To have a gratitude attitude is a gift; to get a gratitude attitude can be a challenge. Sometimes it is easy, the gratefulness presents itself so clearly. Other times you have to search for it. I'm reminded of the verse in Isaiah that says there is treasure to be found in the darkness. Sometimes gratefulness feels like that, hidden in the dark.
For years I have said that I was grateful to God for the life he had given me but I meant the big things. You know, the breathing, the heartbeat, things like that. What I was missing in keeping a gratitude attitude was the key ingredient. The seemingly mundane, the day in and day out that made up life. To focus in on those ordinary things, oftentimes invisible to the naked eye and heart, builds a foundation of gratitude.
Once we have a foundation of gratitude we start looking at life and living life a bit differently. We want other people to have gratitude attitudes and be filled the way we are. We want other people to see the treasure in the mundane of life the way our eyes have been opened to it. We want to see a smile on faces and sparkles in eyes. Gratitude leads to kindness. My foundation of gratitude compelled me to extend it to others through acts of kindness. I dare say that a foundation of gratitude in your life will do the same.
Acts of kindness aren't hard, nor do they have to be financially costly or take hours or days. Acts of kindness sometimes can happen, and do happen, without ever being really noticed until later on. I recently wrote about the drought conditions of kindness. Kindness has been lost to random because it ceased to be common. I believe we should make kindness common again.
Here's what I have seen about acts of kindness (some are random, others not so much). They are fun, others-focused, change the atmosphere of the room, and transform the countenance of people. I noticed in celebrating my 40th with 40 acts of kindness that it potentially blessed people who were on the fringes of it rather than the actual recipient. Of course, most of the time I had no idea how the actual recipient felt about it but I saw the responses of the cashiers or the observers. Perhaps it inspired them to hold the door open for the person behind them instead of letting it close. Do you realize that holding the door open for people is now considered a random act of kindness? That should not be, that is a common courtesy. Let's make kindness common again.
It doesn't take long to make a difference for others and even yourself. Acts of kindness may never really get noticed, are you okay with that? What is the motivation for doing them, accolades or because you are grateful for life? My husband and I cleaned up a section of road in the outskirts of our neighborhood. I'm guessing nobody will notice that it has been cleaned up. I'm okay with that. It isn't about others in that case but about taking care of what God has created and given us to be stewards over. I feel better knowing that section of road has less trash on it.
Here's what I figured out during my celebration. Acts of kindness don't really take all that long and honestly? They are a better use of my time than sitting on my couch, as much as I love my couch, and watching mindless TV. None of us knows what others might be struggling with behind the masks they wear in public, who knows how a person may be touched by their coffee being paid for or their shopping cart returned for them because you were returning yours also so you might as well get theirs. I felt a particular burden for women who don't fit society's mold for beauty so I decided to speak into it. Who knows if a woman saw one of my dressing room affirmations and it was the exact one she needed that day? We don't know, and we don't need to know. We just need to do and leave results up to the One who does know. We need to be okay with not knowing and just doing.
Do you have time to do a purposeful, yet random, act of kindness once a day? Once a week? The answer is yes, you do have the time. The question really is will you make the time? Can you sacrifice something of yourself for 5 minutes on behalf of another person? When you have a foundation of gratitude the answer is easy.
I'm not going to stop looking for gratitude attitudes within my days and I'm not going to stop acts of kindness. From here on out my acts of kindness won't be so concentrated, they will be more spread out but they will continue. I have a whole list of ones I didn't personally get to, whether it was for financial reasons or time constraints, so there's more to do! Kindness doesn't end. There is no end to it, it can be practiced the whole of our lives. It should be practiced the whole of our lives.
Do you have a foundation of gratitude in your life? If not, build that up. Shore yourself up with gratitude. Two books were particularly helpful to me in that effort. Ann Voscamp's One Thousand Gifts and Anne Lamott's Help, Thanks. Wow. I highly recommend them.
Once you have enough gratitude that you feel the kindness bubbling up and over, wanting to spill out on to others then pick something and try it. Just see what happens! You can Google "Random Acts of Kindness" and you will get a thousand ideas from a thousand people. Feel free to do any of the ones I did if they inspired you, or tweak one more to your preference. I did. I looked at lists and lists, I asked a couple of people for their ideas, and then I compiled my own list - some exactly what others have done, others tweaked according to how I was feeling compelled.
Here's some I didn't get to but will look to do in the future: donate to Wingspan Arts, make up brown bag lunches for the homeless and go hand them out (with bananas or oranges because apples are too hard for their teeth), give a thank you to the local Police Department, thank my trash service guys, brag about an employee to their boss (I've actually done this before - about a year ago), compliment strangers, hand out bubbles to kids at the park, take Mylar balloons to the pediatric wards, pick a teacher on donorschoose.org to contribute to, give a babysitting coupon to a couple in need of a break, help an elderly or disabled person with running errands or grocery shopping, make a CD of happy songs to hand out to people, leave quarters and laundry detergent at the laundry mat for someone to find, donate books/magazines/movies to a local cancer care center, fill backpacks with school supplies for low to no income kids, have an ice cream party for a boys or girls club, make up blessing bags for the homeless and hand them out, create little chemo care packs for cancer patients and drop off at the cancer care center, go to freerice.com, check out Volunteer Match and see what can be done one time or ongoing, mow a neighbor's lawn or pick their weeds, get Frosty coupons from Wendy's and hand out to kids, buy scratch lottery tickets and mail them to random people or tape them to the gas pump or hand them out to homeless people, donate items to a local human trafficking rescue home, thank the cleaning people in your office, taking school crossing guards a cold or hot drink depending on the weather. That's not all, there are thousands more ideas!
Let us live grateful lives that seek to make kindness common once again.
Read the whole story!
The Preface
The Story
For years I have said that I was grateful to God for the life he had given me but I meant the big things. You know, the breathing, the heartbeat, things like that. What I was missing in keeping a gratitude attitude was the key ingredient. The seemingly mundane, the day in and day out that made up life. To focus in on those ordinary things, oftentimes invisible to the naked eye and heart, builds a foundation of gratitude.
Once we have a foundation of gratitude we start looking at life and living life a bit differently. We want other people to have gratitude attitudes and be filled the way we are. We want other people to see the treasure in the mundane of life the way our eyes have been opened to it. We want to see a smile on faces and sparkles in eyes. Gratitude leads to kindness. My foundation of gratitude compelled me to extend it to others through acts of kindness. I dare say that a foundation of gratitude in your life will do the same.
Acts of kindness aren't hard, nor do they have to be financially costly or take hours or days. Acts of kindness sometimes can happen, and do happen, without ever being really noticed until later on. I recently wrote about the drought conditions of kindness. Kindness has been lost to random because it ceased to be common. I believe we should make kindness common again.
Here's what I have seen about acts of kindness (some are random, others not so much). They are fun, others-focused, change the atmosphere of the room, and transform the countenance of people. I noticed in celebrating my 40th with 40 acts of kindness that it potentially blessed people who were on the fringes of it rather than the actual recipient. Of course, most of the time I had no idea how the actual recipient felt about it but I saw the responses of the cashiers or the observers. Perhaps it inspired them to hold the door open for the person behind them instead of letting it close. Do you realize that holding the door open for people is now considered a random act of kindness? That should not be, that is a common courtesy. Let's make kindness common again.
It doesn't take long to make a difference for others and even yourself. Acts of kindness may never really get noticed, are you okay with that? What is the motivation for doing them, accolades or because you are grateful for life? My husband and I cleaned up a section of road in the outskirts of our neighborhood. I'm guessing nobody will notice that it has been cleaned up. I'm okay with that. It isn't about others in that case but about taking care of what God has created and given us to be stewards over. I feel better knowing that section of road has less trash on it.
Here's what I figured out during my celebration. Acts of kindness don't really take all that long and honestly? They are a better use of my time than sitting on my couch, as much as I love my couch, and watching mindless TV. None of us knows what others might be struggling with behind the masks they wear in public, who knows how a person may be touched by their coffee being paid for or their shopping cart returned for them because you were returning yours also so you might as well get theirs. I felt a particular burden for women who don't fit society's mold for beauty so I decided to speak into it. Who knows if a woman saw one of my dressing room affirmations and it was the exact one she needed that day? We don't know, and we don't need to know. We just need to do and leave results up to the One who does know. We need to be okay with not knowing and just doing.
Do you have time to do a purposeful, yet random, act of kindness once a day? Once a week? The answer is yes, you do have the time. The question really is will you make the time? Can you sacrifice something of yourself for 5 minutes on behalf of another person? When you have a foundation of gratitude the answer is easy.
I'm not going to stop looking for gratitude attitudes within my days and I'm not going to stop acts of kindness. From here on out my acts of kindness won't be so concentrated, they will be more spread out but they will continue. I have a whole list of ones I didn't personally get to, whether it was for financial reasons or time constraints, so there's more to do! Kindness doesn't end. There is no end to it, it can be practiced the whole of our lives. It should be practiced the whole of our lives.
Do you have a foundation of gratitude in your life? If not, build that up. Shore yourself up with gratitude. Two books were particularly helpful to me in that effort. Ann Voscamp's One Thousand Gifts and Anne Lamott's Help, Thanks. Wow. I highly recommend them.
Once you have enough gratitude that you feel the kindness bubbling up and over, wanting to spill out on to others then pick something and try it. Just see what happens! You can Google "Random Acts of Kindness" and you will get a thousand ideas from a thousand people. Feel free to do any of the ones I did if they inspired you, or tweak one more to your preference. I did. I looked at lists and lists, I asked a couple of people for their ideas, and then I compiled my own list - some exactly what others have done, others tweaked according to how I was feeling compelled.
Here's some I didn't get to but will look to do in the future: donate to Wingspan Arts, make up brown bag lunches for the homeless and go hand them out (with bananas or oranges because apples are too hard for their teeth), give a thank you to the local Police Department, thank my trash service guys, brag about an employee to their boss (I've actually done this before - about a year ago), compliment strangers, hand out bubbles to kids at the park, take Mylar balloons to the pediatric wards, pick a teacher on donorschoose.org to contribute to, give a babysitting coupon to a couple in need of a break, help an elderly or disabled person with running errands or grocery shopping, make a CD of happy songs to hand out to people, leave quarters and laundry detergent at the laundry mat for someone to find, donate books/magazines/movies to a local cancer care center, fill backpacks with school supplies for low to no income kids, have an ice cream party for a boys or girls club, make up blessing bags for the homeless and hand them out, create little chemo care packs for cancer patients and drop off at the cancer care center, go to freerice.com, check out Volunteer Match and see what can be done one time or ongoing, mow a neighbor's lawn or pick their weeds, get Frosty coupons from Wendy's and hand out to kids, buy scratch lottery tickets and mail them to random people or tape them to the gas pump or hand them out to homeless people, donate items to a local human trafficking rescue home, thank the cleaning people in your office, taking school crossing guards a cold or hot drink depending on the weather. That's not all, there are thousands more ideas!
Let us live grateful lives that seek to make kindness common once again.
Read the whole story!
The Preface
The Story
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