Becoming Crunchy

About 12 days ago now I posted on the March of Kindness challenge initiated by Code Name: Mama.

Basically, taking part just requires doing one Random Act of Kindness each day in March. It has been a huge inspiration to see what’s going on in the online community as SO many people have taken up this challenge – there’s definitely a lot of extra kindness floating around this month!

My main motivation for joining in is tied up with the whole purpose of this blog – changing myself for the better in order to be the best example I can be for the Bean. Even though I have made and will make many mistakes along the way, and there’s no way I’ll ever come near perfection, it is challenges and motivations like this that help get me along the way to where I want to be – the kind of person I want the Bean to see and be herself.

Now, I haven’t done anything spectacular or hugely extravagant. I haven’t kept an exact list of what I’ve done each day.

But all this month, my mind has been on kindness.

Every day, I am thinking – what can my act of kindness be today?

Really, it’s been pretty basic stuff – things like:

• Walking the dog and cleaning the cat box for hubby
• Buying coffee for a friend
• Helping my mother-in-law sign up for a class at the community centre

I’ve repeated the same things on a few days. I even did an act of kindness for myself (and that’s not usually something I would automatically accept as one that counts) – but it turned out to be incredibly helpful to me in simple rejuvenation – basically allowing me to get back into the groove of happily doing things for others.

Hubby even got in on it by offering to give someone at work a ride when he found out their car was in the shop.

It’s also been great reading about what others are doing to participate in the March of Kindness. One of my favorites was a woman who had saved up $500 to buy an iPad – she decided to just give it to her sister who’s husband was out of work, realizing that she could just get an iPad later. I mean, wow!

There have been times when I’ve failed this month as well – opportunities that I’ve missed – unkind acts that I have regretted.

But I’m going to continue working toward a real March of Kindness for the next 20 days, and I’d love for you to join in. If you’ve already made this commitment, will you share some of the things you’ve done here? I really think the best part of doing this the fact that there are a whole bunch of people involved from literally all around the world – I’d certainly love to know your part in it too!

Has anyone ever done a random act of kindness for you? What was it?

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