Kindness and Compassion Practices for Greater Happiness

Positive Psychology Trainer Dr. Jonah Paquette teaches us that practices to show kindness and compassion to others have the additional benefit of contributing to our own happiness. Two kindness and compassion practices are described below: Acts of Kindness and Volunteering. When we are kind to others, it generates a positive feeling for them but also for us and contributes to our overall sense of well-being.

Kindness and Compassion Practice #1: Five Acts of Kindness
Instructions: In our everyday lives, we all perform acts of kindness towards others, and receive similar kindness as well. Some of these acts may be small, while others may seem much larger in scope. Sometimes the person for whom the kind act is being performed may not even be aware of the act. Examples of kind acts include donating blood, volunteering, helping paint a friend’s house, feeding a stranger’s expired parking meter, or bringing coffee to work for a colleague. Over the next week, choose a single day of the week to serve as your “kindness day,” and perform five acts of kindness towards others on that day. Repeat this practice for at least four weeks.

Example: Kindness Day/Date: Tuesday, November 11 

Kind Act #1: This morning, I brought coffee for the support staff at work.
Kind Act #2: Today, I sent a small donation for disaster relief efforts in the Philippines following a recent devastating storm.
Kind Act #3: At noon, I smiled and asked the grocery store checkout clerk how her day was going.
Kind Act #4: This evening, I sent a message checking in on a friend I haven’t seen in a few years.
Kind Act #5: Today, I tracked down and personally thanked a co-worker for their excellent and hard work with a mutual patient.

Impressions: Performing a few of these small acts of kindness not only felt good, it turned out to be fun, too. I especially enjoyed doing things that brought me face-to-face with other people so that I could directly see the impact of my kindness on them. For example, when I brought coffee in for our support staff, I could really see how touched and appreciative they were. I think in the future I’d like to keep coming up with ways to directly interact with others during my kind acts, because that seems to feel especially meaningful to me.

Kindness and Compassion Practice #2: Volunteering and Community Service in your community is also an option for a happiness building practice in the area of kindness and compassion. VolunteerMatch is a great website to check out opportunities in your community to help out.

Gratitude Practices for Increased Happiness

Dr. Jonah Paquette is a Trainer in Positive Psychology. Positive Psychology research studied the beliefs and behaviors of happy, content people to figure out what practices they engage in -- so that we can learn from them in order to increase our own experiences of happiness everyday. Dr. Paquette encourages us to practice gratitude as a way to build more happiness in our lives. Here are a few practices you can try. 

Gratitude Practice #1: Three Good Things

Instructions: Each night for the next two weeks before you go to bed, write down three things that went well for you that day. These good things can be relatively small or minor occurrences, or they can be larger and of greater significance to you. Below each positive event that you list, please write down an answer to the question “Why did this good thing happen?” or “What was my contribution to this good thing?” After two weeks, write a brief reflection on how this practice impacted your mood.

Example: 

Good Thing #1: I had a fulfilling day at work and my sessions with clients went well.
Why this happened/My contribution: I made sure I got plenty of sleep last night and tried to be very present and attuned in my sessions today.

Good Thing #2: My partner cooked my favorite dinner, spaghetti and meatballs.
Why this happened/My contribution: I expressed gratitude and thanked her the last time she cooked, and told her how much I appreciated it.

Good Thing #3: It was a beautiful and sunny day outside when I was driving to work.
Why this happened/My Contribution: I took the time to notice and appreciate the weather, instead of being on “autopilot” on my way to work.

Gratitude Practice #2: Gratitude Letter/Visit

Instructions: 

We all have people in our lives – friends, parents, teachers, mentors, colleagues, coaches, bosses, and so forth – who have helped us throughout the years. Think about someone in your life who has helped you along the way, but whom you have never properly thanked. For the purpose of this exercise, think about an individual who lives near enough to you such that you can visit them in the next few weeks. Write a detailed and thorough letter of gratitude towards this person, expressing your feelings towards them. Thank them for all that they have done for you, and how their kindness impacted your life. Revise the letter as needed, and when you feel satisfied with it, set up a meeting with that individual but don’t yet tell them the true purpose of your visit. When you meet this person, please either read them the letter aloud or have them read it in your presence. Talk to them about what it was like for them, and share your feelings with them as well. After doing this exercise, write a brief reflection about what the experience was like for you, and how it felt.

How this exercise works: We’ve all heard about the power of gratitude and the interpersonal component of gratitude may be the most potent ingredient of this practice. This exercise is essentially interpersonal gratitude on turbo power. Not only are we reflecting on and identifying people to whom we feel grateful, we are expressing it directly to them in both written and verbal form. Thus, we are opening the gateway for increased closeness and connection with that individual.

Getting started: I recommend using a fresh sheet of paper to write your letter (or better yet, using a computer so that you can edit as needed). To get started, I invite you to reflect on a few people whom you might have interest in writing your letter to. Think about someone who has helped you along the way, but whom you wish to thank in an in-depth and heartfelt way. Consider the following questions to generate ideas and start formulating the basis of your gratitude letter:

Whom do I feel gratitude towards?
What does this person mean to me?
What did he/she do to help me?
What would I like to say to this person?
What emotions come up as I reflect on this person?
How is my life different because of this person?

Practicing Happiness in Unprecedented Times

by Lindsay Roznowski

These days, I have a special resentment in my heart for the phrase “unprecedented times.” The past few years have been unpredictable, confusing, and anxiety-provoking as we learn how to do pretty much everything differently. The need to constantly adapt and engage in novel problem-solving for situations that our life experiences have not prepared us for has us all feeling frayed and exhausted. As we emerge from the turmoil of the last two years, many of us have reflected on how we want to show up in the world moving forward. An unpredictable life event that undermines your feeling of security in the world has a way of urging us toward that kind of self-reflection. Personally, this time has motivated me to ask myself: “How do I want to live? How do I want to thrive in ways that I was not pre-pandemic?” Much of what came up for me was that I needed to find ways to prioritize myself in proactive and consistent ways. Everyone talks about self-care, but how often do we prioritize self-care like we would a work appointment or our child’s soccer game? How many of us fully grasp the “putting the oxygen mask on yourself first” metaphor, but still wake up every day and somehow put ourselves last?

The need for proactive and consistent self-care brought to mind a terrific training I attended a few years ago on Positive Psychology with Dr. Jonah Paquette. Positive Psychology is defined as “the scientific study of strengths that enable individuals and communities to thrive.” Positive Psychology is founded on the belief that people desire meaningful and fulfilling lives and wish “to cultivate what is best within themselves to enhance their experiences of love, work, and play.” (Positive Psychology Center, University of Pennsylvania). I came away from the training understanding that happiness can and should be invested in and built on a regular basis and that constructing positivity in our lives takes practice just as other life skills do. During the training we worked with this specific definition of happiness: “The experience of joy, contentment, or positive well-being, combined with a sense that one’s life is good, meaningful, and worthwhile.” (Sonja Lyuborminsky, Ph.D.) Research shows that happier people are healthier people and that happiness has several significant causal effects including psychological (increased life satisfaction, lower rates of depression and anxiety, increased resiliency), physical (increased longevity, improved health, stronger immune system, coping with chronic illness), and life (stronger marriages, closer relationships, improved job performance). Happiness means different things to different people, especially generationally, but Dr. Paquette highlighted this important fact—no matter who you are, happiness comes with practice.  

Dr. Paquette discussed several notable barriers to our happiness including happiness forecasting, hedonic adaptation, and a negative brain. He explained that as humans, we are the only species that engages in happiness forecasting, a practice in which we predict that we will be happy when something specific happens or when we achieve a specific goal (like our sports team winning the championship or getting that promotion at work). One of the biggest problems with happiness forecasting is that we are very bad at it; we habitually hang our hat of happiness on the hook of external events out of our control. And further, we often associate the achievement of happiness with something external, instead of investing in the work internally. In addition, research has found that even when we do externalize our happiness and focus on achieving something we think will make us happier, once we do, hedonic adaptation quickly sets in and we return to our relatively stable baseline level of happiness. On the neuroscience side, it is clear that our brains are like Velcro for negative thoughts and Teflon for positive thoughts, so we must practice positivity more often and more consistently in order for it to finally stick.

Dr. Paquette introduced us to happiness-building practices in numerous areas including: gratitude, kindness and compassion, self-compassion, mindfulness, connection, optimism, and signature strengths. A series of exercises on each of these practices are included below. Have fun experimenting with one or more of these powerful practices to strengthen your happiness!

Lindsay Roznowski is a Licensed Professional Counselor providing individual and family therapy to children, adolescents, and adults. Specialties include trauma-focused cognitive behavior therapy; yoga and mindfulness; therapeutic work with children and adolescents; and family therapy. Lindsay teaches her clients happiness practices and skills derived from positive psychology as a way to invest in themselves and their self-care, especially during these complicated times. She is a certified yoga teacher and uses her background dialectical behavior therapy, mindfulness-based approaches, and trauma-focused therapy to offer her clients informed, holistic care. She works collaboratively with each client to create a therapy plan that acknowledges the whole person and supports the fullness of each client’s personal goals. In addition to counseling, Lindsay also offers therapeutic groups and workshops. For questions or to schedule a session, contact Lindsay at 215-326-9665 or at
lindsay@bloomwellnesscounseling.com.