Tuesday, August 23, 2011

Give a Little Bit

Have any of you seen this commercial yet?



It makes me laugh every time. The first time I laughed because of the silliness of it, especially the pregnant woman's line "I'm going to name my daughter after you". But the next couple of times I saw it, I still laughed but I was also intrigued by the website advertised at the end of the spot. I decided I had better check out Peopleforgood.ca as soon as possible to find out what it's all about.

Well, am I ever glad I did!

The mission of People For Good is as follows:

"And our goal is to make the world a better place, one good deed at a time. It may sound ambitious but it’s easier than you’d think. In fact, you could help make the world a better place right now. Just by doing something nice for someone. Rest assured, we’re not asking for money, we just want you to donate a little generosity." from here

You can sign up through their Facebook page and become part of the movement yourself. Not sure what you - little ol' insignificant you - can do to help someone else? Check out the Good Ideas page and you will see that it only takes one small thing to help another person feel good. To make their day even. These are things that ALL of us can do and they only take a few minutes.

Think about it - what are the things that tend to make your day? I mean, sure, big things such as getting a promotion, getting engaged, buying a home can make you feel pretty awesome. But so can the small things - the things that happen when you least expect it and (as the commercial tagline says) don't happen very often. 

It could be the smile and personal greeting from the barista at your daily morning coffee-shop (I get "Good morning, Kim" every morning at Second Cup and it really starts my day off nicely), someone holding the door open for you, or getting up to the drive-thru window to find out the person ahead of you paid for your food/drink (this actually happened to me one time at Tim Hortons and - WOW. My mom and I were so touched and surprised we still remember it to this day, years later). 

Or it could be something even smaller, such as finding that top you have been searching for for weeks, a cuddle from your cat, surprise flowers (for no reason - which I experienced just last week - lucky me :D) or a Facebook message from an old friend you haven't heard from in a while. 

I remember in Junior High a friend of mine and I were hanging around downtown Halifax and we spontaneously decided to put money in a couple of meters that were close to running out. It's not like we ever saw that person and got a thank-you from them (they probably didn't even take a second glance at the total) but we felt SO good. 

Think about what would make you feel really good and try doing that for someone else. When you are walking around, be aware - look around you at the other people and what they are doing. You never know when you going to see someone who looks lost or who drops their wallet on the ground. I think far too often too many of us walk through life with our heads down, not acknowledging our fellow human beings and that's too bad. It is especially mind-boggling that this happens when doing nice little things for people feels as good as it does. You would think more people would do it more often.

Anyway, I'm not trying to get on a high horse here - I'm just as guilty as most for being self-absorbed. But that's why I joined this movement - maybe it will give me a little boost of confidence to do more small things here and there. This is not a new idea for me anyway - as you can see, I wrote about good deeds, aka. random acts of kindness, before on this blog. All my opinions and thoughts from then still apply now! It's just time to jog my memory.

So join People for Good and do a good deed  today - just one is all it takes. 

*Update: Further to this, check out ImprovEverywhere's latest project - getting New Yorkers to Say Something Nice*



2 comments:

Anonymous said...

please don't be mad *inserts embarrassed face* but I've sadly had to move blogs...again. if you read my last two posts, you will see why.

you can email me here tashablogs@gmail.com or check my twitter page for my new home.

and that commercial made me semi-laugh. I guess I didn't find it that funny haha...

Anonymous said...

I love the say something nice vid...:)

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