Change the world with small acts of kindness

I'm not alone. I'm not the only one. I'm not a spacey pollyanna who's out of touch with reality (or not the only one, anyway). Positive thinking and small acts of kindness are powerful and I do make a difference in the world just by being me.

There is a ton of work going on to study Happiness and Well-being, not just to promote lifestyle changes for individuals or products to improve your life, but to promote Peace and the Greater Good. Some of this work is done at the Greater Good Science Center in California at the University of California at Berkeley.

The Greater Good Science Center studies the psychology, sociology, and neuroscience of well-being, and teaches skills that foster a thriving, resilient, and compassionate society.

How cool is that? (I know, Berkeley California.) Click on that link and check out their website. There are tons of fascinating articles to read. That was their mission statement and this is what they believe:

Our Core Beliefs

• Compassion is a fundamental human trait, with deep psychological and evolutionary roots. By creating environments that foster cooperation and altruism, we help nurture the positive side of human nature.
• Happiness is not simply dependent on a person’s genes. It is a set of skills that can be taught, and, with practice, developed over time.
• Happiness and altruism are intertwined—doing good is an essential ingredient to being happy.
• Science should do more than help us understand human behavior and emotion in the abstract; it should be applied toward improving people’s personal and professional lives.
• Studying the roots of good, healthy, and positive behavior is just as important as studying human pathologies. To promote individual and social well-being, science must examine how people overcome difficult circumstances and how they develop positive emotions and relationships.
• Individual well-being promotes social well-being, and social well-being promotes individual well-being. The well-being of society as a whole can best be achieved by providing information, tools, and skills to those people directly responsible for shaping the well-being of others.

There's a documentary film in the works that some of those Berkeley scientists have contributed to. 

Good Virus is a feel-good documentary, narrated by Catherine Ryan Hyde, best selling author of the novel and film, Pay It Forward. Good Virus is all about being nice and the benefits of being nice. We profile cutting-edge scientists and authors from Berkeley to Harvard and everywhere in between as well as real life people whose lives illustrate their incredible discovery: THAT KINDNESS IS CONTAGIOUS!

You can read about Good Virus on this website.

I now have 2 more books to add to my summer reading list: Pay if Forward, by Catherine Ryan Hyde and Born to be Good: the science of a meaningful life, by Dacher Keltner.

Here are some Happiness Habits for you from Berkeley: