5.1. What is kindness and how can it help you and your family?

Giving and receiving kindness has always been highly regarded through many spiritual, religious and ethical traditions throughout history.

How kindness can protect against the negative effects of stress

In this video Michelle explains how kindness towards yourself, as well as to others, can be beneficial in helping you and your family to protect yourself against the negative effects of stress.

This is of particular relevance when dealing with times of adversity, like the pandemic.

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MICHELLE:
As you will have learned from unit 2, kindness is one of the 24 character strengths that, along with love and social intelligence, falls within the virtue category of humanity. Showing kindness involves being generous, caring, empathic, and compassionate towards others and ideally ourselves, and individuals who are authentically kind do it not out of a sense of duty or principle, but because they believe that others are worthy of attention and affirmation for their own sake as human beings.
Kindness is also one of the top five most prevalent character strengths globally. And showing kindness to others can help buffer against the negative effects of stress. When looking at the impact of positive psychology during COVID, kindness was also identified as a particular strength for reaping dividends.
For example, people are happier when they do good for others rather than for themselves. Talking to strangers can boost your mood. Expressing gratitude, which we covered in unit 3, also increases another's estimation of the grateful person. In return, this also increases the mood of the giver of gratitude. People can feel closer, and relationships can thrive.
The same research article which reported all of this also described how many people across the globe increase their levels of kindness towards others during the COVID-19 pandemic. For example, as we heard on the news, in many cities, people would stand on their balconies each evening to clang pots and pans together as a way to thank essential workers.
Kindness also became a major theme on social media, including some of the wonderful acts of kindness shown by people like Sir Tom. The setting up of dedicated pages for people to record their acts of kindness during COVID also appeared, and many people donated food, money, goods, even blood to help others more in need.
Whilst many of these acts of kindness only took a few seconds or minutes, they had great ripple effects throughout communities whilst also incidentally feeding back to bolster the giver's wellbeing. While showing kindness towards others is important, showing self-compassion or kindness to ourselves can also be a very powerful way to help cope with the curveballs that life will throws at us like the pandemic. And as a parent, it can help us be the best that we can be for others too.
Self-compassion, however, is not about being selfish. It involves treating yourself with the same kindness and concern that you would show to a good friend when they are struggling. And in many ways, it is the golden rule in reverse. Do unto others as you would have done unto yourself.
More generally, showing self-compassion can also help lessen anxiety, self-criticism, perfectionism, and according to Kristin Neff -- who's a renowned psychological researcher in this field -- self-compassion also involves the shared nature of suffering. As such, this means that rather than feeling isolated and alone with our struggles, we would remember that everyone is imperfect and encounters challenges in life, and this is what differentiates self-compassion from self-pity.
Throughout this next unit, therefore, you will learn more about what kindness is and how it can help you and your family. And as part of this, I also hope you will learn to be more self-compassionate as, after all, you have been through the pandemic too.
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In simple terms, kindness is a type of behaviour defined by generosity, consideration or concern for others. Kindness can be manifested in diverse ways by individuals and can be an outward expression of love and grace. When considering the character strengths from Unit 2, love and kindness, along with social intelligence, are considered to be key strengths of humanity. As kindness is considered to be a part of being human, positive psychologists are interested in increasing the opportunities in your life to practise it.

During the COVID-19 pandemic there were many examples of kindness shown in communities. A great example of this in the UK was Captain Sir Thomas Moore, who decided to walk around his garden every day, doing 100 laps by the time he turned 100 on 30th April 2020, to raise £1000 for NHS Charities Together. The public were so moved by his efforts that they were inspired to respond with kindness and donate to his fundraising, and he raised over £32,000,000!

Kindness

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The fourth of six themes

5.2 Benefits of kindness