Be Kinder: Live Longer
By: Susan Kelley
Tags: Kindness, Life, Wellness, Psychology, Health

Be Kinder: Live Longer

Photo by Randalyn Hill on Unsplash

It’s a simple fact. Can’t avoid it anymore. While it might feel better sometimes to curl up in your curmudgeonly ball, it’s true that being nicer leads to living longer. Dr. Kelli Harding wrote about it in her book, “The Rabbit Effect,” and now we have no excuse to be so jerky to people, even though we’ve basically been stuck at home with only the Uber Eats guy to talk to.

Basically, Harding did this experiment with rabbits where they eat more or less unhealthy food, but one group of rabbits got to experience a life filled with kindness while the other group — not so much. Turns out the group that experienced a life filled with acts of caring, well . . . you guessed it.

The Mayo Clinic reports that spreading love through acts of kindness increases the amount of oxytocin in our bodies, which actually makes us happier human beings. So when you pay it forward by buying the next person in line their morning latte, it’s not just good for them, it’s good for you.

I thought about making resolutions for 2021, ways to improve my own life, and it turns out, I just need to look at ways to improve someone else’s.

On February 19 of 2020, in the very earliest weeks of the COVID-19 Pandemic, I was let go from a job for which I had moved to a new city, totally relocating and setting out on a new path. I was really excited about this job, and then — BAM! But . . . I didn’t want to hang around my house moping while I looked for work, and I heard about a nearby church in South Baltimore that was transitioning to a food bank, making fresh, homemade food for the neighborhood — 100 to 150 meals a day to feed the primarily Hispanic residents, many with family members who were undocumented and thus ineligible for things like stimulus checks or other benefits.

I started volunteering and was soon the sole person cooking each afternoon, with a rotating cast of other volunteers. No surprise, I weathered three months of layoff without feeling depressed, without getting sick, and while staying optimistic and in shape.

Dr. Waguih William Ishak of Cedars-Sinai is quick to point out that we don’t get the health benefits we need from a single act of kindness. Just one act of kindness won’t give you an effect that lasts several days — or even hours. “The trick you need to know: Acts of kindness have to be repeated,” Dr. Ishak says. Doctors like Ishak recommend making kindness a practice, doing things like dropping an extra few coins in a tip jar on a regular basis, being the one who brings in an office treat regularly, acting as the neighborhood snow-shoveler without asking for compensation, that kind of thing. Those acts are things you can carry with you long-term.

Reaching out to others is a hugely beneficial way to make sure your kindness cup is always full. Getting to know your co-workers, and genuinely connecting with them is an overlooked, but important, facet of kindness as well. We all know how good it feels just to be valued by another human being.

There is solid research supporting the idea that being kind may change more than your state of being, it may alter your health, limiting inflammatory responses, lower your blood pressure and heart rate, and prove to be the best thing you do for yourself — and someone else.