Spread Kindness Like Confetti

Do you ever feel like you need a counterpoint to messages you’re hearing too much of in the culture? Perhaps you’re watching a lot of news and it’s leaving you a little too aware of the most devasting happenings across the globe. Or you may have people in your life who worry and complain a lot, who repeatedly talk about how busy they are and how bleak things seem. 

In cases like this, we forget about our own power. It’s easy to get drawn into victim consciousness, so we’d like to remind ourselves of the good we can do. There are many things, but one of the easiest, most effective and contagious actions we can take is kindness. 

Kindness is within our power. It’s always available to us as an option. Free to enact. It leaves us and all who are involved better off than where we started. What’s not to love?

Just think of how kindness has positively affected your own mood. Perhaps you’ve been walking down the street, not feeling particularly positive, when you see a person sitting on a bench, crying. A moment later, someone else approaches them with a tissue and a look of understanding. Witnessing an act of compassion like this can touch our heart and lift our spirits.

It’s especially uplifting when we see acts of kindness in children. When we see a child looking out for a sibling or friend, or offering comfort to an adult or an animal, it melts hearts. It also breeds hope and optimism for our future.

Kindness is different from helping. It may include helping another person or cause, but the terms aren’t identical. Although helping others can certainly be a good thing, it can also sometimes be tainted by underlying intentions.

Some people make a point of helping publicly to bolster their image or to feel “better than” both those who don’t help and those whom they’re helping. Consider those who are eager to extend help yet are unable to ask for help themselves. In some cases, a person may even conflate helping others with their own worth. Brené Brown talks about this shadow aspect in her work. Ann Lammott also acknowledges help as “the sunny side of control” in her talks and writing. We’ve all seen someone who’s helped another, only to express negativity shortly afterward when their efforts weren’t acknowledged, thanked, or reciprocated.

Acts of kindness can include and overlap with help, but differ in that the intention of kindness is always pure. We can all feel and recognize its authentic nature when we experience it. There’s no manipulation, hidden agenda or passive aggressiveness. There’s no motive for something in return. It’s not done for approval. It’s freely initiated and given. Which may be why it’s accompanied with an air of ease and lightness.

This levity that kindness exudes is an extension from its source. The person being kind is acting from a peaceful place within them. Kindness is an example of our brains and our limbs taking their cues from our heart.

Kindness, like a flower, emerges from a soil that’s been nourished. When we do the inner work on ourselves of feeling our feelings (especially the difficult ones), being honest, and making space and time for stillness, peace is present. From this place, kindness is simply natural.

There are endless ways to be kind. You may find that the more you practice kindness, the more ideas you generate about how you can be kind. You may also recognize kindness more often around you and develop a deeper appreciation for it. When kindness is spread around like confetti, it multiplies like seeds and grows!

Here are just a few examples of random acts of kindness that anyone can do that we hope inspire you:

• Eat lunch with a new co-worker, classmate or colleague.
• Rake or mow the lawn for a neighbour.
• Initiate a conversation with someone.
• Donate blood.
• Give an extra generous tip.
• Let someone go first in line.
• Send someone a surprise thank you card and gift.
• Leave someone an uplifting note.
• Compliment a stranger.
• Plant a tree.
• Be kind to yourself by finding a therapist.
• Forgive someone.
• Keep an extra umbrella in your car to give to someone caught in the rain.

Kindness is something we appreciate seeing at Figg Street Co., and we hope you also experience it when you shop with us! What are some of your favourite experiences of kindness?