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When you’re feeling low, there’s a way to help yourself feel better that’s so simple you may not believe it at first: you could perform small acts of kindness. 

“Being kind has been shown to be like a two-way street: if you are kind to someone else, it actually improves your own well-being,” says Professor Irma Eloff, Educational Psychology lecturer at the University of Pretoria (UP). “There is extensive well-being literature that proves that if you have an inclination towards kindness and display higher levels of kindness behaviours, your level of well-being is actually higher.”

What’s more, even thinking about kind acts seems to have a positive effect: If you spend time thinking about kind things you can do for others, or things you’ve noticed others doing, the thinking alone seems to have a positive effect on overall well-being. “Some of the benefits of kindness include increased serotonin, energy, and happiness levels; it increases your levels of compassion and empathy, and there are even some indications that it can increase your lifespan. Kindness has also been shown to decrease some negative health indicators, such as reducing stress and anxiety, decreasing depression, and lowering blood pressure.”

Studies also show that kindness has a predictable – and potentially world-changing – ripple effect: If you witness kindness, you are inspired to do something kind yourself, even though it may be something very small.

These benefits are some of the main reasons why Prof Eloff applauds the annual UP Random Acts of Kindness campaign, which is rolled out during Mandela Month in July, and this year includes a ‘21 Days of Kindness’ challenge, in which UP experts provide tips on being kind, and students and staff are invited to share their own advice on how to increase kindness in society.

“Kindness seems to be contagious, so when large institutions launch campaigns to kick off a ‘wave’ of kindness, this can lead to huge benefits for individuals and society,” Prof Eloff says. “Campaigns such as these are important reminders that kindness is something that is available to all of us at any time; you can choose at any moment to act kindly.”

She cites the University of British Columbia’s Kindness Project, which does interdisciplinary work across fields like education, biology, medicine, and even sustainability. “It focuses on students and staff, and especially on conflict resolution, in order to make their university and society a kinder place.”

The ‘21 Days of Kindness’ challenge, based on the idea that it takes 21 days to form new habits, is a good starting point to change behaviour and increase kindness, she says. “I love the fact that Tukkies will be sharing their ideas. I think wonderful ideas will come from staff and students. But although there seems to be a popular perception take it takes 21 days, there are studies that show you can form a habit in a period as short as a week, if you do something consistently.”

As an example she discusses the ‘Three Good Things’ exercise, which involves taking time at the end of each day to write down three good things that made you smile that day. “You can change a habit and even change the way you think on a daily basis by doing that for seven days.”

Prof Eloff has some favourite tips to offer for anyone looking to increase their own happiness and overall well-being by injecting more kindness into their world:

• First, she emphasises the acts of kindness need not be big acts; they can be as small as smiling at someone, complimenting someone, or letting someone cut into traffic ahead of you.
• Surprise classmates or colleagues with a nice communal snack, and note how that lifts happiness levels.
• Handwrite a note to express appreciation to someone.
• Go over to someone who isn’t connecting with anyone at a function, or perhaps is the new person in the room, and say hello.
• Strange as it seems, you could also try spending money on someone else. “The book Happy Money by Elizabeth Dunn and Michael Norton describes studies that showed that if you spend money on someone else it actually improves your levels of well-being more than if you were to spend that same money on yourself.”
• She also suggests trying to do five small acts of kindness in one day, citing a study by American professor Sonja Lyubomirsky of the Department of Psychology at the University of California which showed that people who performed five small acts of kindness in one day experienced an even bigger positive effect on happiness than those who did one kind thing every day over a five-day period.

So as we embrace THE UP WAY and send our Random Acts of Kindness out into the world this Mandela Month, you can help the ripple of kindness started here become a wave – the science shows that even the smallest act of kindness helps it build!