The woman who was kind every day for a year
The woman who was kind every day for a year
Based on The Kindness Test, the world's largest study of kindness, launched on BBC Radio 4 devised by the University of Sussex. ROBIN BANERJEE; Sussex Centre for Research on Kindness: You might think about kindness as being this quite soft, fluffy, wishy- washy thing, but actually, it's really fundamental to how we connect with each other. BERNADETTE RUSSELL; Kindness Campaigner: I think being kind is part of the purpose of being alive. NINA ANDERSEN; Founder, Community Senior Letters: Acts of kindness are needed in the world, right now more than ever. CAPTION: THE EXTRAORDINARY POWER OF KINDNESS BERNADETTE RUSSELL: Back in 2011, I was sitting in a café, just enjoying a breakfast, when I looked up at a screen and there was a double - decker bus on fire in London. It was terrifying. It looked like civil war. And there was a very negative response to the riots that really upset me as well. I'd felt increasingly despairing about what felt like the enormity of the problems of the world . I didn't know what I could do. CAPTION: A FEW DAYS LATER, BERNADETTE GAVE A STRANGER IN A POST OFFICE 50P FOR A STAMP. BERNADETTE RU SSELL: And he was overwhelmed with gratitude, it was disproportionate to my tiny amount of time and money. But I thought, I did kind of put a smile on his face, that sort of did make a difference. So as I was going home, I concocted this foolhardy notion t hat I was going to try and do an act of kindness every single day for a stranger for a year. It was completely life - transforming. CAPTION: STUDIES HAVE REPEATEDLY SHOWN KINDNESS TO BE INTUITIVE. THE MORE TOME WE HAVE TO THINK, THE LESS KIND WE ARE LIKELY TO BE. EVEN LITTLE CHILDREN HAVE AN INSTINCT FOR HELPING BEHAVIOUR WHEN THEY FEEL CONNECTED TO OTHERS. BEING KIND CAN ALSO HAVE POWERFUL EFFECTS ON OUR BRAINS. ROBIN BANERJEE: It's one of the big paradoxes of kindness, that an act of kindness that is intended to benefit others actually had some positive consequences for yourself. There are patterns of activation in the brain which correspond to a boost to wellbeing. The reward pathways in the brain are activated when people are performing kind acts. CAPTION: KIND ACTS TRIGGER NEUROTRANSMITTERS IN THE BRAIN - THE CHEMICAL MESSENGERS THAT CONTROL OUR MOOD. THE PLEASUREABLE SENSATIONS THAT FOLLOW DRIVE A SENSE OF CONNECTEDNESS WITH OTHERS. ROBIN BANERJEE: Those relationships that are required for worki ng cooperatively are founded upon basic social connections. So it's pretty fundamental to how human beings interact with each other. Thank you so much, that's really kind of you. CAPTION: SO, BACK TO BERNADETTE... WHAT HAPPENED WHEN SHE WAS ACTIVELY KIND EVERY DAY? BERNADETTE RUSSELL: Oh, yes. So over the course of the year, it proved itself to be utterly heart - warming, completely terrifying, occasionally expensive, sometimes physically hazardous, like when I carried some really heavy shopping over four miles to a lady's flat. So it was a really, sort of, creative journey, that was also tiring and incredibly inspiring. KINDNESS CAMPAIGNERS: Kindness changes the world! CAPTION: BERNADETTE EXPERIENCED THE CHEMICAL EFFECTS OF THE SO - CALLED 'HELPER'S HIGH' - THE SPECIAL TINGLY FEELING THAT COMES OVER US WHEN WE ARE KIND. BERNADETTE RUSSELL: I was like high every day. Mostly it was kind of a warm glow round your heart and also your tummy. It just felt really good. CAPTION: SO IF KINDNESS IS SO BENEFICIAL, AND IT'S IN OUR NATURE, WHY DON'T WE LIVE IN A KINDER WORLD? ROBIN BANERJEE: Human beings have a predisposition to exhibit kindness to other people. But they also have the possibility of demonstrating quite significant unkindness to other people. The environment makes a huge difference. All of those stories about kindness being weak, we have to challenge those now. When you think of a really successful person do you think of someone who's kind? Or do you think of someone who's out there in the limelig ht, really dominant figure, a celebrity, who's very wealthy? What can we do to turn the narrative of success around, so we sa y that actually being successful does involve positive relationships with other people. CAPTION: THE KINDESS TEST - A RECENT STUD Y OF OVER 60,000 PEOPLE AROUND THE WORLD - FOUND THAT TWO - THIRDS THOUGHT THE COVID - 19 PANDEMIC HAD MADE PEOPLE KINDER. IN THE FIRST LOCKDOWN IN 2020, NINA ANDERSEN SET UP A LETTER - WRITING CAMPAIGN CONNECTING SCHOOL PUPILS WITH OLDER PEOPLE. NINA ANDERSEN : This is one of my favourites. Some old people dancing. I just thought about how elderly people had no contact beyond the walls of their care homes. What started off as quite a small localised idea just became something way bigger than I could ever have imagined. It's reached over 250 schools and over 250 care homes and positively impacted thousands of people. BERNADETTE RUSSELL: What we witnessed during that time was how much we yearn to help each other. What we have to do now is remember the immense k indness that we were capable of during this time. CAPTION: SO HOW COULD WE BUILD A KINDER WORLD? ROBIN BANERJEE: This can't simply be a matter of instructing people in a given setting to be kind. Hey, you. You need to be kind. We need to change our envi ronment so that it feels normative to be kind. BERNADETTE RUSSELL: I would really like to see businesses, schools, hospitals all public services, have a kindness manifesto. So that they all ask themselves, "Is this kind?" So that it becomes an ordinary pa rt of our conversation at every level in every organisation, everywhere. CAPTION: BUT THE DESIRE FOR BIG CHANGES DOESN'T MEAN SMALL ACTS OF KINDNESS AREN'T MEANINGFUL. BERNADETTE RUSSELL: The biggest lesson for me was to embrace the fact that every single day I can do something. That thing might be just say ing good morning to someone. That thing might be just smiling. That's how we change the world. NINA ANDERSEN: If you carry out a good deed to someone else that will increase the chance of them carrying out kind deeds to other people. So it kind of goes in a circle, kindness. ROBIN BANERJEE: The small stuff may actually be the big stuff. All those small things that you figure, "Well, they're not important, just people being nice to each other." Maybe th at's the most important thing for creating an environment which actually enables people to feel good and to be able to work together and to be able to take on some really big challenges. BERNADETTE RUSSELL: In the same way that a beach is filled with a billion grains of sand, there's this sort of beautiful humility in saying, "I can, at every single moment, at any point of any day, contribute to making the world a better place."
