“If you want to be happy, practice compassion.”
– The Fourteenth Dalai Lama
“Without kindness, there can be no true joy.”
-Thomas Carlyle
There are a myriad of reasons to practice kindness. It makes the world a better place for all of us to live. It lifts the burdens of others. It takes you out of your own worries as you focus on making a difference for other people. But did you know that research show that doing even simple acts of kindness really does boost your own general sense of happiness as long as you do one thing.
Happiness Secret #2
That one thing is to do something BIGGER or DIFFERNT than you normally do. In a study, researchers found that people who were instructed to perform at least 5 acts of kindness in a week only saw a boost in their personal happiness level if those acts were compressed into a single day. They believe this is because that caused them to look for things they wouldn’t normally do rather than just reflecting at the end of the week on the nice things they probably would have typically done anyway.
For the biggest boost in happiness, do something you don’t normally do. Of course, being kind all the time is probably already adding to your happiness, but to really get an extra smile, find something out of the ordinary.
Check out our list of Random Acts of Kindness Ideas to get the ideas flowing and start injecting more happiness into your life and those around you.
An easy and fun way to spread some smiles right now is to send a Smiley Card. Use code KINDNESSBOOST at checkout to send one card for free.