While research into kindness and compassion is still young, evidence suggests that kindness and compassion are biological traits, and that practicing these skills can lead to improved health, enhanced well-being and better relationships.  Compassion and kindness allow us to walk with ourselves and others in a new way, as we work to create a world we're all happy to find ourselves within.

According to the 2018 BC McCreary Adolescent Health Survey, 39% of students reported experiencing discrimination in the previous year.  While students described discrimination most often on accord of physical appearance, experienced discrimination based on race, sexual orientation, and physical appearance had all increased since the previous survey in 2013.  The McCreary report is a cumulative report from over 38,000 students across 58 BC districts, and reminds us of the importance of working towards kindness, compassion, and strengthened relationships.   

Did you know that just one act of a kindness a day can reduce anxiety, stress and depression, while flooding your body with hormones that lead to greater calmness, happiness, and health in both yourself, as well as the person you helped?  Kindness can lead to increased serotonin, endorphins, and oxytocin.

When we look at our current reality in junction with the vision we hold and would like to see actuate, the experience can be one of tension.  And yet, if we imagine an elastic stretched between the two, we come to see the only way for resolution and release of tension when holding steady to our vision, is by shifting our currently reality towards it.  By focusing on the schools, environments, communities and interactions we hope to create, we can shift our reality towards one of even greater kindness and compassion. 

Check out the link through the Random Acts of Kindness Foundation to visit monthly kindness activities, and to reflect on ideas and inspiration to bring kindness into your day!  Scroll through ideas relevant to work, school and home environments, and consider how one random act of kindness a day could shift your world.

Compassion for oneself mirrors compassion for others.  In noticing and responding to the experience of pain, we are then able to offer ourselves the same kindness in turn that we might offer a friend.  Rather than trying to repress an experience, self compassion allows us to notice and care for self, noticing and comforting ourselves through challenging moments.

While it can be tempting to move quickly to a place of problem solving, we seldom make our best decisions when in distress.  By acknowledging our situation and the hurt we are experiencing, focusing on common humanity, and working to alleviate suffering through kindness and self compassion - we are able to better care for ourselves, alleviate our suffering, remain connected, and make better decisions. 

Mindfulness and awareness allow us to acknowledge when we are in pain - for instance, when negative self talk may leave us feeling hurt.  This is not about over exaggerating emotions, but rather about acknowledging them.  If we are unable to recognize our experience of the present moment, we are unable to intentionally address and ease hurt and suffering.

Focusing on common humanity allows us to remain connected, rather than to isolate.  When we wonder  "why me", we often feel cut-off, furthering hurt and distress.  When we recognize suffering is a part of life's experience and common humanity, we are more likely to continue feeling connected to others, alleviating pain.

Self-Kindness offers an alternative approach to unhelpful self- criticism.  While responding to personal failures and challenges with self-criticism often leads to further stress and resentment, self-kindness allows us to accept the current reality from a supportive place of compassion, forgiveness, learning, and new perspectives.

The Kindness curriculum seeks to draw on research and evidence based practice to design lessons growing skills in kindness and compassion, just as we would try to grow skills in literacy and numeracy.  Check out the link below and explore free curriculum cultivating social/emotional learning related to these topics.

The Kindness Curriculum is an Australian resource including activities designed to build the attributes of empathy, gratitude, perspective, honesty, self-compassion, self-acceptance, humility, collaboration, mindfulness, meditation, trust, affiliation and humour.

The Kindness is the Classroom Program is supported through the Random Acts of Kindness Foundation, and offers free lesson plans and resources for K-12 classrooms, in addition to educator resources.   Based on a four step model, empower-act-share inspire, this resource is CASEL-approved, and seeks to embed kindness within the framework of social emotional learning.

On Being host Krista Tippett and neuroscientist Richard Davidson discuss the topic of love, kindness, and education, considering how emotions can both contribute and disrupt cognition and behaviour, being an intimate aspect of all we do.  With the belief that we are hardwired for compassion in the same way we are hardwired for language, Dr. Richard Davidson discusses how to cultivate characteristics like compassion and kindness in the classroom.