Ripples of Kindness

"Remember there's no such thing as a small act of kindness.
Every act creates a ripple with no logical end."

~Scott Adams

I don't tweet so I wasn't aware of this, but I read over at one my favorite inspirational blogs, Kind Over Matter, today about something that is so simple yet the effect is so stunning.

Ann Curry (yes, that Ann Curry) shared the following thought:

@AnnCurry

Imagine if all of us committed to 20 mitvahs/acts of kindness to honor each child lost in Newtown. I'm in. If you are RT #20Acts

Imagine the ripple effect! I believe that what you focus on grows, so why not focus on kindness?

Here is what Ann had to say of her recent experience covering the tragedy:

After the experience in Newtown. I thought, “What if? Imagine if everyone could commit to doing one act of kindness for every one of those children killed in Newtown.” So that’s what I tweeted. And guess what? People committed. I said in my tweet, “I’m in. RT if you’re in.” Not only did they commit to 20 acts of kindness, they wanted to up it to 26 acts of kindness for every child and adult who was lost at the school. Some even debated maybe we should include the mother, who died, at 27 acts. Some debated maybe we should include the killer as well as he was struggling and in pain.

Amanda at Kind over Matter suggested that we each commit to at least 26 (but I prefer her proposition to make it 28 to include both the shooter and his mother who also lost their lives) Random Acts of Kindness. That is less than one a day each month! And if you do something for 21 days it becomes a habit, right? So after a month of Kindness it should easily become a daily habit! And so easy to do! But in case you have trouble thinking of them, Amanda also posted a Random Acts of Kindness checklist.

{Click here to download your own copy}

She also has so many other great free printables like the Free Compliments, Take One and the Kindness Lollipop flowers that would also make great random acts. How easy would it be to send an anonymous note to someone in the phone book? In the past for Lent, I have done the Blessed Bucks challenge where I place 40 $1 bills in places that people would likely find them, like taped to a box of diapers or tucked inside the next newspaper in the stack, each with the following message written on them "May you be blessed with health, wealth & love."  I will certainly revive that for Lent again this year (join me if you like!). Of course, I particularly like the idea of making jewelry and dropping it off at a local women's shelter. I am going to look into doing just that.

Today I left a nice tip for my favorite coffee shop girl and I upgraded all my orders placed this week to Priority shipping so that they could receive their goodies in time for Christmas gifting.

Later I will be dropping everything and cutting snowflake ballerinas with my daughter so we can send them to Newtown to decorate their new school and I think we will whip up some sweets to send to school for the teachers on Friday (today is a snow day. Hello, Winter Storm Draco!). I also plan to make a surprise mother's necklace for my office mate who wouldn't be able to buy one for herself. 

That is the start of my #28Acts. It doesn't matter how many you choose to do nor the reasons why, what matters is that you do them.

Are you in?