Easy Ways to Share Kindness... When You're Paying Attention

At Camp Kindness Counts, we are all about using the power of awareness to open new doors and opportunities to kindness. Once you recognize the places where compassion and connection can happen, you can move into kind action!

Here are some ideas of places to keep your attention lingering this week to see what opportunities for sharing kindness arise.

Who Is Helping?

From mail carriers and delivery couriers, to grocery store clerks, to the people who keep our cities clean, there are people all around us who are helping to keep things running smoothly and making the lives of those around them so much easier. Keep your eyes out for them, and thank them! We are wired for connection, and when people see that those affected by their actions are grateful for what they do, it has a major impact.

Who Could Use a Hand? Or Just a Connection?

So often it seems like we're expected to watch the people around us like we're on the other side of a glass window! Can you strike up a conversation with a kid who is trying to keep their parent's attention while their parent is trying to check out at the grocery store? Or maybe it's the elderly person sitting alone at your bus stop. When we empathize with the people around us, or try to see how they're feeling we can often strike up conversations and make connections with them that we didn't expect to be able to!

What Do You Leave Behind?

You've probably heard of "leave no trace" -- the idea that when we're outside in nature, we don't want to leave any garbage or disruption behind as a sign that we were there. Because it's a messy world, we often find garbage in a park when we get there, calling us to take "leave no trace" a step further and leave the place better than we found it. Similarly, we can focus on how we leave people feeling. Everyone is facing challenges and processing their own feelings. How do we take care of them? Do we leave garbage, disruption and negativity behind us after we spend time with someone? What kinds of feelings do we cause people to have when they are around us? What are those magic words we can share with our friends and family that build them up and allow them to be their best selves? What do we love about them? What do we think they are great at? What do we learn from them, or what do they inspire us to be better at through their own character strengths?