Increasing your happiness through “the helper’s high” — Acts of Kindness

We could all use a little more happiness in our lives, and helping others is a proven method — a brilliant win-win! But with so many people working from home now, how can you regularly incorporate acts of kindness into your life?

I recently had an interesting phone experience involving a triage call to me regarding my need for physiotherapy. From the tone of his voice, it quickly became obvious that the caller was reading from a script and having to go through the same motions call after call after call. The effect it had on me was profound. I went from answering the call with a pleasant greeting and feeling positive about moving forward with recovery from my injury to feeling a bit low, robotically answering his robotic questions, getting a little frustrated at times, and thinking that I never wanted to deal with this organisation again! Reflecting on his misery and the monotony of his job prompted me to write this article. What could he have done differently and how could he bring more joy to his own life, let alone mine?

There is an interesting debate about whether true altruism (giving selflessly) exists because doing something nice for someone else has the benefit of making you feel great. I say, who cares? If your act of kindness (AoK) is having the marvellous effect of making both the giver and the receiver feel happier, then it is a double win! However, with so many people working from home now, the opportunities to perform such acts are more limited.

There is plenty of great research on AoK, but two big things to keep in mind are: 1) the size of the AoK does not matter, so it does not have to be a grand and expensive gesture, and 2) performing different AoK has a greater impact on your happiness than repeatedly performing the same one over and over. Therefore, a great idea is to create a list of simple AoK that you can draw on for inspiration.

However, there are two things that are necessary. First, the acts that you include on your list (and that you perform) should resonate with you. This is important because if they don’t feel meaningful to you, then you won’t feel like you have necessarily done anything worthwhile and therefore won’t gain the boost of happiness. Second, though very much in line with the first, is that the acts need to be genuine and done with complete sincerity.

The amazing thing that makes this so easy is that the AoK can be either in your personal life or your work life (and even better if you do both) to have a global effect on your general happiness levels. There is a natural spillover effect from one domain to the other, whether from personal to work, or vice versa.

Below are a few ideas, by no means a definitive list, but something to perhaps act as a little inspiration for creating your own list:

· Order a personalised card online to send someone — not for an occasion but to simply brighten up their day

· Send a message or call someone just to say “hi”

· Write a positive comment on a post/blog/website

· Send one thank you note to a different person every week

· If someone actually gives you a real answer when you ask them how they are, really listen to them

· Send a message of encouragement to a colleague who is preparing to give a presentation

· Regularly reach out to someone who is going through a rough time

· Did you start baking or gardening during lockdown? Surprise a friend with freshly baked cookies or a homegrown plant (once lockdown is over and you are legally permitted, of course)

As for my triage caller… What could he have done differently? He could have taken a moment at the start of his shift to remember that everyone he calls is a person in pain. He could have adopted the mindset of wanting to help make every person’s journey to recovery a little easier. He could have engaged with a gentle and caring tone of voice. He could have added some positive encouragement. He could even have told me that he needed to read some information to me and ask me a set of standard questions and so might sound like he was reading from a script. All of that would have demonstrated some empathy and made a massive difference.

I’m very happy to say that I did manage to shake off a little bit of his misery. I changed my tone to try to positively affect him and asked him questions to attempt to get him off script for a moment. In turn, I heard a slight return to humanity in his voice which, I have to say, made my day!

If you have an AoK idea, please share it below in the comments. This could be your AoK for today, and perhaps we can create a varied list for everyone to draw on to make us all feel happier 😊