Make Kindness the Norm

In Ayurveda, there are three personality types, referred to as three gunas: Sattva, Rajas, and Tamas. We have the ability to influence these personality types through our daily activities and mindset. Depending on what state of mind we have will determine how we interpret the world around us. 

Kindness in words creates confidence. Kindness in thinking creates profoundness. Kindness in giving creates love.” —Lao Tzu

• Sattva is purity, illuminating, knowledge, and harmony which manifests brilliance, goodness, joy, satisfaction, nobility, and contentment.
• Rajas is passion, action, energy, and motion which manifests desire, attachment, and satisfaction.
• Tamas is darkness, lazy, and impurity, which manifests ignorance, delusion, and the inability to see things clearly.

Kindness begins with the understanding that we all struggle. —Charles Glassman

Practicing a non-violent lifestyle, being kind to one another, selfless service, performing activity that brings others joy—all of these actions manifest sattva elements. Sattva creates balance, in which our mind and body can perform actions with more clarity. By producing more sattva in our lives, not only do we help ourselves, but we help manifest sattva in those around us.

Carry out a random act of kindness, with no expectation of reward, safe in the knowledge that one day someone might do the same for you. —Princess Diana

Here are some things you can incorporate into your life that will help manifest more sattva:

1. Send a kind message to a loved one
2. Do something to make a stranger smile
3. Perform a favor for someone without them having to ask or expect anything in return
4. Pay it forward by paying for someone’s breakfast or coffee
5. Do a good deed for someone less fortunate
6. Donate items that you no longer need
7. Return lost items
8. Become a mentor
9. Spend more time listening
10. Forgive more
11. Walk a dog or visit with a cat at a shelter
12. Leave a good review for a business that you were happy with
13. Join a charitable or non-profit project
14. Perhaps the most important one: Be kind to yourself.

As our kindness for ourselves grows, so does our kindness for other people. —Pema Chödrön