How can practising kindness transform your life?
Practising kindness and positive regard can have a transformative effect on your life.
Kindness and positive regard can have a significant impact on your life in various ways. Here are some ways in which they can positively and happily influence you:
The first is my favourite as it has a double-whammy effect! What’s not to love?
When we're kind we feel happier, and our bodies are healthiest.
Ripple effect of positivity
Kindness and positive regard have a ripple effect on others. When you treat someone with kindness, they are more likely to pass it on to others. This creates a chain reaction of positive actions and contributes to a more compassionate and harmonious society.
By being a catalyst for positive change, you can make a significant difference in the lives of those around you.
Improved relationships
When you approach others with positive regard and kindness, it fosters a sense of trust and respect in your relationships. People are more likely to respond positively to your kindness, leading to stronger bonds and deeper connections with others. This can apply to relationships with family, friends, colleagues, and even strangers.
Enhanced emotional well-being
Practising positive regard and kindness can boost your own emotional well-being. When you genuinely care about and show kindness towards others, it promotes a sense of empathy, compassion, and gratitude within you. These positive emotions contribute to increased happiness, reduced stress, and a greater overall sense of fulfilment and contentment in life.
Increased self-esteem
Treating others with positive regard and kindness also has a positive impact on your self-esteem.
When you consistently act in ways that benefit others and show kindness, you develop a sense of personal worth and value. It reinforces the belief that you are a caring and considerate individual, which in turn boosts your self-confidence and self-image.
Improved mental and physical health
Research has shown that practising kindness and experiencing positive regard can have beneficial effects on your mental and physical health. Acts of kindness and positive interactions release endorphins and other feel-good hormones, which contribute to improved mood, reduced anxiety, and increased overall well-being.
Additionally, being kind and receiving kindness from others can lower stress levels and improve cardiovascular health.
Personal growth and fulfilment
Incorporating positive regard and kindness into your life can lead to personal growth and fulfilment. It encourages you to develop qualities such as empathy, patience, and understanding.
Through acts of kindness, you learn to see situations from different perspectives and appreciate the humanity in others. This growth allows you to become a more well-rounded and compassionate individual.
In summary, kindness and positive regards have a transformative effect on your life. They improve relationships, enhance emotional well-being, boost self-esteem, create a ripple effect of positivity, improve mental and physical health, and contribute to personal growth and fulfilment.
Dr David Hamilton writes, "Scientific evidence has proven that kindness changes the brain, impacts the heart and immune system, is an antidote to depression and even slows the ageing process. We're actually genetically wired to be kind." In The Five Side Effects of Kindness, David Hamilton shows that the effects of kindness are felt daily throughout our nervous system. When we're kind we feel happier, and our bodies are healthiest.
Dr Bruce Lipton is an advocate of our perception of our environment being the single most influential factor of our health and wellbeing and research into epigenetics supports that we can physically change our biochemistry by changing our environment. In his book The Biology of Belief, he writes that beliefs control human biology rather than DNA and inheritance.
One of the reasons I created the Emotional Identity Technique was to incorporate this idea of kindness to self - something that a lot of people struggle with - on an identity level (from Dilts neurological levels) as well as identify where this information was stored on a metaphysical level. One of the many wholeness techniques that I use to great effect.