One of the best and easiest ways to feel good is by being kind to others. According to a 2016-study from Oxford University, a few random acts of kindness can cause a small, but significant, improvement in your wellbeing. Another study by the University of British Columbia found that such acts of kindness can help people forget their social anxiety to mingle more easily.
And you know what`s even better? The more you show kindness to people, the more people will follow with their own acts of kindness.
According to this study by the University of California, acts of kindness spread surprisingly easily which means making people feel better may cause them to do the same for someone else. So begin with yourself and try these 24 acts of kindness to cheer you up this summer.
- Send your favorite writer, blogger or journalist a warm email and tell them how much you liked their work.
- Expressing gratitude makes us healthier. Tell those who matter how much they mean to you. Walter Green spent a year traveling across America to tell every one of his mentors, friends, and beloved family members how much they meant to him. And it changed his life forever.
- Put some flowers on a stranger`s grave. It will make you grateful.
- Spend a day at a nursing home, make small talk and be genuinely interested. People in some of these places can spend months without a single visitor. If you don`t have enough time, you can call your grandma, uncle or aunt, or at least help a senior on the street.
- Similarly, volunteer at a soup kitchen
- Give someone a genuine compliment; it will mean a lot. Most people don`t like the ugly, scared, worthless, ashamed and inadequate person they think they are.
- Buy a sandwich and give it to anyone on the street who`s working late.
- You can also pay for someone else`s order when you eat out. Or pay for people`s groceries.
- Buy a dozen cups of coffee and tea, hit your office building an hour early and ask anyone already working if they need a drink. Michael Bloomberg used this kind gesture to network with Wall Street’s top CEOs.
- Sit with someone who`s eating alone. Introduce yourself and make some friends. If you work in a place with a lot of people, plan to have a meal every day with a different person.
- Generously tip a waiter or a drive-through worker. The look on their face when they get the money is worth every penny you pull out of your pocket.
- Surprise your roommate/partner/spouse and do their dishes.
- Offer to babysit someone else`s child. Let them have some fun and spend the night making friends with a toddler.
- Mow a neighbor’s lawn. It’s one of the easiest ways to make friends with them.
- Memorize a few good jokes and cheer someone up with one of them. Make them laugh really hard.
- Interrupt nobody for a day. Let people talk and express themselves until they stop. If someone’s having a bad day, don`t judge, throw solutions or one-up them. Just listen and rephrase what they`re saying to show that you understand them.
- Tape change to the parking meter
- Each day, write one thing you like about your partner in a notebook then give it to them by the end of the month. The founder of Success Magazine, Darren Hardy, did that for a year and he swears by it.
- Donate your old clothes to someone who needs them.
- Better yet, donate new clothes to someone who needs them.
- Compliment someone else’s work and say ‘Thank you” to social workers.
- Teach a newbie at work a trick of your own.
- Leave an inspirational message on someone’s windshield.
- Say “How’s your day?” to a cashier before ordering.
Enjoy your summer and enjoy spreading kindness.