Random acts of kindness - Giving and receiving
About a month ago, I spontaneously decided to help a stranger through a simple random act of kindness. Now, most times random acts of kindness are … well, random so you never really know if your actions actually helped or created change in a person’s life. While it’s very satisfying to just help for the pleasure of helping, it’s also great to hear back. So I’m happy to report that I heard back from my cousin in Vancouver. He has been in contact with the artist and they are discussing the possibility of showing Robert Leclerc’s art in their Vancouver Art Gallery. Fantastic… all it took was one email to open a door for someone.
Yesterday, Leo Babuta, my favorite Zen Habits Guru wrote a very inspirational post about kindness, hope, and faith. In it, he discusses how random acts of kindness lift our spirits and bring us closer together and he goes one step further by actually starting his own wave of kindness.
Inspired by Oprah’s “pay it forward” episode, Leo decided to give 30 copies of his wonderful new Zen To Done e-book and has offered to give some link love to other blogs who chose to participate and pay it forward with a random act of kindness.
Just reading Leo’s post yesterday lifted my spirits and inspired me to join in and toss my own kindness pebbles into the pond. I received his amazing Zen to Done e-book last night and I’ll be reading it with great interest over the weekend. I’m in a great transition period so this book will help me create some lasting changes in my life.
My random act of kindness will be to write 5 letters expressing my gratitude to strangers who do thankless but incredibly important jobs.
My heartfelt thanks go out to Leo and to everybody who chooses to be a force for good in the world.
Peace
The Bloggers of Kindness | Zen Habits Says:
[...] 2.0: Random acts of kindness - Giving and receiving (Wrote 5 letters to strangers thanking them for doing a great job - [...]
Posted on December 11th, 2007 at 1:59 am
Kate Saltfleet
Says:
Hey good for you. Have you seen the film Amelie? A great inspiration for random acts of kindness.
Posted on December 11th, 2007 at 5:04 pm
avoxtar
Says:
Hello Kate,
Yes I have seen Amelie, I especially loved the traveling gnome sequences! It was a wonderful movie. Thanks for your comment!
I visited your blog for the first time today and thought it was quite interesting! I’ve added you to my RSS reader and I’ll be browsing around your past articles! Thanks for visiting!
Yanik
Posted on December 11th, 2007 at 11:56 pm
Mohammed
Says:
I heard about “Random Acts of Kindness” from a book I read call “Join Me”. An ordinary guy put an ad in a newspaper that just said “Join Me” with a post box address. A few people wrote to him and said “join and then what”… From there a trail of RAKs started. A fun story.
I just got here from Zen Habits and am thinking about how I can do some “pay it forward” / RAK. First off, I am going to say a sincere Thank You to the people at work who do some really horrible jobs to give me a better life.
Posted on December 14th, 2007 at 11:29 am
avoxtar
Says:
Hi Mohammed,
That is such an interesting story! I’d never heard of that. I’ll see if I can track that book down, I’d love to read it.
Have you ever seen the Pay it forward movie? It’s quite inspiring!
I initially thought I would write 5 gratitude letters but I find myself looking for more and more people to send gratitude letters to. There are so many people around us who could really use a nice pat on the back. Kudos to you for thanking those around you!
Posted on December 14th, 2007 at 12:58 pm
Season of Goodwill (Part Three) « Experiments in Living Says:
[...] tag some people (fun!) I’m going to grab some of the bloggers of kindness - father sez, joy, yanik and Book Club Classics. Just copy and paste the questions, answer them in your blog and link back [...]
Posted on December 18th, 2007 at 10:25 am