Have you ever done something nice for someone “for no reason”. It wasn’t to repay them or because you had to – it was just because you wanted to. Well, then you performed a random act of kindness. Read on to learn how to do more random acts of kindness in your life to lift your spirits and improve the lives of others.

Random acts of kindness are acts performed by a person who wants to either help or positively influence another person (Passmore & Oades, 2015). Occasionally, random acts of kindness are defined as acts of kindness that a person does only for someone they don’t know (Baskerville et al., 2000), but this doesn’t seem like a magic ingredient (Curry et al., 2018). Just being kind is good for well-being (and that’s what we’re focusing on here). Kindness is one of the most valuable character strengths in Western society (Binfet, 2015).

We like kind people, so kindness can help us please. In addition, kindness has been shown to improve not only the well-being of others, but also our personal well-being. For example, if we spend more money on others, we tend to be happier, and if we volunteer to help others, we tend to be healthier (Curry et al., 2018).