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The Kindness Box

Geoff-Allen

Geoff-Allen

Resident megalomaniac
Giving is just plain good for everybody. Of course, the recipient of your gift gets a happy boost, but did you know that you benefit as well? A wide range of research has linked different forms of generosity to better health. Studies show that giving or volunteering can make you feel less stressed, isolated and angry, and more cooperative and socially connected. Research shows that when we give of ourselves, everything from life satisfaction to self-realization and physical health can improve. A 1999 study at the University of California, Berkeley, even found that elderly people who volunteered for two or more organizations were 44 percent less likely to die over a five-year period.

Comes from this site -

https://thebestbrainpossible.com/happiness-is-a-skill/

Along with other useful suggestions!

Cheers!
 
Geoff-Allen

Geoff-Allen

Resident megalomaniac
Buddhism now kindness -

Kindness is not just the giving; it is the opening up. Kindness is the displacing of the ego that wants this and doesn’t want that, that will do something necessary for this needy person, but not for that one. Kindness is a space in the heart that grows larger and larger until it can encompass the world.

Meanness sees the world as a threat instead of a sea of rich possibilities, and something demanding the maintenance of the self, rather than the involvement with others and the responsibilities and the costs that might involve. It thus fails to appreciate the extent to which we are already dependent on others and the world around us, that gave us life. And it is this very involvement that is the principal source of enrichment of our lives. I once stood next to one of the richest men in the world at a party, and never forgot his sad, grey face. However many millions of barrels of oil you possess, they can never replace human beings and human warmth. They may even create a barrier, which can prevent an individual coming into himself, until kindness – wise kindness – can begin to dissolve the barriers. Just doing generous things that make us look good doesn’t work, because it binds us into a trap run by the ego, and that is indulgence, however wonderful its effects, not kindness.

Kindness by John Aske

All the best!
 
Geoff-Allen

Geoff-Allen

Resident megalomaniac
"Love" has so many different meanings; and "compassion" can feel lofty and remote.. But about "kindness" has a heartfelt warmth and spontaneity about it. "Kindness is my religion", proclaimed the Dalai Lama, so let us upgrade it from its modest and personal connotations. Metta, translated as "loving kindness", is after all one of the four Brahma Viharas or "blessed abodes", up there with compassion, equanimity and empathetic joy.

Who is it that wants to be Kind?

Before hastening to discover how we can acquire this precious quality of kindness it will be helpful to reflect a little on "Why do I want to be kind?

Read the full-talk here -

8. How to be Kind - Ken Jones Zen

Cheers!
 
Geoff-Allen

Geoff-Allen

Resident megalomaniac
You have talked about practices that are appropriate to particular cultures, such as the Tibetan meditation on the mother as the symbol of compassion. What do you think are the appropriate practices for American culture?

The 17th Karmapa: Well, I’m still learning about American culture, but the best guess I can make at the present time is that recalling kindness is the most important thing. In order for us to have compassion toward all sentient beings, we need to remember their kindness. We need to reflect on how they have been kind to us.

We can do this by using the example of a mother, a father, a spouse, or anyone who has been kind to us. The main thing is to recall the immediate sources of kindness in our lives so that we come to the appreciation that, in the end, all sentient beings have been kind to us. Especially in this twenty-first century, we can see clearly how all beings depend on one another. Whether we’re eating food or putting on clothing or building a home to live in, it’s evident that many different beings participate in sustaining us. Through interdependence, everyone is kind to us. There is a vast network of interdependence through which we receive the kindness of all sentient beings.

Comes from this site - well-worth checking out ...

Kindness Is the Most Important Thing

Al the best!
 
F

FineLinen

Well-Known Member
Two Sacramento police officers proved that Santa Claus isn't the only one working the night shift and brightening the holidays.

Officers Phil Burnham and Nick Knoblock saw a family of five carrying suitcases through downtown Sacramento around midnight on Saturday.

They thought something was out of place and found out Robbie and Ivory Pruitt had just lost their home.

Burnham and Knoblock then offered to pay for a hotel room for the family.

"You know, you've got some good officers out there, you know. They're human, just like us, like anybody else. I'm just thankful they pulled up on us," Robbie said.

"There were cries and hugs, and they were very appreciative," Knoblock said.

A charity called Sacramento Police Cares covered the officers' out of pocket expenses.

Burnham and Knoblock said they would have helped the Pruitt's even if they didn't get a dime back.
 
Geoff-Allen

Geoff-Allen

Resident megalomaniac
Learning to be good to yourself - interesting interview -

How do you learn to go gentle on yourself? Where do you begin to teach self-love?

I asked a favorite blogger of mine, Margarita Tartakovsky, who is an Associate Editor at Psych Central, and the author of the blog Weightless. Margarita writes often on this topic, so I thought I’d pick her brain and dispense her wisdom to my readers.

How do you begin to be kind to yourself?

Learning to Be Good to Yourself: An Interview with Margarita Tartakovsky, MS

All the best!
 
Geoff-Allen

Geoff-Allen

Resident megalomaniac
Be-the-reason-600x600.png


Loads more at Tiny Buddha - pages & pages if you have the time plus the inclination ...

Fun & Inspiring Archives - Tiny Buddha

Plus menus at top of page!

All the best!
 
Geoff-Allen

Geoff-Allen

Resident megalomaniac
“Oh, the comfort, the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person; having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but to pour them all out, just as they are, chaff and grain together, knowing that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and then, with a breath of kindness, blow the rest away.”

~ Dinah Maria Mulock Craik, A Life For A Life
 
Geoff-Allen

Geoff-Allen

Resident megalomaniac
“The greatest thing a father can do for his children is to respect the woman that gave birth to his children. It is because of her that you have the greatest treasures in your life. You may have moved on, but your children have not. If you can’t be her soulmate, then at least be thoughtful. Whom your children love should always be someone that you acknowledge with kindness. Your children notice everything and will follow your example.”

~ Shannon Alder
 
Geoff-Allen

Geoff-Allen

Resident megalomaniac
Tolstoy perpetual kindness -

“Practice kindness all day to everybody and you will realize you’re already in heaven now,” Jack Kerouac wrote in a beautiful letter to his first wife and lifelong friend. Somehow, despite our sincerest intentions, we repeatedly fall short of this earthly divinity, so readily available yet so easily elusive. And yet in our culture, it has been aptly observed, “we are never as kind as we want to be, but nothing outrages us more than people being unkind to us.” In his stirring Syracuse commencement address, George Saunders confessed with unsentimental ruefulness: “What I regret most in my life are failures of kindness.” I doubt any decent person, upon candid reflection, would rank any other species of regret higher. To be human is to leap toward our highest moral potentialities, only to trip over the foibled actualities of our reflexive patterns. To be a good human is to keep leaping anyway.

Leo Tolstoy on Kindness and the Measure of Love

Enjoy your day!
 
Geoff-Allen

Geoff-Allen

Resident megalomaniac
At that same site -

The measure of true kindness — which is different from nicety, different from politeness — is often revealed in those challenging instances when we must rise above the impulse toward its opposite, ignited by fear and anger and despair.

That’s what the poet Naomi Shihab Nye captures with grounding and elevating tenderness in her poem “Kindness,” found in Words Under Words: Selected Poems (public library).

Kindness Over Fear: Naomi Shihab Nye Tells the Remarkable Real-Life Story That Inspired Her Beloved Poem “Kindness”

:)
 
Geoff-Allen

Geoff-Allen

Resident megalomaniac
Want to make the world a better place? Being kind is the first step. We think everyday should be World Kindness Day but November 13th is the official date. World Kindness Day was introduced in 1998 by the World Kindness Movement. It is observed in many countries, including Canada, Japan, Australia, Nigeria and United Arab Emirates. Kindness is a virtue of paramount importance, yet not everyone goes out of their way to help someone else, or even take the small effort of smiling at a stranger. But there is no denying that there is an absolute necessity to be nice to others, even if it requires an effort.

The purpose of World Kindness Day is to look beyond ourselves, beyond the boundaries of our country, beyond our culture, our race, our religion; and realize we are citizens of the world. As world citizens we have a commonality, and must realize that if progress is to be made in human relations and endeavors, if we are to achieve the goal of peaceful coexistence, we must focus on what we have in common. When we find likenesses we begin to experience empathy, and in such a state we can fully relate to that person or those people. While we may think of people from other cultures as being ‘different’ when we compare them with our own customs and beliefs, it doesn’t mean that we are any better than they are. When we become friends with someone from a different culture we discover that despite some obvious differences, there are many similarities.

World Kindness Day - Make the World a Better Place - Age Safe America

All the best!
 
Geoff-Allen

Geoff-Allen

Resident megalomaniac
From struggling kids at school and messy office politics to larger issues like climate change and war, some problems just don't seem to go away.

But a growing group of renegade scientists say we could tackle these tricky problems by "evolving" kinder, more collaborative societies.

"We can change society, and can change it for the better," argues evolutionary biologist David Sloan Wilson of Binghamton University in the US.

He says experiments using his particular brand of evolutionary theory have shown encouraging kindness and collaboration in schools can help students on the cusp of dropping out, to thrive.

Professor Wilson is now keen to spread his tools for social change around the world, and despite his ideas flying in the face of the dominant view, they are gaining some traction.

Could the science of kindness make the world a better place?

Cheers!
 
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