Day 3 Installing The Positive
Wellbeing Practice - Noticing moments of joy in your day and performing random acts of kindness
Notice a pleasant event in your day
As you go about your day today notice something that makes you feel good. Observe: what happens in my body when I am experiencing joy? Or when you are trusting others? When you are generous and showing genuine kindness and concern? Can you see the immediate consequences of your positive emotional states and optimistic perspective at that time? Can you notice how it affects you? And others? Is there a sense of greater peace within you in such moments?
Also make a conscious decision to do something that brings you joy today - phone a friend, buy a bunch of flowers for yourself, make a cup of tea and watch the birds. If you like, a random act of kindness to yourself! Ask yourself the same questions - how does it feel in my body? What effect does it have on me? Endeavour to make this a part of your everyday life. When I did my mindfulness course several years ago I decided to take up singing to bring more joy into my life. Please let me know what your ideas are for bringing joy into your life - share them in the comments below so we can inspire each other. You never know your idea may be a great help to one of our friends on this page. It could be your random act of kindness to someone else.
Random Acts of Kindness
For the next 7 days (or you can do 7 acts in one day) perform an act of kindness everyday. These can be small things, let someone go in front of you in the supermarket, buy the person in the queue next to you a coffee or a bunch of flowers, pay someone an unexpected compliment, let someone have your parking space or bigger things like giving blood, planting a tree or volunteering for your favourite charity.
Notice how this makes you feel good. Notice how does it make the other person feel? Notice if you have an expectation of how it will make the other person feel - can you let this go? Does it change your perspective?
Research shows that happier people are kinder people and that seeking out opportunities to be kind makes us happier in the long term it raises our baseline of happiness.
So performing random acts of kindness makes us happier than say buying a new pair of shoes or a new coat. This is partly because of our hedonic adaptation - we want the new shoes but the happiness is short lived and after a few hours or days we go back to our happiness baseline and also because by performing random acts of kindness we connect to other people and social connection is another big factor in happiness. Being connected to other people makes us happier. We are social creatures.
In fact loneliness has a huge impact on our health and is as bad for our health as smoking 15 cigarettes a day. The pandemic is having a huge impact on our ability to connect and many people are isolated and lonely. So maybe today your random act of kindness could be to write a letter, send a gift or phone someone you know who is lonely at the moment. Or try volunteering here - https://www.ageuk.org.uk/services/befriending-services/sign-up-for-telephone-befriending/
You can make a note in your diary about what acts you performed and how they made you feel.