 kindness do you perform acts of kindness throughout the day we're gonna be speaking to the founder of the one kindness movement today whose goal is to get one million acts of kindness out into the world we're gonna find out what is an act of kindness during this interview you're probably gonna ask yourself well am I kind what do I do what's my act of kindness have I been kind to people do I do it as a as a habit or do I just do it sporadically why do we want to do it I mean why do we want to put good out into the world does it make us feel good do we feel good about making other people feel good what is an act of kindness is it a gift is it an act of service we're gonna figure this out today John Wayne founder of the one kindness movement who's joining us from Vancouver Canada hello John great to have you here it's a pleasure to be here James how are you doing doing so well thank you mate doing so well so tell me a little bit about yourself first of all and how you came to be the founder of one kindness and what it's all about yeah sure I mean I you know I'm an entrepreneur but for the longest time I've always been a big believer that what it is that we do every single day can have multiple impacts one of course is our own impact the way that we affect ourselves but you know in terms of ideas of profit and growth and the ideas of sort of getting a message out but we tend to forget the kind of impact that we can have as individuals to help the world around us and the truth is you know I did a little bit of researching to this you know the science behind kindness and I discovered that those two things are actually one and the same which is to say kindness is actually a very selfish act and that's a good thing I want people to be more selfish and I'll explain why in a little bit to sort of talk a little bit of my story you know I have I actually started my first sort of philanthropic sort of charity movement when I was quite young I was in eighth grade which up in Canada basically is you know what we call middle school to early high school kind of thing and at a time I was you know I was like any other kid who's you know in eighth grade I didn't really care about anything other than myself for you know math homework or whatever it is that you care you know you think about as a kid and I was sitting at home and my parents were watching the news and they had seen this this news report about an earthquake event that I happened in a place called Taiwan and that's actually where it is my parents were from so they cared a lot about it but you know like any kid I just didn't care and it wasn't until on the screen there was a kid about my age who was who was affected very deeply by this this earthquake you have seen that he was basically sort of crouching over this building that had collapsed and he was digging through the rubble and the news reporter went up to him and asked you know what are you digging for you know what's what's going on why are you here and he said well my sister and my parents are down there and it's very very clear at this point that if you're looking at the building that there's no possible survivor who could have made it after the earthquake but he was just in this trans-like state he just kept digging and kept repeating my sister and my parents are down there my sister and my parents are down there and it wasn't until later all the rescue workers try to pull them off that you know he was still repeating the same words and in that moment I just started crying I I never really cried as a kid except for that one time because I suddenly realized that he's exactly like me in every sense of the word and every kind of everyday acts the things that he was still worried about yesterday is probably the same things that I was worried about today and that moment I just realized that something had to change I had help and I ended up with the help of my school and my parents and various other organizations started a foundation that were able to you know basically fundraise quite a bit of money for you know the relief of the situation and ever since then it's in the back of my head that I wanted to pursue this something that has greater benefit to the world every single year I take on a personal challenge and you know one year I did this thing called radical honesty where I just told the truth for only you know only the truth for a year another year I sort of you know wanted to go and spend time with a homeless so every single week I would go and take a different homeless person on me on the street after lunch and just to hear their story and to understand where they're coming from and this year I started doing this thing called one kindness which is every single day you just do one kind act for yourself so that's sort of how the whole movement started started us actually as a personal as a personal curiosity and personal experiment to see what the effect would have and what I found well was absolutely shocking was the benefit it had for me actually not just for the people that I was helping yeah well we're gonna find out what the benefit is in a second you mentioned that you did a year of radical honesty there's actually a book isn't there called radical honesty by Brad Blanton and I've read that book and when I read it I was like oh great I'm gonna go and practice radical honesty and I did and it was super super awkward and it was but it was actually really pretty awesome at the same time I was in a romantic relationship at the time and I read this book on a plane heading back to see my my girlfriend and and we had a real breakthrough conversation that lasted a couple of hours because we just were radically honest with with one another about things we didn't like things we did like concerns for the future like all kinds of things it was it was pretty remarkable when you when you're actually radically honest and you find out that you're doing things that the other person doesn't like and you do is like what and then you realize and then you share what you dislike or like the other person and you see their reaction it's pretty amazing but I found the experience to be one where it really actually brought us closer together because the deep trust and the honesty that kind of more intimacy I guess or more greater connection you felt did you I don't want to get off the topic of one kindness but did you find that or did you find it to be less or more than that I actually am right on the same page with you I discovered it as well through the book radical honesty by Brad Blanton and later on actually our chance to meet him and he is every bit as interesting as the book suggests I found that it had this absolutely life-changing effect where once you open up to somebody they open right up back up to you I thought it would be a lot more difficult than it actually was but it was this incredible thing I mean we tell these little white lies all the time week and these could be lives of omission that they could just be like moments where we feel something that we dislike in other people or moments where we feel something that we don't have the courage to voice but it's incredible how liberating the experience becomes once you've had a chance to do so and you do connect at a very deep level with people I still practice it with my friends to this day although probably not quite as dramatically as I did for that one year right that it was everyone well you've actually inspired me to get Brad Blanton on the on on the show and interviewing about it so well thank you for sharing that well that's another that's another topic of conversation but the idea is that you it sounds like you you implement these tests or these experiments once a year or once a month or something where you actually go out and you make a point to do something in a specific action so what did you do with this one act of kindness and you were mentioned before you know it's kindness is a selfish act and that's a good thing so let's just start with you know how did you start off like how did you start doing this great question it it started actually I was going through a little bit of a rut in my life in some ways I mean not necessarily in terms of business my business was doing fine you know I was happy in my life in a lot of ways I was traveling a lot I was you know doing all these things that I thought was gonna make me happier but there's this kind of emptiness that I was feeling and it's it's a it's the emptiness I think that comes when you sort of hit all those check marks that you feel like you should hit in your life I set this list of to-dos when I was a teenager like when I become an adult whatever that meant you know I would go and do all these things and I had checked off most of things on that list and I kind of realized well this wasn't giving me that sense of fulfillment that I was craving that I that I know that I could have in that sense of passion and excitement for life that I see other people you know having so this year I started off as saying well I read in a book something just like you know go and do a daily after kindness and I was like okay sure it sounds easy enough and that day I was at a friend's house and there was a little party you were all hanging out watching the movie and on my way back I saw this guy that I knew that I wasn't really that close with and he was walking on the street in a kind of a rough neighborhood and I kind of felt well I I should go up and see if you know how he's doing so I pulled my car over and I asked you know hey can I can I help you basically like we don't know each other that well but you know you're walking in this kind of darkly lit alleyway in the middle of the night is there something I could do and he's like well you want to go grocery shopping so I said hop in you know it's it's at one o'clock in the morning I'm gonna drive around town we're gonna find a grocery store for you so that's what we did we had this great time we actually found a 24-hour grocery store we just went shopping and in doing so we had this amazing conversation this this really great connection and at the end of that I realized oh my god like I don't know why I just felt great the next day like all that feelings of like anxiety or hesitancy or that sense of emptiness just faded I just felt phenomenal so I'm like okay there's got to be something there so I started asking my friends you know who do you know that is an expert on happiness and what that effect is and they connected to me with a professor who had done various research on happiness and I asked the professor I called him up and I asked hey listen you don't know me but I know you're an expert on happiness and I would love to find out how kindness leads to happiness and he said there's there apparently tons of tests that have been done scientifically back research throughout the years that show the beneficial effects on ourselves when we do an act of kindness it has relates to basically the vagus nerve and in our brainstem and the way that our empathy works but it like kicks in our endorphins it kicks in all these great chemicals that make us feel what the scientists have now called the helpers high so I didn't realize that I was feeling literally high from this little act of kindness that I was doing for someone and ever since then I've been like okay we got to get everyone else doing this because it's amazing that we're not doing this every day it's amazing that we could feel disconnected this excited and this happy with you know basically helping other people the help is high I like that so when you help someone in dolphins are released that's what's that's what's going on with the body so it's like if you exercise afterwards it releases endorphins and you feel you feel great if you help someone with an act of kindness you according to these studies you get the same kind of endorphin release is that right yeah absolutely and there's actually very good evolutionary studies done on it and as a matter of fact if you want to trace back to the original founder who discovered the science behind this she is Charles Darwin and he had actually written about how empathy is a particularly important aspect in mammals and in human beings that is not necessarily universal but empathy is a great evolutionary trait because if you help other people in your community they tend to want to help you back so that's how we build communities in a very tribal hunter-gatherer sense because if we're just acting in our own self-interest all the time then the community suffers but we're helping each other then we grow so you know we've had it long for a long time in the business communities this idea that oh it's all about profit and it's for ourselves but really the greatest benefit you know oftentimes come from our ability to connect with and and sort of support other people in our society okay I'll give you one example of where that's where that's true in my own life and if you're a longtime listener of my podcast the James Wanick show you probably would have heard this story but back in 2000 excuse me back in 2010 I helped a friend of mine with an act of kindness I won't say what it was just because he'll feel embarrassed by it but I helped him out with something and that was it I didn't ask for anything in return I didn't expect anything in return and then three weeks later he messaged me in an email and he said hey ESPN is looking for an international anchor to host Sports Center the TV show Sports Center and I thought you'd be really good for it would you like me to introduce you to the producer of ESPN who's hiring this international anchor and I'm like hell yeah and then he introduced me to this producer and long story short I ended up getting a job and hosting Sports Center on ESPN for two years out of Bristol Connecticut that wouldn't have come to me that opportunity would not have come to me if I had not have helped my friend because we weren't really at that point we weren't really communicating I had just made it an effort to reach out to people and say hey how can I help and then he actually took me up on my offer and I gave him help and then three weeks later bang there you go and I and I wanted to host a TV show for 20 years since I was a kid so I mean that's just one example but it's pretty powerful isn't it it's like I did an act of kindness for someone and then he did an act of kindness for me back I wasn't expecting anything he didn't owe me anything I don't think he felt like he owed me anything it's just he wanted to do something because I done something for him yeah it's a very powerful thing and I love that story thank you for sharing it is actually absolutely coming from the fact that you helped something and unreciprocated like you didn't do it because you want to do you want to get on ESPN but you did it because you want to help someone I actually have a story that somebody else shared with me if I can share that go ahead so a few weeks ago I was down in California and I was at an event at a hotel and I had just you know it was the long day and I just wanted to sort of burn off some energy so I went to the gym and while so the gym I met a guy his name is Tony Horton I don't know if you know who he is yeah he's the the face of P90X which is one of the most successful workout DVD programs of all time absolutely yeah huge huge name and you know it was a really random occurrence but I ran into him and he and his team were there doing this really intense workout and he kind of pulled me in there we end up joining him on the workout at the end of it when I was telling him about this you know movement that I was doing he told me a story he said you know when he first started off in his early days he had gone to LA to become an actor but at the same time he was also pretty personal training that's just before he became you know sort of a massive success to the end of becoming and he at the time was reading a book and every single day there was a task for him to do in the book and one of the days the task was go do something kind for something that for someone that you may not necessarily like and he was kind of like oh man okay fine whatever and again he wasn't you know extremely well off at this point you know he still needed to find more clients but at his gym there was this guy he would play pick up basketball games with and the guy was you know because sometimes get in his face a little bit but Tony felt well you know what I'm gonna try this so he went up to the guy and said listen I I want to train you and if you if you will like my help I would like to train you just free of charge just because you know I want to help and the guy was like sure you know I'll go away at the time so why not and after a few sessions Tony said that the training was so effective that the guy was blown away and he came back he's like listen Tony I've never seen change like this happened to my own body before and I'm so impressed I would like you to meet a friend of mine and his friend's name was Carl Dichler who is the CEO of Beachbody and it was because of his act of kindness because of Tony's act of kindness reaching out that you know Beachbody met Tony and the two of them created basically P9x which ended up you know generating something like over a billion dollars of revenue it's literally more than one billion dollars with a billion yeah it's absolutely insane so very similar to your story there James you know it's incredible how much we could sort of see how I don't know if we believe in karma I don't know that you know the idea was sort of putting the acts of kindness out there can come back to you was is necessarily the point here but a lot of times we do see how helping each other can have benefits to our own careers yeah I'll give you just one more example and then we'll come up with some practical ways that we can help people little things during the day I remember I was in Bangkok Thailand in 2001 and I was living in London at the time and I just gone down to Koh Phin Yang and Koh Samui and on the full moon party I was backpacking around and I remember I was going back to London and my visa my Australian work visa was about to expire and I didn't have a job I didn't have any work when I went back to London I remember I was walking along I think it was it's called Koh San Road in Bangkok and I remember they had this little it's like a coffee shop but they showed movies inside it was kind of like a pub coffee shop kind of thing and they were showing the movie coyote ugly and which is it alright kind of movie I guess but it's from back in 2000 or something and I went oh coyote ugly all right I'll just go in there and watch that and there was only one free chair left and it was next to these two guys that were sitting down and there's about 50 people in this coffee shop bar kind of thing all watching the movie and so I went down I said I was a seat taken may I sit here and one of the two guys said sure sit down so I sat down watch the movie at the end of the movie we got to talking and in conversation I had said that was going back to London that I wasn't sure whether I was gonna get work there and what I was gonna go back to Australia or whatever he goes oh I don't I know a friend of mine who works in the sports industry because I told him I was interested in sports and it works at a magazine called Sport Business Magazine and he said well when you get back to London I'll connect you guys via email or something and I'm okay cool that'd be great so we swap details and I and then I went to the airport jumped on a plane and flew back to London and then two weeks later I got an email from him that guy that I'd met introducing me to his friend the guy called Matt and Matt said yeah I'm having a party Friday night come and come and hang out so I went to the party and just socialized with them and then he said are you looking for work I said yeah you know something in sports he goes I work for Sport Business Magazine I think they're looking for journalists I'll connect you to the editor the next week I went in interviewed with the editor and he offered me a job right away and offered to give me a extend my work visa for another two years and I went great so then I ended up getting this great job I had a visa in the UK for an extra two years and ultimately that same editor of the magazine was the guy who wrote my visa application for the United States two later which ended up enabling me to be able to live and work in the US on an eye visa for the first two years before I then went on to get a green card before I then went on to become a naturalized naturalized citizen so you can just see like just the simple the simplest little thing can like an active kindness can just lead to huge life changing life transforming benefits and and you know for me it was just I just wanted to sit down in a damn coffee shop in Thailand was the only chair left and that guy led to another guy that led to me staying in the UK and led to me go into the US and getting a visa and like just little tiny little acts of kindness can completely change change your life so anyway I don't want to labor the point let's get into some practical things here shall we John what what's what can the listener or viewer do what's another example let's rattle off some examples of acts of kindness that we can do here and like yeah maybe put some structure to like right what do we do on a Monday what we don't make sure that we're doing this all the time rather than yeah yeah you know it's actually it's the biggest thing is there's been studies that have sort of tracked so we know now the kindness sort of makes you happier scientifically speaking we know that it has an impact on your physiology and your psychology but there's actually a very specific way to do it to sort of maximize that benefit that you get it's not just go out there and be kind because what what is kindness anyway is it like opening the door for somebody is it like buying someone a cup of coffee do you have to go volunteer I think a lot of people have this idea that kindness is this big thing that you have to do that's like done by like Gandhi and Mother Teresa and like these exceptional figures but the science behind it that they've sort of discovered the studies that have been done shows that a kind act can actually be very very simple as long as it's done on a regular routine daily basis and it's a compounding effect as in if you do it one day you're gonna feel pretty good for the next couple of days but then that's gonna taper off very very quickly as opposed to if you just simply make a routine out of it you're actually going to see that changing your life so the one kindest movement comes with a bracelet and if you want to go check out the bracelet you can go to my website already because you're watching this on video right now you see I'm wearing one of these things and it's a bracelet that basically says one kindness on one side so the idea is you start your day wearing this and at some point through the day you go to an act of kindness that is unreciprocated and just the benefit of somebody else this can be as big as you want or as small as you want but the truth is it's actually not the size of the act that matters it can be something like you know paying a compliment to somebody or telling somebody that you know you appreciate them a friend of mine does this where you'll go to especially people working the service industry you say hey has somebody told you lately that you were appreciated and she has had people sort of say you know see that change in their face immediately even going as far as down it's like literally breaking down crying in front of him because they've never been told something like that or they don't hear enough or it could be something like you know for example up here we have a cafe called Tim Portons and I literally just buy like stacks and stacks of these like you know anywhere between five to 20 bucks you know Tim Portons cards and when I see someone who's just going about their day it could be someone on the street I'll just be like hey listen I just want to give you a Tim Portons card just so they thanks for being awesome thanks for being you and yeah and and a lot of times and you see that change and then you feel that warmth that that's that can make a difference in how you feel so the idea is after you're done this bracelet acts a reminder so after you've done the act you flip it around and the logo that you see on my bracelet there is our is the movements logo which is a heart with a check mark in it and every yeah and it reminds you just that yeah you've done it today and it also signifies some other people around you that they can see that you've done it and they get reminded to go do something like that on your own as well I love it will you send me one of those I want to wear it and I'm going to put it on my snapchat and Instagram and and I'm going to document what happens with it I love it I'm gonna absolutely yeah I'll do it today so pay a compliment tell someone you appreciate them give them a like a Starbucks card or you know whatever buy a cup of coffee I'm gonna play a I'm gonna play a recorded voicemail I have here I have a friend of mine called excuse me don't know what's going on with my throat today I have a friend of mine called Mark Krasner he lives over in New York he's owns a company called expectful which helps pregnant women with meditation so they have really healthy pregnancies really good friend of mine and he does this thing once every like two or three weeks he'll phone me and leave a message so like he's strategic he lives in New York I'm in Los Angeles and he strategically phones me early morning his time when he knows that I'll be asleep and my phone's on silent so then when I wake up I'll see that there's a missed call and a voicemail from him so so within like 20 minutes of me waking up when I if I check my phone or voice messages I see there's a message there now I'm gonna try and play this I haven't listened to this I know he swears so if you if you I think he says yeah I think he does swear um so if you are with children right now and you don't want to let them hear some good words just put a thing over there he is but let's play this and I'll just give you an idea about what what he sends me and this is this is obviously his act of kindness he's never said to me oh I'm I'm gonna send you an act of kindness but this is an act of kindness he doesn't ask for anything in return he just sends me a message every three weeks in the morning so let's see if I can play this here so it makes me a little more wise you know because I'm like you know I'm at I can see three hours into the future uh calling to tell you that you're the fucking man you're the best you're the greatest you're a champion you've got a great heart big muscles you're charismatic intelligent passionate and a force for goodness well man have a great day that's it I literally got like six of these messages that like they're like two like I'm scrolling down now I can see it like and I just wake up and like who wouldn't feel good when you wake up and you get that message right oh my god that's great I we need more people like that yeah yeah yeah and what a what a great thing I mean honestly um you know just it's so it's so simple make it make it your make it a habit you know sometimes I'll just have a stack of little note cards that I leave around and I'll just write a little hand you know people we don't do enough handwriting notes everything lives on the phone these days we just text everyone right write a note you know it doesn't matter for somebody in your life that you care about just write them a note just feel like listen I just want to say I love you because you're amazing uh you have you have you know big epic muscles um you're a rock star right uh people it makes people think you can think of a time when you heard something like that and it just makes your day um you know I I like to people don't write handwritten notes anymore and they should and in fact I can't show you now but on my fridge I'm looking I'm recording this in my living room in my stand-up desk but I have a direct line of sight towards my fridge and on my fridge I have one two three four five six seven handwritten letters that listeners of the James Wanick show podcast or followers on my snapchat or instagram have have written to me thanking me for the effect that they've had in their life and I post it there and I remember those people's names like I and I value that and I treasure it and it makes me feel good to look at it um so a handwritten note is great here's another one even if the idea of writing a handwritten note is like oh that's too much work I don't want to do it now I've got to find their address and then I've got to go to the post office and then I've got to get a stamp and an envelope and write their name on the thing and send it like even like to me that sounds like a lot of work I don't like doing that I'll tell you what I do the next best thing and even it can it can even be more powerful is send a video text message like that is super powerful I'll literally just grab my iphone turn it on me and I'll say something like hey man I just wanted to say it was super awesome seeing you the other day thank you so much for having me I really appreciate you what you did was great you're awesome blah blah blah and I just send it as a video text because then they can see your body language they can they can see the visual of you thanking them well in this case I'm using an example of me thanking someone but there's no reason why you can't just out of the blue pick up your phone record yourself and video and say hey man I haven't spoken to you for six months I just want to say I miss talking to you you're rock how are you that's cool that can like you know and who doesn't like getting invitations to places my people love being invited somewhere because it makes them feel like they're wanted that the other that someone else in this world likes and enjoys their company so I was as we're recording this it's December 2016 and the holiday period is coming up and I live in Los Angeles and there's a lot of transient people a lot of people whose families live from out of town and they're just here working and stuff like that it gets lonely this time this time of year because a lot of people go back to their their families and the people who stay are kind of like oh I don't know what's going on oh anyway I was in the gym today the crunch gym and I ran into a guy Australian actor called Ryan Cooper and he's in a new Scarlett Johansson movie that's coming up and I met funnily enough I met him in a Russian bath house in New York about six weeks ago and I just got talking he goes are you Aussie here I'm like yeah you're Aussie yeah and we just got chatting anyway long story short he was in the gym he came up and said hello said hey man how you doing remember we met in the Russian bath house in New York I'm like yeah I do remember Ryan how are you it's great to talk to you and he's married he's got a lovely wife and he said oh my wife's back in in Australia at the moment I'm just finishing up some work stuff here but she's back in back in Australia and instinctively I thought to myself ah he's probably feeling a little bit of loneliness or whatever and there's a there's a an event or a social function I'm going to this Sunday and I instinctively thought of him and said hey man I'm going to this this thing on Sunday five o'clock do you want to would you like to come it's gonna be a cool little group of people's little Christmas party and he looked at me and he's like mate I would love to thank you so much you know my wife's back in Australia at the moment I'm feeling a little he didn't say a lonely or isolated but hey I think he said I'm feeling a little bit I can't remember what the word was something about being separated from Australia or his wife or whatever and he said oh that would be great that would be awesome and I could see in his face that he really meant it you know like he was really very appreciative of that and so yeah and then I texted him the details and and whatever so I'm hogging the conversation here hogging talking too much and for the sake of hearing my own voice and but I'm just using that as an example like an invitation inviting someone somewhere can be an act of kindness yeah absolutely I love the example an invitation is very powerful I mean you know it's a funny thing we think back to where we're kids and sometimes you see that kid in the corner sitting alone and no one was sitting with him at lunch and you don't realize that there are people who live their entire lives like that you know invite someone you know for a cup of coffee that you someone I work you know other little things are just things that you can a lot of times encounter I can't tell you at this point how many random things have come up you know see people on the street you know trying to put luggage away or trying to put groceries in their car and I'll just go up and I'll be like can I give you a hand with that always ask this is important don't just go don't just go up to people and grab their grab their groceries they're going to think that you're robbing them you know what's funny though when I have done that and I I wouldn't say I do it regularly but I do it sporadically when I have done that and I ask oh can I help you carry this you know your baby stroller up the stairs or can I help you off the train or would you like to sit in this chair if I ask the question their first response is usually oh no thank you that's very nice and then I then I say again it's okay let me do it for you and then they say yes so it's funny people will will instinctively want to say no because I'm not sure what's going on there mentally but I think maybe it's an element of of a stranger danger it might be an element also of not wanting to put the other the other person off and not wanting to trouble them even though I'm asking to be troubled slightly to you know to help you so you do have to come in with us with a follow-up question um the other way the other one thing you can do is actually instead of asking a question like can I help you take the baby stroller up the stairs it could be like oh let me help you take the baby stroller up the stairs and then just wait like don't go and actually move in there because then maybe the model still the baby but rather than like asking if they'd like to help you just say I'm gonna I'm going to help you and then they can either say oh thank you or no it's okay so you get an experiment a little little bit with that and I use the baby stroller as an example because sometimes when I get off the New York subway when I'm in New York I do see you know women struggling to pull their baby stroller up and so I'll just let me take that for you and and I'll maybe I may they're always so appreciative like thank you so much thank you really appreciate that yeah absolutely and you bring up a very good point it is actually not that easy to offer help to a stranger we get very defensive because we feel like someone's trying to sell us something uh recently so um my friends and I were setting this up in multiple cities in 2017 but you know we do little kindness gatherings and kindness parties so we just go and brainstorm some random things so we've done things where we go down to you know let's just say like you know rougher areas in the neighborhood where some people who might be homeless or transient might you know congregate and we'll go away and give away things like gloves and socks and one time we decided to just go up there and just pack up a lot of little snacks like we will buy um these pre-packaged popcorn and cookies and write little notes on them like you're amazing and we try to give them to strangers on the street and you'd be surprised at how many people look at us expecting a sales pitch to follow and we had to actually explain to them that like would you like some cookies and we're just giving this away because it's our one kindness project we're just being it's a kindness project that we're doing that we're just giving away free stuff and so many people would kind of had to do a double take where they kind of like no no no okay fine all right that's second moment right it's it's something that does occasionally take a little bit of patience but the result that you get from it the way you feel afterwards is so rewarding um and at the same time it's you know just just take you have to sort of keep an eye out for ways to help people and that's how we build a better society which people kind of uh create that um i'm gonna shut up speaking of things thank you i i'm sort of cutting you off there i i also want to thank you because you mentioned about listening to your podcast because of you i got a standing desk and uh yeah that's so good now we're both standing on our stand-up desk that's right so i wanted to say thank you and i appreciate that because this thing has changed my entire workflow and i feel so much better as a result of it that's amazing i'm so happy and so and look that's made me feel good so yeah like yeah i could flip this thing around i didn't even realize that i'd done my active kindness to you oh man and that's the thing is that it's so easy for us to to receive help from someone we don't even know and uh and we could share that that moment right like share share that appreciation i think what i might do i might do a little test run when i'm next in the grocery store i might see if i can find someone a head or behind me who maybe has like a like a few item i'm not i'm not gonna pay for everyone's groceries i could do but if someone's got like 200 bucks for the groceries maybe i won't do it but if someone's got like one or two items i might um what i might do is like if someone's behind me i'll say you know what i'm gonna grab your groceries on me today and just go bang or what else could you do i guess you could secretly leave because that way then you're gonna feel good about their reaction so what you could do is you could secretly slip the cash register person 10 bucks if you know it was gonna be and say hey i'm gonna this is 10 bucks for the person behind me just use that 10 for them you don't need to tell them and then you just walk out that way you don't get any you know you don't get any visual feeling of like them thanking you because it's like what you said like um going back to the initial point i think you were alluding to kindness is a selfish act isn't it it is yeah just explain that just a little bit before just as we wrap this up here well i mean one of the things that i talk about and i you know i've given a few talks about this and one of things i talk about is that actually kindness helps you in four specific ways one is in happiness which is it actually raises your happiness levels and it does so actually over a course of three to five days actually it's not just like in that moment you're happier but you become a happier person over three to five days number two that i bring up is this healthier for you it lowers your cortisol levels which is the stress hormone it actually improves your heart basically your your your heart it literally improves your heart by lowering your blood pressure there's again science that shows this you know they've done tests at senior homes and found that seniors who volunteer actually have a lower mortality rate something massive at like 40 lower mortality rate than seniors who don't i i could be very happy very happy to send you the studies that that people have done about this it goes on and on so one of the things that a lot of times i talk about is that look i mean except that kindness is a selfish act a lot of us we're very we want to be humble so we're not comfortable taking a compliment like i i have a difficulty taking a compliment a lot of times somebody has to be like oh like you know that's a great thing you did and i'll be like no no no i'll you know i'll kind of push it off but then realize that giving them that opportunity to say thank you is even that act is an act of kindness in a lot of ways like giving someone opportunity to sort of share what they've done or share what they've experienced because of you that's also part of it um so the the main point of it is that once we're accepting that doing that kind of kindness is not making a holier than that it doesn't make you necessarily a superior person it's just being human being um i think that makes things easier for other people to accept and also for you to just go out there and do more of this all right so there you go no reason to not be be kind to people in fact if you're kind to people you'll be happy for three or five days you lower your cortisol levels improve your heart lower your blood pressure you'll be rocking it um john wang who is the founder of the one kindness movement thank you so much i want you as the listener now to go and follow john's instagram page which is one kindness um just go there because that'll be a great daily reminder if you're on instagram um just to remind you to do your act of kindness that day so follow him on instagram it's uh at one kindness uh john's gonna um john's gonna send me the little little wristband um but you should grab a wristband how does the listener or the follower grab a a one of these wristbands which again is a visual and physical daily reminder to perform that one act of kindness so starting in 2017 uh early 2017 we'll have these available for uh individuals to go and order on your own time you just go to our website which is onekindness.org which is O-N-E-K-I-N-D-N-E-S-S.org you can get one of these wristbands um it's just there as a daily reminder but it also helps you create we have a 21 day challenge so the idea behind it is that you want to do this for at least 21 days and you want to challenge a friend or a family member to join you on it so you can kind of keep each other accountable doing it and i can guarantee you after 21 days your life is going to change uh it's just and it's it's just to help yourself and help other people around you there's no way there's no reason not to do this well john thank you so much for your time i really appreciate you sharing your kindness with me and with my uh my audience if you're listening to this go ahead and follow john on his instagram which is at onekindness grab yourself um a wristband at onekindness.org i just went there as he was finishing speaking and put my email address in there to sign up because you get um a little email notifications telling you giving you examples of kind acts that you can follow and just to finish this i'm actually going to send the text message to someone one of my friends right now i've already typed it out it says i appreciate you that is all bang just texted it fantastic dude so maybe we'll see whether we get a response in the next 20 seconds that we wrap this up but uh uh john thank you so much i really appreciate your time keep doing what you're doing and uh keep spreading kindness in the world and i i appreciate you thank you so much for having me on the show james i appreciate you and for the opportunity all right thanks very much for the audience we'll catch you on the next one see you