It doesn’t have to be in the form of a nice compliment this time. You don’t even need to communicate it to the target person. Just do an incognito service to someone. See how this makes you feel. Think how many times you received that..
We are subjects to random acts of kindness all the time. There’s always somebody doing something nice for us without our knowledge. And sometimes they’re doing it even without knowing who we really are.
Kindness is never about the receiver’s identity. It doesn’t really matter who’s going to receive it. It matters more who’s going to give it away. Kindness is about yourself. About compassion.
Pick a random act of kindness and do it for an unknown person. And after that move on.
How To Do A Random Act Of Kindness
If you really want to do an act of kindness, congrats. It’s one of the most useful things you can do for yourself. Here’s a short description of how I saw this done (and, subsequently, how I learned to do it myself).
There are a few rules.
The first one is to really be a random act. Even for you. You don’t have to put it on your agenda and cross it off after you did. No need to be on your to do list. But commit yourself to do it, once a day. Try to surprise yourself too with it, try to trigger this act at random times during the day.
The second “rule” is to be about kindness, pure and simple. Like in creating kindness after you do it. Do not mistake a random kind of kindness with “buying” good points for your karma. It doesn’t work like this. What you do should generate pure feelings after that. The easiest way to check if you really gonna do an act of kindness, is to project yourself in the place of the other person. Literally put yourself in the shoes of the other one. What do you need? How would you feel if someone will do that for you?
And the third prerequisite (observe that I didn’t use the term “rule” anymore) is to remain unknown to the other. Keep your identity hidden, if you can. Be anonymous. Be nobody. Hide your identity at the other end of the act. Remain unknown.
Now, if you can manage to do this constantly, your random acts of kindness will work as intended. They will create enough good will to “echo” back to you in forms as unknown and as powerful as your own acts. In other words, there will be significant improvement in your life.
I used to do this a lot, but during the last few months, there was some sort of increase in this area, both on the acts I perform and on the acts I witness. To keep the story short, I will give just one short example of all the random acts of kindness I witness.
One friend told me that during the last two weeks he started to buy some food, not more than 3 USD (you can get decent food with 3 USD in Romania) and give it away to unknown people. Or to people with whom he had a personal history of anger or misconceptions. He used to think bad about taxi drivers, for instance, so he started to give it away to taxi drivers.
The most important thing after he did it? He was literally bursting to tears each and every time after that. No exception.
Now, it’s your turn. 🙂
