A part of kindness consists in loving people more than they deserve.
— Joseph Joubert
Where I grew up, a good old fashioned Catholic wake was the norm. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the tradition, a wake usually consisted of the presence of the casket in a viewing room; a kneeler in front of the casket so prayers could be said, a short conversation of condolence with family members and a Rosary led by a priest. If the person hadn’t died in an awful accident leaving them unfit to be seen, the casket was open.
I’m sure that this tradition probably evolved from the older tradition of Continue reading » Healing Kindness
Make 2012 the year you commit daily acts of random kindness – it’ll escalate wellness all over the place!
Double Whammy: The occurrence of two SUPER AWESOME things/events at one time
— UrbanDictionary.com
Today I’m advocating that you turn your attention, your efforts, your energy toward doing random acts of kindness for others. And already a voice inside your head objects: Wait a minute! It’s the beginning of a new year and I really need to focus on my own goals! But that’s what Dan Rockwell, a.k.a. the Leadership Freak, calls “wrong-headed thinking”:
We’ve all heard people wishing they had more opportunities. This happens for two reasons:
- Comparing our opportunities with others makes us want what others have. Envy and greed are, however, partners with emptiness and frustration.
- Wrong-headed thinking about opportunities. Opportunities are not primarily about getting. Getting is the result of opportunity not the opportunity itself.
Opportunities are your chance to add value before receiving benefit…You have more opportunities than you can imagine because opportunities are about giving. The more value you add, the greater the opportunity.
Ok – so here’s the good news: I’m not suggesting you spend all day doing good – nope, I’m only suggesting that you devote about three minutes a day to this “doing good for others” thing. And the best news of all: your actions will create a cascading double whammy effect.
Do the Double Whammy Twofer
Two wellness increases for the price of one… that’s what you get when you perform random acts of kindness:
- You reduce your stress by doing something good for Other People (OPs).
- OPs then have something good to put on their What-Went-Well List at the end of the day which increases their sense of well being.
There you have it, wellness spread like peanut butter on bread – all over the place! But in only three minutes??? Come on, how can that be? Well, I’m suggesting that you do TEN of what Jason F. Wright dubs the Continue reading » Escalate Flourishing with a Double Whammy Two-fer
originally published March 24, 2010 and includes these comments
Don’t be yourself, be someone a little nicer.
— Mignon McLaughlin
One of the things that Ellie and I do to improve and expand this blog is to wander (others surf, we wander) the internet searching for people and ideas that we can introduce to you. This weekend, I found an article with a different view of the “small stuff” of life. The author is a wife, mother, blogger and psychology student. She was reflecting on her weekend and the oft quoted, “Rule number one is, don’t sweat the Continue reading » Lost in the Small Stuff
It’s so curious: one can resist tears and ‘behave’ very well in the hardest hours of grief. But then someone makes you a friendly sign behind a window, or one notices that a flower that was in bud only yesterday has suddenly blossomed, or a letter slips from a drawer… and everything collapses.
— Colette
Last week, one of the women at work lost her 93 year old grandmother. It wasn’t entirely unexpected and they had been very close since my friend was a little girl. Expected or not, when someone we care about dies, it is always difficult.
Sending a sympathy card or note is what we do when a friend suffers a loss. That’s why Hallmark was invented, to help us say what we don’t know how to say ourselves. When a friend loses someone close to them, we instinctively want to provide comfort. For me, what I want is to Continue reading » Growing Up Means Figuring Out How to Do the Hard Stuff
Don’t be yourself, be someone a little nicer.
— Mignon McLaughlin
One of the things that Ellie and I do to improve and expand this blog is to wander (others surf, we wander) the internet searching for people and ideas that we can introduce to you. This weekend, I found an article with a different view of the “small stuff” of life. The author is a wife, mother, blogger and psychology student. She was reflecting on her weekend and the oft quoted, “Rule number one is, don’t sweat the Continue reading » Lost in the Small Stuff
|
|
|
Posts
Comments
Recent Comments