Free and Cheap Random Acts of Kindness Part 3.

Put a couple of quarters on a gumball machine for a child to find, or put a dollar on a vending machine (especially in a hospital!) with a little note that says something like, "Enjoy this random act of kindness.".   This is so fun! 

Reach out to your neighbors.  Bake loaves of banana bread, wrap and deliver them. 

Send someone a little note, a thank you card.  Thanksgiving is a great time of year to send a note to say thank you to someone who has been a help to you.  

Free and Cheap Random Acts of Kindness, Part 2.

Free things to do. 

• Do someone in your family's chores.
• Visit an old friend.
• Call someone and ask how they are doing.
• Pray for a friend or even a stranger.  (Read Praying for Strangers by River Jordan for inspiration.)
• Pick up litter.
• Smile at someone.
• Hold the door for someone.
• Take the carts in at a grocery store.
• Donate your old stuff to charity.
• Forgive someone.
• Write a note to someone and hand deliver it.  This is especially great with your in-house family members, husband and kids.  
• Elijah's Hope Go to www.elijahshope.net and commit to pray for an orphan every day.  There is no monetary donation involved, just your time.  Unlike the other sites in the last section, you will have to register with the site and provide an email address.
• Walk or run for charity.  Find a list of charity walk events at http://www.charitywalksblog.com/charity-walk-events/.  
• Walk to help find a cure for cancer.
• http://www.relayforlife.org/
• http://www.ndss.org/buddy-walk/ for Down's syndrome
• http://www.lung.org/donate/events/lung-walk/   Lung Walk
• http://startwalkingnow.org/start_heart_walk.jsp Heart Walk
• http://www.runforcharity.com/running-events/
• fundraising.stjude.org .  Become a St. Jude Hero and "Run for a Reason".  There are many opportunities to help here. 
• http://www.stjude.org/volunteer or call 800) 822-6344, Monday – Friday, 7 a.m. – 11 p.m. CT.
• Donate blood or help others do so.  www.redcrossblood.org or 1-800-RED CROSS (1-800-733-2767). If you can't give blood, you can be a greeter, a phone assistant or a driver. 

Twenty Five Ways To Spread Some Kindness.

http://lauragraceweldon.com/2012/07/17/25-ways-to-spread-some-kindness/

Check out this post on Laura Grace Weldon's blog.  It's the same kind of thing we're talking about.

Free and Cheap Random Acts of Kindness - Part 1.

Random Acts of Kindness You Can Do Right Now!

1.     Visit The Hunger Site and donate food to someone who is hungry.  This is free to do. 

www.thehungersite.com

2.  Visit The Breast Cancer Site and donate a portion of a mammogram to a woman in poverty, just by clicking!  You could actually save someone's life.  Think about it!

www.thebreastcancersite.com

3.     Visit The Animal Rescue site and donate a bowl of food to a homeless animal in a shelter.

www.theanimalrescuesite.com

4.     Go to The Veterans Site to donate a meal to someone who has served our country.

www.theveteransite.com

5.     Go to The Autism Site to donate free therapy to an autistic child.  While you are there, do some shopping.  Their silicone bracelets are very cute.

www.theautismsite.com

6.     The Child Health Site - This is where you can donate health care to a child.  They keep a running total of the number of children who have been helped each day at the bottom of the page that you will see after you click and donate.  On the day I was writing this, 204 children had been helped.

www.thechildhealthsite.com

7.     The Literacy Site - Click here to donate books to children!  After you click it will show you how many books have been donated that day.

www.theliteracysite.com

8.     The Rainforest Site - When you click on this site's give button, you save the rainforest, an amount measured in square feet.  Every little bit helps.  100% of the sponsor's money goes to the rainforest.

www.therainforestsite.com

9.     Free Rice - Play a vocabulary game, answer a math question or even prep for your SAT test using this site and every correct answer donates 10 grains of rice for a hungry person through the United Nations World Food Program.  You'll need to play quite a while to give them a whole bowlful, but hey, it's fun and kind of addictive. 

www.freerice.com

Do good while you are shopping!  
http://www.igive.com/welcome/lp16/cr60.cfm

Gratitude.

Feeling gratitude is essential, I think, to feeling happy.  Take a minute right now to savor something in your life and feel happy about it.  One thing.  It might be that you are thankful for your eyesight so that you can read or thankful for your computer or phone that you can use to connect to others.  Science supports the fact that feeling gratitude can make you happier.  The Science of Gratitude.  Eight boosts of Gratitude Gratitude will signicantly improve your life!

Here's a free printable gratitude journal (Christian Faith Based.) and here are some tips for making the experience really work for you Tips for Keeping a Gratitude Journal and here are some free printables that are really cute and fun.. Gratitude Lists Free Download and here's a bunch of prompts that will get you thinking about what you feel gratitude for.  

Here at our house, we've started a blessings jar and we're putting in blessings and memories and then we will open it and read them all on New Year's Eve.  Here's a link to a Pinterest Board with a lot of ideas for how to make one.  Ours is very simple, a jar with a taped on label, but whatever works.  

Here is the most beautiful gratitude journal I have ever seen from Visual Blessings.  

Art as therapy.

I have made it through a lot of things in the past couple of years, my mom's Alzheimer's disease has been the number one stressor, but you can add to that working, raising teenagers, health problems, having to sell the house I grew up in (not to mention cleaning it out!) losing my job, having surgery ... it goes on and on.  I can't focus on it.  I just can't.  I try to do one thing at a time throughout the day until dinnertime and after dinner I try and recharge myself.  One of the ways I am able to cope is because I have started art journaling.  I draw flowers and trees and I don't actually draw all that well, but it helps me, it refuels me for the next day of coping with one thing after the other.  Art has been proven to help with stress, anxiety and mental health.

Doodling Your Way to a More Mindful Life


Happiest Activities are Art Related.


Doodle

Art Therapy

The Power of Pottery


Art As Therapy

You can do art therapy with a therapist, or just do it at home.  It might not be as helpful, but it can't hurt and it might help.  Give it a try.  It has saved my life.

Art Therapy Prompts.

Expressive Art Workshop

Art Therapy Exercises to Try at Home.

10 Easy Art Therapy Exercises to Help You Destress.

Plants, either indoors or outdoors.

Plants make you happier.  It seems crazy, but it's true.   Some of the points in this article are that exercising outdoors boosts your mood and just spending time outside makes you better able to focus and more resilient to stress.   Living near green space makes you live longer.  

Having plants inside your home has all kinds of benefits as well.  I've got to admit that this surprised me and tomorrow I am going to get some plants for my house and for my mom's assisted living facility room.   

Psychology Today - Plants Make You Feel Better  :  plants have been shown to lower blood pressure, improve reaction times, increase attentiveness, improve well-being, lower levels of anxiety during recovery from surgery and more!  

They filter the air of course, but they also make you happier!  In this study, people were given a house plant to take care of and they reported feeling happier in general.  

And, there's a bonus, they also make you smarter.  Houseplants Make You Smarter.  

Even cut flowers improve mood, so if you have a complete inablity to nurture a plant and keep it alive, buy yourself some flowers every now and then.  :-)  

Just for fun, go look at these wonderful balconies on Apartment Therapy.  

Read!

Reading is good for you in so many ways, getting lost in a story is a wonderful thing.  If you are depressed, though, you may find that it is beyond you at the current time.  When I have been grieving in the past I have not been able to concentrate on reading enough to follow the story.  However, if I set myself up with an audio book and my needlework or art journaling, I can escape into the story.

Reading improves cognitive function.

21 Reasons Reading Will Make You Happier

Read Something for Fun.

Take a break, sit down and read something that will make you feel better.  I recommend, Harry Potter, The Ranger's Apprentice or something else for the child in you.

Happiness day.

It's world happiness day today.  I'll have to admit, I have not spent the day in complete and utter happiness.  My mom had to go to the ER today and my brother took her because he was the first one called.  I was taking my son to an activity when it all went down.  Normally, I cope pretty well with this kind of thing, but right now I am coping with a lot of stuff.  I took a stress test the other day for stressful events and I scored 335.  The test said if you score over 300 you should probably talk to someone and find ways to manage the stress.  Today, my management of the stress included throwing up and going to bed for part of the day, while waiting to hear any news.  In my defense, (because I always feel I have to defend my reasons for taking a nap for some reason!) I felt that I might need to spend the night at the hospital, if she had to stay.  Fortunately, she did not have to stay and I am back up again, blogging, crocheting, watching TV and playing words with friends, some of the multitasking that I do when I am stressed.  Sometimes one activity is not enough to take my mind off things.  I'm not proud of it, but there it is.

Apartment Therapy has an excellent article today that is called Ten Simple Things to Make You Happier at Home.  It touches on some of the things that we have already talked about on this blog, like making your bed, but the most fun part to me is something they call "If you can't get out of it, get into it".  It's really good.  You should go read it.

Now I am going to share a link to just about the best ever in the world blog post about feeling happier, how to look at your home with "fresh perspectacles".  It is absolutely awesome and you should absolutely go read it, even if you never listen to anything else I say.  Type.  Whatever.

Momastery

While you are over there, you might want to read her whole blog.  Lot of wisdom there.

Take care of yourself today.

Needlework!

This is something I have just recently started doing.  My mom always crocheted and knitted a little and tried to teach me when I was younger, but I was too stubborn to try when she tried to teach me.  Then, my daughter learned to knit and crochet in 4H classes and then wanted me to learn as well.  (Her Dad already knows how.  My husband actually knitted me a scarf when we were dating.)  Anyway, I resisted for quite some time and when I did try crocheting, I found it stressful at first.  My daughter, wise person that she is, told me to give it a few weeks and then it would switch and become relaxing.  I trusted her and she was right.  Since beginning to crochet and only learning one stitch, the single crochet stitch, I have made 2 complete afghans and am about halfway through another one and yes, I do find it relaxing at this point.  Will I ever learn to double or treble crochet?  Who knows.  Maybe.  Maybe not.  I'm not going to stress about it.  :-)

This is an afghan my daughter did a few weeks ago.  

It turns out my daughter was right and there is research to back her up.  Knitting and crocheting and other kinds of crafting are good for your brain and good for your happiness and now, thanks to the internet, it's easy to learn a craft.

Happiness is a Needle and Thread Away.  "Textile handcraft making was associated with the greatest mood repair, increases in positive, decreases in negative mood"  

Crochet Benefits  "But crochet has been proven to reduce anxiety of all kinds, including panic attacks, social anxiety, and generalized anxiety, making it an especially effective tool to reach for ... "


This is Your Brain on Crafts "There's survey evidence to support crafting's dopamine effect. In one study of more than 3,500 knitters, published in The British Journal of Occupational Therapy, 81% of respondents with depression reported feeling happy after knitting. More than half reported feeling "very happy.""

The Truth About Knitting

Health Benefits  

How to Knit - A video tutorial.

How to Crochet - A video tutorial.

If needle work is not your thing and never will be, do some of the other crafts mentioned in some of the articles, painting, model cars, drawing, paint by numbers.  Find something that gets you in the flow state of mind and relaxes you and then make time to do it!  

Light!

Getting out in the sunlight is good for your health and it is good for your mental health as well.  People tend to get depressed when the natural sunlight is low during the winter, and this is often called seasonal affective disorder.  It can be helped by getting out in the sun or with artificial lights that synthesize sunlight.

Check out these resources:

Mayo Clinic 

Columbia

Benefits of Sunlight 

Did you realize that people do something akin to photosynthesis when exposed to sunlight?  We synthesize vitamin D through a chemical reaction in the skin.  I think that's completely fascinating!  

Sunlight has many, many benefits.  Go outside.  

You Shouldn't Shun the Sun.  

Get out there.  Plant some flower bulbs or do some guerrilla gardening with seed bombs, take a walk with a loved one or just sit down on a bench or your front porch for a little while.  

Make your bed!

There is plenty of evidence that making your bed every morning makes you feel happier.  It seems kind of silly and yet, sometimes the simplest things can have an impact on your well-being.  I personally started making my bed as my February resolution.  I decided this year to make a series of small resolutions and do one each month, adding it to the existing one.  January was prayer and bible reading and February was making my bed.  I've stuck with them both though mid March and I have to say, it makes a difference.  My March task was this blog and I started it and I plan to continue it, just as I have the other 2.  I think that doing one small thing each month and making them cumulative has been a good thing.

I work at home, in the bedroom, right next to the bed so it has an impact, visually, on me, all during my work day.  I make it up and I through the most colorful afghan in the world on it and then as I walk by it every few minutes, it makes me smile.  Also, the kids in my house come and lie down on the bed and talk to me while I am working and that makes me happy as well.

Here's articles on the benefits of making your bed.

Psychology Today  People who make their beds report themselves as happier.

Life Hack  It gives you a sense of accomplishment.

Apartment Therapy  Making your bed is a keystone habit, which means it is a catalyst for other good habits.

I told you this afghan was colorful!  It's also fuzzy and warm.

Who knew?

Get up and do it right this minute.

(Unless someone is in your bed sleeping!)

Sounds Fishy.

Fish?  Yes, eating fish fights depression and anxiety according to this article from All Africa.  I think we all pretty much know that fish contains Omega III fatty acids which are good for our hearts, but they are also good for keeping the brain fighting fit and help with depression.  Fish is not a normal part of my diet but I need to really seriously consider adding it in.  I will have to get some recipes because I don't currently have any.  

My first thought is a tuna noodle casserole, since that might be the best way to please the picky eaters around here.  

Here's one from Starkist Tuna.

Another one that is popular where I am from is Salmon Patties.  Here's a recipe from Chicken of The Sea.  (Which is a fun name for a company, if you think about it. )

In a pinch, if you don't feel like really cooking, I'm assuming that the fish sticks in the grocery will do just as well.   Don't make it more difficult than it has to be.  If you are dealing with sadness/ depression, even attempting to follow a recipe may feel overwhelming.    

Simply smile, even if you don't want to.

Yesterday, Huffington Post, published a simple guide to joy that is very basic, but very good.  It starts with taking a deep breath and continues through several steps until you are visualizing something you have to look forward to.  If you are feeling depressed and anxious, this is a good place to start.  Simple Guide To Joy

Scientific American - Smile!

What can you do to feel happier right now?  Smile at your computer screen, right now, while you are reading this, because smiling makes you happier.  It's true!

Smiling, the evidence that it works, video.

For today's smile, watch this video of Maru the cat!  

MARU

Something else to make you smile right now:

Amazing Facts to Make You Smile

Come on, give it all you've got!

It works!

Dirt?!

Dirt Can Make You Happy.  Yes, gardening is a good outdoor activity that produces something and can, in turn,  produce a feeling of satisfaction that comes from that, it also can get you out in the sunlight and make you exercise, both of which we know to improve mood, but it has an added benefit as well.  There is a bacteria in the soil called Mycobacterium vaccae which has been proven to raise serotonin levels in the brain, which is the important chemical to fight depression.  It seems crazy, but it is true.  Even if you don't garden, just standing barefoot in the soil or picking some of it up with your hands can help you feel better about life.  How to get high on soil.  So if you want to experience more joy in your life in a more natural way than popping a pill, go outside, preferably barefoot and better yet, plant something that you can enjoy later in the year.  Spring is just around the corner and it's a great time to start a garden, even if it is just a tiny one on the windowsill.  Just make sure not to get any kind of sterilized soil that has had the bacteria removed ... get the real thing.  :-)  Healing Landscapes.  There is even a possibility that a vaccine against depression may someday be available!  How awesome is that?