1 Million Acts of Kindness Challenge

One of my favourite shows is Ten's The Project.  I hardly ever watch the news so The Project is a good opportunity to get a summary of the day's events and to have a laugh as well.

Sometimes they have in-depth stories on issues that don't usually come up in the news, like how there is a floating garbage dump in the middle of the ocean and how one man is trying to get the world to pay attention. And the investigation on the underage boy in a detention centre.

Tonight, after a really good stoush between Charlie, Hughesy and Carrie against Steve Price about refugees being able to stay in people's homes while awaiting their visas (a personal interest for me), they had a story about a project to promote random acts of kindness.  So I thought I would check out the info on their website and it led me to this site.  Before I could think too long about it I signed up to pledge 100 Random Acts of Kindness within 8 weeks.  I hadn't even read the details!

So I've just looked it up and I've realised it's not only a really good concept and a great blogging idea it's probably inadvertently given me something to focus on outside of myself.

The website also pointed out how it can help you:

The Challenge will help you		What will you get?
Become a happier person and enjoy your personal kindness Find ways to perform both small and large acts of kindness and see immediate rewards for yourself and others Learn about what motivates people to be kind and other reasons for human behavior Feel better about yourself knowing that you are giving to others and enjoying the results		Eight weeks of daily activities to help you feel kinder and happier Access to others’ heartwarming stories Fascinating, inspirational and  educational articles and videos from our team of experts Online instructional videos of ways to achieve a happier, healthier, kinder you. Access to your own personal account where you can monitor your progress and keep track of your kindness and happiness goals

So I've signed up.  Hopefully one of the better things I've ever done, but time will tell.

It starts on Monday 14th May and I will Tweet and Facebook my progress and post brief updates on Birdy Num Num.  I will also be referring to these suggestions when I need a bit of a kick.  But after reading through them, I've realised I've already done a few of them!  They are very simple and I'm sure we do alot of them without thinking of them as random acts of kindness.  So the challenge will be to go out of my comfort zone and do an act I wouldn't normally attempt.  For me, this could be a little frightening.

If you'd like to join me, let me know in a comment below that you've signed up with 1 Million Acts and let me know your progress each week of the Challenge and I'll list our Random Acts of Kindness once a week (if you blog, let me know your url). Please make sure you've signed up with Birdy Num Num to be emailed my blog posts too!

You can copy this jpg if you would like to advertise it and if you know how to make a button, please let me know!  I have no idea and copied the pic from their site (I hope they're alright with that!).

So from Monday 14th May I will attempt to be a better person.

Pledge: http://www.1millionacts.com.au/8-week-challenge
Random acts of kindness suggestions:
http://cms.1millionacts.com.au/uploads/sitepage/files/1046/100randomactsofkindness3.pdf