Kindness Begins With Me—A Challenge

I want to be kind to everyone for that is right you see,

so I say to myself “remember this: kindness begins with me!” ~Clara W. McMaster

I’ve been thinking about my “Thirty Days of Lovely” challenge and I had an idea for another personal challenge. This idea stemmed from a couple of different places. The fact that I have been the recipient of kindnesses recently has inspired me. Also I have been thinking about what I can do to make the world a little better. Don’t we each have a societal obligation to be civil and kind and to try to make the world a better place? I think so.

My mom taught me from a young age that one sure way to find happiness is to serve others. We do this every day in little ways but I want to take it to the next level. I also want to share my experiences with you. My purpose in doing this is not to “toot my own horn” but to hopefully inspire you to perform some random (and not so random) acts of kindness of your own (and share them with me in the comments!) and to make me accountable. I’ll have to stick with it so I can share with you every day, right?

So, this is how it’s going to work. I’m going to do something nice for someone (friend, family, neighbor or complete stranger—doesn’t matter who) every day for a month. It doesn’t need to be something big. It can be as simple as making a conscientious effort to smile at someone, holding the door open for someone or just making one of my kids their favorite dinner one night. We don’t have millions of extra dollars laying around our house, so I’m going to make an effort to not necessarily have money play a big part in this—although it may play a little part.

I’m going to come back here and share what I did each day with you. Each act may not warrant a whole post so sometimes I might just tack it onto the end of my post. Will you participate with me? Go out and be do-gooders then come and tell me about it. It’ll be fun.

Today’s Kindness: A simple donation to charity. I actually drafted this post last week before the tornadoes devastated the South. The tornado victims have been on my mind a lot since the disaster last week. Now contributing to that cause seems like the most urgent need and is therefore my first effort in this experiment.

What did you do to today to make the world a better place?