Celebrating World Kindness Day 2022 is the perfect opportunity to take a step back and consider who, among your family, friends, neighbours, and work colleagues, may well benefit from a random act of kindness, or a genuine good deed that will bring joy to their day.

The event, which was first launched by The World Kindness Movement in 1998, has neither political nor religious affiliations, and since it was formed in Toyko in 1997, The World Kindness Movement now has over 28 nations involved, with the purpose of 'creating a kinder world by inspiring individuals and nations towards greater kindness'.

What is 'Kindness'?

According to the Oxford dictionary, "kindness" is a quality, i.e. 'the quality of being kind'. Furthermore, kindness is seen to be 'generous, helpful, and caring about other people , or an act showing this quality'.

Kindness doesn't have to be a huge gesture. It can be a smile to a stranger, it can be a visit to an isolated friend or neighbour, it can be playing a supportive role to somebody in your family, or it can be simply checking in with a colleague to ask how they are.

Indeed kindness can be those simple random acts that we encounter every day but that we might sometimes miss, because our lives are so busy, so congested, and so taken up with thinking about ourselves, rather than thinking about how our actions or our words can have a positive, (or negative), impact on those around us.

Is Kindness a truly selfless act?

It is true to say that for every action, there is a reaction, and the interesting thing about 'being kind' is that those random acts of kindness will not only make somebody elses' day a little brighter, they can have an enormous impact on our own well-being.

Moreover, science dictates that when you decide to 'do good' towards somebody else, this activates an area of the brain called the striatum which responds to situations we find rewarding by releasing a 'warm-glow' type of feeling.

So whether you think kindness is truly selfless, or you see acts of kindness as purely transactional, research has proved that an act of kindness has a positive impact on both the giver and the receiver, and the consequences of underestimating this impact could mean people miss opportunities to boost both their own and others’ well-being. (APA 2022).

How can we be kind to colleagues?

It feels strange writing this article, when we have all too recently lost one of very own colleagues who epitomised kindness.

However, the opportunity to reflect on what kindness means and how we can demonstrate acts of kindness to colleagues in a disconnected world should not, and could not, be missed.

Being kind IS selfless, it is demonstrated to others through dedication, patience, loyalty, and generosity.

It is also about making people feel cared for, it is inclusion, and it is about putting others before yourself.

These are all qualities that are carried out quietly, constantly, steadfastly, in an every day approach to simply being kind, and that have all been used to describe Estefy Pantoja.

And on World Kindness Day 2022, we can perhaps make a quiet commitment to ourselves that we will try to live out these values of kindness not just on this day, but on every day and with every interaction with friends, family, neighbours, and of course, colleagues.

This article is dedicated to our much loved and much missed colleague, Estefy Pantoja.