Bridget, who teaches mindfulness-based stress reduction, argues kindness is a practice you can cultivate. She shares how receiving unexpected soaps from a friend shifted her mood, then challenges you to try random acts: anonymous donations, calling a neighbor, paying for someone's parking. Research shows helping others improves your own wellbeing.
Hello, it's Bridget. I thought I would just hop on and do we talk about kindness? So yes, there's a lot of stuff about you know hashtag be kind, and we all agree that it's a good idea definitely to be kind. And you know actually most people are kind. I mean, the kindness is unbelievable at this time of the pandemic. So many people helping other people, you know, donating money, delivering groceries, you know, going to work on the front line. So much kindness, just staying home, self-isolating, an act of kindness. There's a lot of kindness about. And so we are generally, as a people, kind people. I really feel that through my classes, through other people I know. And just from looking around at the world, there is a lot of kindness. But did you know that you can practice kindness as an actual practice? So lots of things that I teach are to do with making new habits, new ways of being, doing something deliberately to get a different result with the mind, to change our mood, to change how we are. And kindness is one of those things. And it seems like, you know, fluffy and pink and that kind of stuff. But actually, to do kindness as a practice is not so easy. And the results of it can be really interesting. I was thinking about doing this before, and then I thought, if I just tell people be kind, they'll not— they'll go, yeah, yeah, we knew that. And we are already, and we're doing all these things. But I want to challenge you. I want to challenge you to do some random Random acts of kindness. It's actually something that I get my MBSR students to do. And the course that I teach comes from the Oxford Mindfulness Centre. So there's lots of research about random acts of kindness and how helpful it is to us, to our wellbeing. So if you're feeling down, to do something kind for somebody else makes a big difference to you. Now today, I'm I'm thinking about this because I got these lovely products. See this? This field day stuff. This local company, field day, and a lovely friend of mine. She sent me soaps and all. She just sent me these randomly. It's not my birthday. There's no good reason to be sending me these things. She just wanted to support the local company, and she wanted to say thank you to me for being a friend, for offering mindfulness classes, and. You know, to be honest, it's, it says more about her than it says about me. It says she's a lovely person because apart from anything else, she's just out of hospital. She has 4 children. She's supposed to be working from home. There's a lot on and she still has time to be kind. So that kind of kindness really touches you. So I am lucky and I feel happy to be a recipient of kindness, but actually when you do an act of kindness like that, You're always, always the first recipient of your own kindness. So this is what the challenge is: to do something without expecting a reward, to give money anonymously, to do something nice for somebody in your household without actually expecting them to thank you. Um, You know, make somebody a cup of tea. It doesn't have to be spending any money. It can be just simple calling somebody, asking them how they are. It can be knocking on a neighbour's door to see if they're doing okay, from keeping your distance. But, you know, the thing is that you do that act of kindness and then you notice what effect it's having on you, what effect it's having on your mood. All the research shows that actually when we help others, we're really helping ourselves. And, you know, it is a bit harder at the minute. You know, sometimes my class, they, they do things like they want to go and help some homeless people, or maybe they, they buy somebody random a coffee. And one lady, Kathy, came up with this great idea of, um, paying for a day's parking and leaving it on the parking meter and saying, feel free to use this. That's great. So there's so many creative ideas, so many creative ways that you can practice kindness. So, um, I would encourage you to just do something, uh, that you wouldn't normally do. Um, something kind for somebody else, something to make somebody else smile, and then notice how you feel when you do that. Um, and I'd love to hear about it. So please write me in the comments, send me a message, let me know. And, um, apart from anything else, if you want to be kind to yourself, which is really important, we have to practice self-kindness. Um, Please come along to my daily mindfulness classes. That's my act of kindness. I'm offering these classes free to support people at this time. It's a perfect time to practice mindfulness, perfect time to meditate during this lockdown. And I've been doing these now since the 19th of March, and I'm going to continue into May because there's enough people want to keep going. So we're going to keep going, and you are free to join. Just jump on my website. And thank you for all the kind things that you are doing there, because really it's kindness that is the thing that bonds us as people, that unites us together, and that gives us hope and helps us to continue. So thank you for all your many acts of kindness. Thank you.
