A small dose of kindness – healing for both the giver and the receiver

Many of us earnestly feel that we’d like to do something to help those around us, or to better the world. Yet, we feel lost at how to do so, feeling that it’s only those of great potential who can carry out such a task. Yet, some of the most giving people the world has ever known state otherwise. For example,

Mother Teresa – “Kind words can be short and easy to speak, but their echoes are truly endless.”
The great English writer, Aldous Huxley, was a pioneer in the study of the development of human potential. In a lecture toward the end of his life, he said:
“People often ask me…what is the most effective technique for transforming their lives?”
He then said, “It’s a little embarrassing that after years of research, my best answer is just be a little kinder.”

Small acts of kindness do indeed change the world – making it a more beautiful place to live in for those who have been touched by them. Cooking a meal for your wife or husband, giving a flower to your loved one because they’re special, listening wholeheartedly to a friend’s problems. The opportunities are endless, and their beauty lies in their simplicity. Anyone can find ways to be kind to the people and other living beings around them. In the process, you aren’t only creating a better world, but building a more joyful and physically healthy self as well. It has been noted in many studies that kindness gives you a more positive sense of self and strengthens your immunity system. Helping others means helping yourself and vice-versa.

Perhaps the major world’s spiritual traditions inherently know this when they state, in one way or another, “It is in giving that we receive.”