The Kindness Letters

Every act of love is a work of peace no matter how small.
~ Mother Teresa

One of my Danish connections on LinkedIn, Lars AP, runs a non-profit for the purpose of spreading kindness.

Although he lives in Denmark and writes and works in Danish, one of his parents is American, and his kindness focus arose from observing that he liked himself better when he was his outgoing American self, speaking English than his more introverted, “let me not be in your way”, Danish-speaking version.  Well, now older and wiser, he shows up as his outgoing relationship-building self regardless of which language he speaks.

After Lars had made a name for himself doing kindness happenings, he invited people to send in their kind stories: something they had done for somebody, that somebody had done for them, or when they had been a bystander left with that little “aah, that was so nice”-feeling.  He shares these stories in his Friday emails along with uplifting music or thoughts or gimmicks or jokes or… you know, it’s a bit like getting a mix of Susan Rooks’ Friday Funnies and David Marlow’s Daily Ikigai in your inbox.

In a recent post, Lars described how he some years back, on an otherwise emotionally gray day, held the door for a young father with a pram and produced a kind-moment right there. It stimulated him to do other small connective actions from his café chair by the window – like smiling to random people in the street.   He had the insight that when we experience awe, we say “awe” – usually spelled aah (or in Danish årh, pronounced – wait for it…: awe).  In that moment we are very present, we may have goosebumps, and we are “feeling with” the people/animals/nature involved in the interaction (or the video or story we see/read.)

When Lars has done corporate and culture events – and yes, kindness in the workplace is a good thing, too – he noticed that when he asked the participants to recall kind events, up to a third of them couldn’t come up with any stories.

What if they just needed the right kind of prompt?

Fortunately, Lars had the data to figure out what such prompts might be: the over 10,000 kind stories people have sent to him over the years.  Coding all these stories for themes, he and his team found that – at least in Denmark – people observe and remember awe in these scenarios:

1. They experienced an unexpected “good luck” kindness (a compliment e.g.)
2. They had some bad luck, and somebody ameliorated that
3. Somebody had pointed out something about them – a talent, skill, habit, or trait – they weren’t aware of was exceptional (secret superpower) or had functioned as an “enlightened witness” and thereby changed the storyteller’s life trajectory
4. They were engaged in play
5. “Love songs” – to people, nature, sunsets,…
6. A time when they were authentic and felt belonging
7. Socially risky situations, like hearing a vulnerable share of a personal story, or doing/seeing something that may run against social norms in order to build a connection.

Lars took this one step further.  He made mood-board-based stories that came up for him when he thought of his awesome experiences from each of these seven categories.  And then he took that activity out in his workshops to see how the participants reacted.

Now people have a scaffold around thoughts of kindness, and -– lo and behold – it does prompt the memory.  Not only can more people recall incidents, but the incidents that have lodged in their memory also say something about what is important to them.  Are most of your stories happening outside?  Might it then be an idea for you to do your meetings from outside if that is where you breathe a little more freely and relax into who you are?

We can meditate on a mountaintop and feel “I am one with the Force and the Force is with me.” But might we also be able to reach transcendence just by being kind?  To Lars, kindness creates small, everyday self-transcendence moment; the sixth step in Maslow’s unfinished Hierarchy of Needs theory.  And who knows what Maslow intended?  Unfortunately, he didn’t get to make that part of his work clear to the world before he died of a heart attack.

To make sure that I understood correctly what Lars wrote in his article, I sent him a LI message inviting him to a Zoom.  And he zoomed in the next day – in the middle of his Easter break – and not only did he spend an hour with me, but immediately afterwards he sent me a pdf of his book Awesome – or, this being in Danish, Århsome, a word he invented for his book.  To me, it was like a category 1 kindness story happening in real-time.

Now I am curious, so I just might come up with a few more stories that are part of my Århsome collection and see if they point me somewhere interesting. Enjoy more below:

The Århsome Stories

What is important to you?   Share your kind stories – from whichever categories are most available in your memory.  And if you decide to do a mood-board and gain insights from doing that, I would love to hear of your stories and findings – as, I am sure, would Lars.