I recently went to my first ‘in person’ conference since the pandemic started. I was really looking forward to speaking to people in real life, but I was also a little bit nervous. Would I remember how to talk to people that I don’t know? Would I be able to make small talk? What’s the current greeting etiquette – bump elbows, shake hands or return to my default hugging approach? When I arrived, my first port of call was to go get a cup of tea, as we all know that a cup of tea makes everything better! In the queue I got talking to a lovely woman, and when we reached the front of the queue she insisted on buying mine for me. This simple random act of kindness flooded my brain with a cocktail of chemicals which instantly made me feel more relaxed (plus of course the tea helped). I returned the favour by promising to post her a free copy of my book, which in turn made me feel good as well. Kindness and random acts of kindness aren’t just nice, they are really good for us, and our wellbeing. And here’s why:
Human connection is a basic survival requirement. We need empathy to connect with others. In fact, so much so that the genes for empathy & connection have been around for the past 500 million years. Kindness takes the steam out of stress: as it increases, stress decreases. Physiologically, they’re opposites. Stress causes our bodies to generate ‘stress hormones’ – cortisol & adrenaline. This pushes our nervous systems into ‘fight or flight’ mode, which inhibits our immune system and increases blood pressure. Kindness, however, causes us to produce oxytocin & nitric acid – ‘kindness molecules’. These push the nervous system into ‘rest & digest’ – the opposite of ‘fight or flight’. Here our immune system thrives, and blood pressure lessens. For these reasons, it also provides some level of protection from disease in the long-term. One of the simplest things you can do to become healthier is to help someone.
Kindness directly improves our mental health: kindness is an antidote to depression. If it’s done regularly, it trains you to be more aware of how other people think and feel and that little shift provides a slight protection from depression. It also directly improves happiness and satisfaction. The part of our brains associated with positive emotion grows, making positive emotions easier to access.
We can train ourselves to be more empathetic and kind. If you’ve studied neuroscience then you’re probably familiar with the term neuroplasticity: neurons in our brains are constantly changing and reorganising themselves – we can essentially ‘rewire’ our brains to work in our favour. If we use the parts of our brains associated with kindness more often, they will get stronger and become a more prevalent part of our everyday thinking; you can cultivate a mindset where you think, speak and are kinder to more people.
But it doesn’t stop here. Kindness has a rippling effect; it’s contagious. At its peak, Covid had an R-rate of 2.5 – meaning the average infected person passed it on to 2.5 more people. Kindness, however, has an R-rate of 4-5. So accordingly every act of kindness can result in a further 125 acts of kindness.
It’s world kindness day on Saturday 13th November, and the random acts of kindness website have got some great ideas to help you bring more kindness into the world – or you can download our free eBook, full of ideas here! Of course you don’t need to wait until that official day to be kind to others, but it’s a timely reminder that being kind is good news for everyone.
Interested in hearing more about the science of Kindness and how to bring it into the workplace? Catch up on this brilliant edition of The Reset Show here – featuring David R Hamilton and Jamil Zaki.
