Three Kinds of Kindness

“Life’s persistent and most urgent question is ‘What are you doing for others?’” ~Martin Luther King, Jr.

An app to help us channel our strengths into kindness.

Playful kindness is about adding joy to the world and can include creating/strengthening interesting things/experiences. Playful kindness is often expressed through curiosity, creativity, game creation, gameplay (tag, hide-and-go-seek, etc.), and humor. When we play, we are also being kind to ourselves. More examples: organize a block party or an open-mic (poetry, music, stand-up comedy) event for your community.

“Let us be grateful to people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.” ~Marcel Proust

Compassionate kindness is about the prevention and amelioration of suffering. Examples: volunteer at a hospital or soup kitchen, shelter the unhoused, visit incarcerated individuals, advocate for a compassionate cause, etc.

“In a real sense all life is inter-related. All [people] are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be, and you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be…” ~Martin Luther King, Jr.

Constructive kindness is about noticing strengths and positive potential and sparking growth. Self-actualization is a way to be kind to yourself, because it is a form of strengths-based kindness. Examples: become a mentor (youth, arts, peer, etc.), coach (sports, speach, etc.), community builder (neighborhoods, choirs, etc.), etc. Mentoring is about providing another human being unconditional positive regard, being a mirror that reflects the mentee’s strengths back to them, and being a map-making guide that shows them how to translate their strengths into practical hope. Transformative kindness that is also accompanied with an intention to benefit the wellbeing of future generations is know as generative kindness.

All strength building is kindness, constructive kindness. This kindness can be directed towards oneself and others. Maximal constructive kindness stems from a drive to see every person and all of their communities fully alive and thriving, a harmonious maximization of strengths and assets. Generativity is a type of constructive kindness that emphasizes elevating the wellbeing of future generations.

Constructive Kindness in Action:
~ Through mentoring – helping young people translate their strengths into practical hope.
~ In friendships – the ‘We bring out the best in each other!’ dynamic.
~ Through community building practices like Asset-Based Community Development and Appreciative Inquiry.

One origination point of strengths psychology can be traced back to a project designed to enhance the positive impact of a youth mentoring program in the early 1950’s.

Playful and Constructive Kindness is Powered by the Play Drive:
We see curiosity, creativity, generativity, gameplay, humor, and many such activities as manifestations of a fundamental play drive that we all share. When our ever vigilant threat meter falls into the zone of physical and psychological safety, our play drive fires up. Curiosity helps us to broaden our awareness of potential resources at hand. Creativity, helps us to build up, preserve, and transform resources to help us to meet our physical and psychological needs and our desire to flourish. Creativity also help us to generate variety in our gameplay through practices such as painting, sculpture, poetry, literature, music, dance, theater, and sport. Philosophy and science can be thought of as a games driven by curiosity based questions such as ‘Why is there anything rather than nothing?’, ‘How does the universe work?’, ‘What can we do with the stuff we find in this universe?’, and ‘What does it mean to live a good life?’ Aside from being opportunities for generative playfulness, philosophy and science can have many other positive side effects!

“[Practical] hope is a perceived capability to derive pathways to desired goals, and motivate oneself via agency thinking to use those pathways.” ~Prof. C.R. (Rick) Snyder

Seeds of Kindness Ideas:

• Do acts of kindness, anonymously or not, write an anonymous note about your kindness on a card (click here for a template | use paper that is embedded with wildflower seeds and plant them in the spring with your crew/peeps/friends), and post it up somewhere (imagine that you’ve talked your local coffee shop into hosting a window for kindness cards) to inspire others to become more intentional about practicing kindness. Try to keep your note to two sentences:
  • What was your act of kindness?
  • Choose one: How did you feel? What was the experience like? Takeaways?
• Let at least one of your acts of kindness be to yourself, and aim some of your acts of kindness at benefiting others.
• A creative kindness stretch goal: try the free VIA Survey of Character Strengths at www.viacharacter.org or at www.authentichappiness.sas.upenn.edu and translate your top strengths into acts of kindness. Discovering and building up your strengths is a form of self-kindness that also enhances your ability to practice kindness towards others.
• Volunteerism is committed kindness. Local volunteer opportunities: Lincoln (boards) | Omaha
• Other kindness projects: Secret Kindness Agents | Kindness builds moral courage! | The founder of Choose Love in conversation with Dr. Vivek Murthy.

How kindness can make the world a better place:

Wellbeing (physical health, positive mental wellbeing, friendship, knowledge, a thriving natural environment, etc.) and illbeing (disease, natural disasters, human generated suffering, etc.) are related but distinct aspects of the human experience. The absence of illbeing in a community, does not imply the presence of wellbeing. Wellbeing is generated through playful and transformative kindness, and illbeing is reduced through compassionate kindness.

Kindness and Friendship:

“The maximum of mutual love is friendship.” ~Immanuel Kant

Love is kindness in action. If asked to describe their friendship, best friends respond with some version of the following three elements:

• We enjoy each other’s company = playful kindness
• We have each other’s backs = compassionate kindness
• We bring out the best in each other = constructive kindness

Practicing playful, compassionate, and constructive acts of kindness strengthens our people skills and prepares us for deeper bonds of friendship.

Nick Hernandez, Community Connectedness Builder
[email protected]
Call/Text: 402-909-5203
My Top Strengths:
CliftonStrengths: Connectedness | Maximizer | Futuristic | Strategic | Positivity
VIA strengths: Curiosity | Zest | Humor (Playfulness) | Appreciation of Beauty & Excellence | Hope
Free VIA Survey of Character Strengths: Registration | Take Test | Handbook

Click here to return to the homepage.