What I Learned After a Hundred Days of Practicing Conscious Acts of Kindness
A few months ago, I started practicing “conscious acts of kindness,” almost on a whim. I had no idea what I was signing myself up for. I didn’t think being kind to people would be a life-changing activity. Focusing on kindness just seemed like another way to continue practicing gratitude and generosity.
It all started rather innocently during the first week of April 2019. One of my colleagues thanked me for sending her a Starbucks gift card. She said my personal note I wrote her had inspired her to get back into running. After chatting about giving for a few moments, she told me a story about another person who thanked five people a day!
Without thinking, I blurted out, “I’m going to do that.” Then I quickly backtracked. “Maybe not five people a day, but I could definitely thank one person a day. That I can do.” Little did I know.
Shawn Achor, bestselling author of The Happiness Advantage, considers thanking people you know a conscious act of kindness. A conscious act is different from a random act of kindness, which is when you do something kind for a stranger when a moment presents itself (like letting them cut in line if they’re running late or covering the cost of their coffee if they’re a dollar short).
In his TED talk on The Happiness Advantage, Achor explained acts of kindness (be it random or conscious) are one of the five ways you can train your brain to be more positive. By increasing your overall positive outlook, you can become happier, more productive, and creative.
I wasn’t thinking of happiness as an outcome as I decided to start thanking people — nor the productivity or creativity benefits. I was just seeking ways to push myself out of my comfort zone. To make it really uncomfortable, I contacted friends out of the blue and told them how much I appreciated them and why. No explanation. No reason. Just reached out and told the person how they had impacted my life and how much I appreciated them. (That also had consequences as you’ll see).
After performing conscious acts of kindness for over a hundred days — so far — this is what I’ve learned.
Kindness is uncomfortable.
Despite the fact I’ve been practicing these acts for over three months, it hasn’t gotten easier. I still feel a pit in my stomach each time I anticipate writing to someone. Telling friends how important and meaningful they are to you is akin to saying “I love you.” For the first time. Every day.
Being kind made me feel vulnerable. I feared my friend wouldn’t understand how I felt, or reciprocate the feelings. Before this, I never told people how I felt. I would either make a joke to deflect a serious moment or change the subject. What if I poured my feelings out to someone and all they said was “thanks,” or nothing at all?
You realize your impact on other people’s lives.
A couple of times, I did get a short reply of “thanks” from someone and that didn’t feel great. A few times, I got no reply at all (which I attributed to people not getting the message rather than the person ignoring it) and sometimes that made me feel relieved.
More often, though, I got a wonderful reply from a friend, former employer, or family member. They told me how I had made their day, impacted their life, or appreciated me just as much. It made me feel great to see the joy I brought to other people’s lives and to have that joy returned.
Unexpectedly, opening myself up to people also opened me emotionally. When I was sharing with some people in a workshop how great it was to see the impact I made on my friends' lives, I started to cry. I thought, what the hell is this? Why am I crying about something good in my life? And then I realized, oh, this is what people mean by tears of joy.
Friends might think you’re suicidal.
Baring your soul out of the blue can have unintended consequences. Your friends might think you are having one of those euphoric mood swings that some people express before they take their life or reaching out to say a final goodbye.
Not everyone was worried. But one friend was decidedly concerned. He didn’t call 911 but he did take me aside to see if I was doing okay. After that, I started prefacing my thank you messages to say I was reaching out to say hi and see how they were doing. Then I bared my soul.
Kindness rekindles friendships.
By reaching out to people in my network every day, I rekindled connections with some people I had lost touch with. Let’s face it, we have a lot of people in our friend networks and rarely do we take time to reach out to them directly.
Thanking people for being important in my life was a great way to connect with old friends. It was also a reminder to make an effort to reach out more often.
Sometimes you get surprised.
While most replies from people were positive and touching, one was shocking — and humbling. About a month and a half or so into the experiment, I got a surprise negative reply back from an old French professor.
So a little context is necessary before I tell you what she said and why she said it. I originally had reached out to thank my professor for the part she played in encouraging me to enter my play You Bastard in a literary contest. I won first prize. This encouraged me to produce the play, which led to my first directing gig, and hearing a sold-out crowd laughing in delight on opening night.
If my French professor hadn’t told me about the contest, I would never have had that opening night memory. I was very grateful. I wrote to her about how small acts can have big consequences.
Of course, I had forgotten about my small acts that had horrible consequences for her. Unfortunately, I had once been a total jerk to this same professor. She reminded me of the act of unkindness I had given her. I basically harassed her about her methods of grading until she had to warn me she would take official action if I persisted. For years, I thought I had been attacking the grading policy. Now I realized, I had been attacking her. I owed her an apology. So I wrote to ask for her forgiveness. Her act of kindness was to give it.
Kindness focuses you on other people’s needs.
I’m an independent person, so thinking of other people’s needs first has never been my second nature. Nor my third, fourth, or fifth either. So practicing acts of kindness was a great way for me to think about what others needed.
It helped me develop more empathy. It also carried over into my other daily acts of giving, inspiring me to ask more often if there was something I could do for someone.
Acts of kindness are difficult to do every day.
Thanking one person a day seemed like a manageable challenge. I mean, all I had to do was pick a friend from my life, think about how they had impacted me, and write them a personal message. It only took a couple of minutes to complete the task. How hard was that to do every day?
Pretty hard, as it turns out. I found myself pushing the task off to late at night. Sometimes, I would miss a day. In the end, being vulnerable never got easy. And that’s the way it should be.
Acts of kindness can be addicting.
After the first two and a half months, I had gone through a large list of people who had impacted me. I had contacted relatives, parents, close friends, co-workers, and classmates. I thought I had done a good job learning from the experience. I had connected with old friends, cried with joy, made peoples’ days, and gotten out of my comfort zone. Did I really need to keep doing conscious acts of kindness and being vulnerable? Maybe a year was too much of a challenge?
A week later, I went into withdrawal. I felt out of center. I missed the rush of getting out of my comfort zone. I missed the joy of making someone else’s day and having them make mine. Never mind the discomfort of being vulnerable The benefits far outweighed the risk.
So I’m back to thanking people for their impact on my life, letting them know why I enjoyed knowing them and being part of their lives.
When I started, I had no idea performing acts of kindness would be so rewarding and life-changing. I learned some big life lessons from the process, about others, myself, and how it all works. I’m not saying we’ll all have the same journey, but if you give acts of kindness a try, I’m sure you’ll learn something as well. And according to positive psychology research, you’ll be happier, more creative, and productive — if you’re into that.
Kyle Crocco spends his days as the Chief Creative at BigSpeakSpeakers Bureau and his evenings creating music for Duh Professors. He regularly publishes content about business thought leaders and personal growth on Medium, Business 2 Community, and Born 2 Invest.
