Why Kindness Is Great for Wellbeing

Lessons for Leaders

This week I'm sharing why kindness is great for wellbeing.

Listen in when I talk about

Why kindness elevates your mood as well as other people’s.

The science behind random acts of kindness without getting too geeky about it

How kindness can help reduce stress and improve

4 easy ways to be kind to yourself.

Our brains are wired for us to be kind to each other. This stems back to very ancient days when we lived together in tribes, when we needed to get along, help each other out. It was part of our survival strategy.

When we are kind to other people. It releases the oxytocin hormone. Oxytocin in commonly known as the love hormone (which is nice an appropriate for the month of February – when we talk about love a lot because of Valentines day). When we get the feelings of love or positive regard from those small acts of kindness, it releases that feel-good chemical and oxytocin it lowers blood pressure. So it’s really good for keeping us healthy.

Did you know that kindness can help reduce stress and improve our emotional wellbeing – because it changes how we view things, or we feel less troubled or we feel not so alone.

Studies show that helping others is linked to increased feelings of wellbeing. It reduces stress, improves self-esteem, boosts confidence and can promote changes in the brain that are linked with happiness.

That’s for them AND for you too!

I talked in last episode about helping with exhaustion as we’re all pretty fed up and knackered now. This lockdown isn’t helping the situation.

As human beings we are often good at beating ourselves up. We are great at feeling guilty, at doing the must / we should chatter to ourselves.

So I want to encourage you to be kind to yourself today and over this week. Think about the words that you say, the things that you do, check if you’re beating yourself up about something!

Here’s 4 easy ways to be kind to yourself. Which one will you choose? 🥊Don’t beat Yourself Up – we’ve all done things in the past that haven’t gone well or could be better. The trick is to see what you can learn and be kind to yourself about it. 😀Smile at someone – think how you feel if someone smiles at you. We never know how much a simple smile or hello can brighten someone’s day. Smiling is infectious. Use it to spread kindness. 🥾👠Stop Judging – it’s easy to judge others by what we see – but what about what we don’t see? If we were to talk a mile in their shoes, I wonder how we would react and respond. Try and stop yourself from judging when you notice it happening. It will also mean you’re less judgemental of yourself too. 👍Offer Help – is there someone you can offer to help? There’s always someone struggling and as a nation we do often struggle to ask for help – so how about offering it? I’m not here to give you more on your to-do list, but picking just one or two of these things this week and seeing what the impact is would be a kind thing to do.

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