quiet your agenda
3) Ask more questions than you give answers
4) Pay attention to your talk/listen ratio
5) Repeat back what you heard
6) Wait until someone is done talking before you respond
Hold the door open for the person behind you without expecting a Thank you
How often have we opened the door for someone and not received a thank you in return and got upset? Keep doing good, keep opening doors and be kind. Open the door with the intention of giving and not receiving. If you don’t get a thank you, realize you have sown an act of kindness without expecting anything in return and that is awesome. If you get a thank you that’s even better!
If everyone would do little things that they would like done for them it adds up over time. You cannot control others but you can control what you do and setting a good example of what kindness is and should be is a great place to start.
Pay for someone’s coffee or food in the drive-thru or pay for a stranger’s meal
Recently, at a McDonalds drive thru, 167 drivers paid it forward. It took one person to pay for a meal that started a ripple effect. Frank Ward, the owner of the Scottsburg McDonald’s, described the chain as an “act of kindness.”
When the woman, whom Hostetler described as being in her early 60s, saw there was a man with four kids in the car behind her, she told Hostetler she’d pay for his $36 food order too.
“She paid it in full and told me to tell the dad Happy Father’s Day,” Hostetler recalled.
When Hostetler told the man that his four Happy Meals and other food was paid for, he offered to pay for the next two cars behind him. (ABC News)
One act of kindness can affect many people you will never meet and you do not know what that act of kindness can do! Keep sowing love, compassion and kindness one act of kindness at a time.
Love is Good and being kind and loving others never goes out of style. Here is to being kind every day!
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