Tag Archive for: Kindness

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How to Make a Difference Today

I often ask myself, “How can I make a positive impact on others today?” This is an empowering question that often leads to great ideas. To make a difference in the world, it will always involve helping others. There are several ways to help others but there is one way that is often overlooked. That way is to continue to grow ourselves because we can’t help someone if we are not in the right mental place to do so.

Kindness, whether it is with others or yourself, will always make a difference in the world. When practiced daily, kindness will have a major positive impact on the world. It doesn’t always have to be practiced for others because when we offer ourselves kindness, we are teaching others to be kind to themselves too. Let’s teach something powerful today.  Take the Every Day Kindness Challenge and start making a powerful impact today.

While kindness doesn’t solve all of our problems, it does help us stay positive and more optimistic. Just think of the consequences if we all practiced kindness daily? I bet there would be a big impact on negative thinking, depression, bullying, anger and so much more.

Teach kindness. Help others learn kindness. Learn kindness. These are the keys to a positive outlook on life.

With peace and gratitude,
Bill

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Kindness For those Who DON’T Deserve It

I asked myself this question today, “Why does kindness matter?” It is a valid question to ask since I built the idontstink.com site around the kindness meter and regularly issue Kindness Challenges. But what does kindness mean to me and why should any of us care.  Well, let me just tackle those questions today.

To me, kindness isn’t something that you do as a task for your “to do” lists. It is more about being gentle, thoughtful and caring to others who could use it. Actually, it is the people we believe that DO NOT deserve our kindness are the very ones that need it the most. Kindness is showing empathy, tolerance and restraint to these people. Remember, we are all fighting our own battles and who is it for me to say that my battle is bigger or worse than yours?

I still can’t get out of my head reading all the stories about bullying, the negative statistics associated with them and the consequences bullying has on our society. We must take a personal stance for finding a solution. I believe searching for a solution has much more power than “fighting against” bullying. For me, I believe that kindness is one of the most powerful tools we can use create a better place. Kindness always delivers and is never, ever wasted.

Join me today and take the Kindness Challenge. Together, you and I can and WILL make a positive difference in the world.
With peace, gratitude, and kindness,
Bill

Kindness Matters

Kindness matters. It plays a major role in helping ourselves and others stay positive. We have to remember that we all have our our struggles and battles that we fight daily. It is so easy to forget this and put our values and rules on others. That is a losing proposition for sure. With kindness, we seem to break through all those barriers that otherwise would not have been broken and reach people on their soul level.

I remember when I was planning the Arts and Jazz Festival Kindness Challenge. I was a bit overwhelmed by the amount of time and money it took to have a kindness booth for three consecutive days. Others around me rallied for support of the work I was attempting to accomplish and the results were simply amazing. During that event, I watched time after time people light up when we would offer kindness. We were not trying to sell them anything, just offering to be kind. Kindness matters.

I did a search on Google yesterday for stories about bullying and it returned 320 (wait for it)….. MILLION pages. I started looking through a few of them and time after time, there were completely horrible outcomes to bullying. I read over and over again where one person that was bullied as a kid would then turn into a bully themselves (Ritchie Incognito of the Miami Dolphins comes to mind quickly). While my book, STINKIN’ THINKIN’ STINKS isn’t a book on bullying, it does offer tools and techniques that will help build self-esteem in our kids today. This site was built to quickly and directly help kids deal with what they are struggling with today. It may not solve world hunger, but it is a tool. Bullying as it sits today is simply unacceptable. We can no longer look the other way when it is happening or about to happen because it is occurring DAILY with 90% of kids in 4th through 8th grades reported as being bullied. Seriously? This is all a symptom of STINKIN’ THINKIN!

The answer to all this madness is kindness. It is impossible to be a bully and be kind at the same time. If you want to change your life and the lives of those around you, practice kindness. It doesn’t take much, just some effort. You can do that, right? I challenge you right now to take the Kindness Challenge and start making a positive difference in the world today.

With Peace, Gratitude, and Kindness,
Bill

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28 Days of Kindness Challenge Starts TODAY!

Today is the first day of IDontStink.com’s 28 Day Kindness Challenge.  We are challenging you to do at least one kind act each day for the next 28 days.  You can do that, right?  Easy peasy!  I will be posting some of the kind deeds that come up during the challenge and I encourage you to post your comments on your kind deeds so we all can benefit.  To get things started, I decided to practice kindness yesterday and here is the story.

Yesterday, Sunday March 2nd, we had a ice storm hit the Dallas/Fort Worth area. I was in my office working on the March Daily Positive Points when I saw my neighbor trying to get her car up her slick, ice coated driveway so she could park it in her garage. I decided right then and there to offer a hand. I went to my garage, grabbed a shovel and headed over there. After about 20 minutes of shoveling, scraping, (slipping), and freezing, we were able to get her car in the garage.  She was very grateful but I know we all would have done the same thing.  I left feeling like this was a good start to the Kindness Challenge I was launching on Monday.

Share your stories here in the comment section or send me an email via “Ask Sweetie” barrel and she will send them directly to me.
Peace and gratitude,
Bill

Kindness & Kids – A Great Combo

Doing acts of kindness is the key to happiness for all of us, including kids and teens.  Instead of expecting others to do things for us, why not try doing something kind for someone else?  It will do more to raise your own happiness than you can ever imagine!

We have to do more for our kids than just turn the into “receivers.”  Kids are born to be givers.  I will never forget the kind acts my son David did as a very, very young child.  He was only 3 when he gave his entire collection of hundreds of matchbox cars to his friend down the street because he didn’t have his own toys.  And once he started school, he would give all of his supplies away by the end of the first six weeks to those who needed them.  Why?  Because it made him feel good to help others.  And it still does!  Just last weekend, he and his wife volunteered for Habitat for Humanity.

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Daily Positive Points

Here’s your Daily Positive Points for today:

Today’s Message
Each day do your best to learn something new.  If you can accomplish this, just think how much you will have learned in a month, a year, a decade.  Start today! 

Today’s ACTION
Today, offer to mentor someone who could use it.  It doesn’t take much, just offer something and watch the true power of kindness.  For ideas, go to idontstink.com and click on the kindness meter.  There are approximately 200 kind deeds to choose from in 8 categories.

Today’s Quote
“As irrigators lead water where they want, as archers make their arrows straight, as carpenters carve wood, the wise shape their minds.” ~Buddha

If you are not receiving these SUPER COOL, SUPER AWESOME daily messages, simply click “join our list” at the top of any page on our site.  You will then start receivig them Monday-Friday.  Go ahea, MAKE YOUR DAY! 🙂

With gratitude and peace,
Bill

 

Give Half of Something Kindness Challenge starts TODAY!

The is year’s Kindness Challenge is a little different than what I have offered in the past.  This year the theme is Give Half of Something.  What I mean by that is everyone has something they can give half of in the effort to do kind deeds.  It can be half the time you spend watching TV on a certain night.  It can be half of your budget for coffee in the morning.  Basically, anything you can think of that fits the bill, give half of it. So, join me today at idontstink.com and participate in the 6 week Kindness Challenge.  Give half of something, half of anything.  You CAN do it!

Don’t forget to log your kind deeds into your very own FREE Kindness Meter at idontstink.com.

With peace, gratitude, AND kindness,
Bill

Announcing July’s Kindness Challenge

This year for our annual Kindness Challenge we are going to do something a little different.  This year’s challenge is called, “Half of Something Kindness Challenge.”  The challenge will begin July 1st and run through August 30th.  The premise is that everyone can give up half of something.  Maybe you spend one hour a day playing video games.  Your challenge would be to give up half that time and do something kind during that time.  Easy right?

We will be putting more details around the challenge and encourage you to participate and tell as many people as you can about it.  Full details and how you can participate will be coming within the next few weeks.

Peace and gratitude,

Bill

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90 Days of Kindness – DAY 90!

bonus4Well, today marks the final day of the Kindness Challenge.  I hope that by some small way this challenge has prompted several of you to do kind deeds.  But you know what?  Just because the Kindness Challenge ended today doesn’t mean that you should stop doing kind deeds for others and yourself.  The main purpose of this challenge was to get you thinking about doing kindness consciously on a daily basis.

Come back for more post thoughts on the Kindness Challenge.

With kindness and gratitude,

Bill

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90 Days of Kindness – Day 89

Today marks the next to last day in the kindness challenge.  One question I keep asking myself is was this a successful smilechallenge?  I thought about this a lot over the past few days.  I believe my answer is that if a single person participated in the challenge and completed at least one kind deed, then yes, this was a successful challenge.

F0r me, many times I was reminded to do kind deeds because of the challenge.  By keeping kindness in my awareness it allowed me to do more kind deeds.  I suggest as you start off the new year, decide that you will spread your love with kindness to all that you meet.  Don’t reserve the kind deeds for just people you know, share them with everyone.

May you have a positive and blessed new year!

Peace, gratitude, and kindness,

Bill