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Kindness At Home

Kindness is essential for a peaceful, happy and loving home. Kindness includes:

care for ourselves and/or each other so that basic needs are met, e.g. healthy eating, exercise
making time for hobbies and interests
listening and making time for ourselves and others; and treating others with respect and empathy
It includes celebrating birthdays and achievements; fun times; and banter that is good natured rather than mocking or distressing.

Within such a context, people are more likely to be happy and confident; they are more likely to be able thrive and excel; and any instances of strife or disagreement can be followed with genuine discussion and/or apologies. Performances and relationships outside the home are also more likely to improve.

Being Kind to Ourselves: Self-care

Being Kind to Ourselves

Kindness begins with our behaviour and especially self-care. This includes taking time to treat ourselves with respect and compassion. For instance:

eating healthy and nourishing food
taking time to exercIse e.g. walking, dancing, gym, swimming
getting outdoors to recharge and build physical fitness; and especially when we are surrounding by beautiful places to visit and see
making time for hobbies, interests and activities that are enjoyable.

Kindness also means thinking about how we talk to ourselves. As an example, if a colleague gets a promotion and you did not, it would be easy to self-criticise and tell ourselves: “you should have done better”, or “you messed that up”.

By taking a more compassionate and kinder stance however, you might instead give yourself some encouragement: “your time will come”, or “you are feeling annoyed / angry, and need to do some self-care to improve how you are feeling". Kindness and self-compassion are especially important at difficult times, but ideally, kindness and self-care or compassion becomes a way of life -a daily way of life!

Self- or other criticism can be the opposite of compassion and kindness, This occurs when we accidentally allow an inner critical voice freedom to judge, undermine, condemn or even sabotage our efforts and activities. When this happens, moods often drop, stress or anxiety increases, and a lot of energy gets wasted. Typically however, this happens because people simply had not realised the negative consequences, or that there are better and more effective ways to manage negative, angry, anxious or worry thoughts.

Daily Steps to Kindness and Care

Daily steps towards kindness and self-care, and a new you, can include any of the following:

Eating healthily, and regularly (usually around every 4-5 hours), which includes eating 5-7 portions of fruit and vegetables, and making sure you are not dehydrated. Ideal breakfasts might be those that are oats-based or protein based.
Going walking: walking or other exercise releases endorphins and lowers levels of cortisol which means that we feel better and get more energy. Exercise sounds too difficult or taxing? Choose an activity that would be most enjoyable or fun, e.g. many people prefer walking outdoors rather than walking on a treadmill. Also, to motivate yourself, just commit to walking / exercising for 5 minutes only, or a short distance like the garden parameter / street corner and back – ideally once you have started you will want to walk further.
Making time for hobbies and interests: these are activities that can become waylaid when stressed or down, but they are sure fire ways to recharge one’s battery and lift mood. If you are not sure what your hobbies are, or if has been a while since you engaged in a hobby, maybe flick through your local paper to see what is on, and what might be of interest? Or fun?
Scheduling in “me time”: such slots could be before 8am, lunchtime and/or early evenings - and no work /technology distractions are permitted. This time could be spent in meditation, exercise (incl cycling or walking); pampering (incl spa-type treatments at home); outdoor walking (ideally with wow glasses on!), or generally being creative (e.g. writing / playing music).
Scheduling in family time; even after a stressful or busy day talking with your biggest supporters can help keep you grounded, e.g. via phone, if not personal visit.
Minimising or ideally dropping activities that do not help long-term, incl rumination or thinking about things that annoy; moaning / complaining / venting; efforts to change friends or adult family members.

Professional Supports

Self-care and kindness can also include accessing CBT support, or attending one of our informal community Stress Busters courses (see our sister site at TheICanCentre.com). Additionally, there is no assumption / need for anything to be "wrong" to access these supports. Instead, it is quite fine to attend these even for personal development, information and/or prevention.

Find out more

Barriers to Kindness and Care At Home

"I dont have time/energy to selfcare"

What is behind this? What are we telling ourselves?

No time for fun things? Ourselves? What are we valuing?
Practical problem solving needed, e.g. a to-do list?
Maybe we are spreading ourselves too thinly? Or spending time on things that are not so important?
Do we need to ask for help?

What if we did selfcare? Is it worth it?

What if we showed ourselves the same kindness or respect that we show others? How would your day / life change?

More time to do what you want to do?
Better qualtiy of sleep? Better heatlh? Potentially a longer life?
More purpose / fun / joy? More hobbies and interests? More quality to life?
Less concern about what others think?

Recharging - One Act of Kindness At a Time

Feeling too anxious or tired to selfcare? Your battery a bit low?

It is OK not to be OK .
Yet what if you were to do three acts of kindness tomorrow e.g. a healthy meal? A spa treatment, e.g. shower, body lotion? And some exercise (even ten minutes’ walk)?
And imagine each of these three activities was worth three points each - and you did three?
What would happen to your battery/mood - except it increase or improve it by nearly ten points (3 activities X 3 points each)?

The more little acts of kindness behaviours you do, the higher up your battery goes! Try it for yourself?