Help one person smile. Kindness is catching.

Today is World Smile Day and this year the theme is acts of kindness. At Complete, we can’t think of a better awareness day. Kindness is catching. Your random act of kindness today will inspire others. Not only will you make the recipient feel better, you’ll feel better and so could others too.

A workplace study of acts of kindness revealed that recipients of kindness tended to be proactive in finding out who had been kind to them. They also paid it forward to others, which helped to spread the feelings of positivity. Not only that, but as the acts of kindness spread, people started being more creative in how they could show their kindness. The whole experience had a hugely positive side-effect of being an exercise in creative thinking.

Smile and mean it

Smiling is simply the external expression of our inner emotions. Right now, you might not feel like smiling. Maybe you’re having a tough day. Whatever you’re going through, we all have the ability to shift our emotional state and see that reflected in a genuine, heartfelt smile.

At Complete, we teach the SHIFT skill to enable people to move their emotional state. Most of the approaches people use to affect their mood – things like exercise, alcohol or commiserating with family or friends – cannot be done in the heat of the moment. The SHIFT skill is designed to enable you to change the way you feel at any moment of the day.

This is the SHIFT process:

Stop and shift your attention to your

Heart, breathe through this area

Induce a positive emotion

Feel it in your body and allow it to

Turn the brain back on and notice your insights

The ability to change how you feel on demand, under any circumstance, is genuinely life-changing. You never have to feel anything you don’t want to feel ever again. You can smile and really feel the emotion of that smile. It’s not about painting on a smile, it’s about fundamentally shifting to a more positive emotional state.

SHIFT is one of a number of techniques that Complete coaches teach their coachees. It’s part of our coaching programmes that have a demonstrable ROI.

So, start to SHIFT your emotional state and do an act of kindness. Together we could inspire a contagion of kindness!

And we’d love to hear about the acts of kindness that have made you smile, so please share.