Five Ways To Spread Love And Happiness To Others Around You

A well-known quote from Mother Theresa goes, “I alone cannot change the world but I can cast a stone across the waters to create many ripples.” It’s true that everyone has their own unique gifts to contribute to those around them and to the world—and they don’t have to be big. Simply aiming to spread love and treat others with respect and kindness in your daily life can create that ripple effect of positivity in your community. What not everyone realizes is that these acts can impact the giver in meaningful ways, too. Read on to learn more about what both you and those around you can gain when you show loving kindness, and get inspiration on how to start.

Six ways to try spreading love and happiness to those around you

Projecting love toward others doesn’t have to entail a large expenditure of time, energy, or money. Even small gestures can have significant effects. Here are a few ideas on how you might spread a bit of love and kindness to others today.

Acts of kindness: give someone a compliment

A thoughtful, genuine compliment can make a person’s day. For instance, you might praise a colleague for their work on a particular project or let a friend know how much you appreciate a certain quality of theirs.

Find ways to help others 

When you start looking for ways to do this, you’re likely to begin seeing opportunities everywhere. For example, you could help someone who is struggling with a heavy package, shovel the snow from your neighbor’s sidewalk after doing your own, or offer your professional expertise for free to someone who could use it.

Express gratitude and love 

When someone helps you or when you recall a kindness they extended to you in the past, consider speaking up. Letting others know the ways in which they positively impact us is an often-overlooked method of spreading love and kindness and encouraging others to continue doing the same.

Practice active listening to make someone feel heard as a small act of kindness

Giving a friend or colleague your undivided attention when they’re expressing something with you that’s meaningful or important to them can be another way to show love. This simple act can help a person feel seen, heard, and connected. 

Write a note focusing on happiness and joy

Giving random notes of encouragement or other positive sentiments can bring an unexpected smile to someone’s face. Leaving a short note somewhere for a stranger to find or writing a letter to a loved one can be quick but impactful ways to brighten a person’s day.

Finding your own ways for spreading love and happiness 

When you first start making an increased effort to bring more love and joy into your days, you’ll probably want some ideas to get you started. But if you’ve been actively focusing on a kindness practice like this for some time, it can be fun to find your own ways to spread love and happiness in the world. 

For example, if you collect keychains, you might feel inclined to leave one on a park bench with a small note that says it’s a gift for the first stranger who finds it. Likewise, if you’re feeling financially stable and in a drive-thru at your favorite coffee shop, you might ask the cashier to let you pay for the person’s order behind you. 

Whenever small acts of kindness come to mind, you have an opportunity to spread joy in a way that’s personal to you. Many things that bring you joy and make you smile are likely to make other people smile, too.

Simple acts of kindness to spread joy 

The Random Acts of Kindness Foundation (RAK) was established in 1995 to promote a worldwide movement that encourages people to spread kindness and pass it on to others. If you want to find more fun ideas to spread love and happiness in your life, there are several lists, books, and websites dedicated to random acts of kindness for inspiration. 

These random acts of kindness range from holding the door for someone to leaving money on a vending machine. They’re often quite creative with ideas suitable for all different kinds of people with a variety of circumstances and situations. 

Six benefits of spreading love and happiness in your community

You probably know from experience that it feels good to make someone smile. Engaging with others from a loving place can benefit both them and you in many ways. Some of these benefits are unique to each person involved, but others are more universal in nature. 

Below, we’ve highlighted some benefits of spreading happiness and love to those around you. 

It can be a gift to your physical health

According to an article published by the American Psychological Association, performing acts of kindness to those around you has been linked to some physical health benefits, like lower blood pressure. They note, however, that the health benefits of giving are more likely to occur when the methods are “socially connected or relational”—such as taking a friend who is having a tough time out to dinner rather than sending them a meal. 

The article also states that the rewards tend to be greater when the person acts kindly of their own accord, rather than being required to do so, and when they feel they’ve made a positive impact.

Love and happiness can be good for your mental health

The American Psychiatric Association shows details on how acting with love and kindness toward others can improve your mental health. They cite one study that split people who were experiencing symptoms of depression or anxiety into three groups. One group engaged in acts of kindness, another joined in social activities, and another participated in a brief therapy intervention. 

While all three groups experienced reduced symptoms, those who engaged in acts of kindness also “effectively improved social connection and related dimensions of well-being.” They also reference other studies that have found that showing love to others through kind acts can increase happiness and self-esteem while decreasing stress and emotional reactivity.

It can boost your mood

So not only can showing kindness make you feel good, but it can encourage you to behave in this way towards others more in the future, too. Plus, showing love to people around you can also trigger a release of oxytocin, “the love hormone,” which is involved in building trust and social bonds.

Spreading love and happiness can win you more friends

One study classified high school students according to the social roles they tended to play, from “nice youths” to “rebels.” It followed these students over time to see how their role impacted their friendships and found that those who were nice—or high in empathy with an inclination to avoid hurting others—tended to have more friendships throughout high school than all other groups, as well as higher levels of well-being. 

In contrast, students who displayed rebellious traits tended to disrupt their friendships over time as a result of their own aggression. In other words, acting with kindness and empathy may draw others to you socially, which can benefit your health and well-being in various ways.

It can lead to even more kindness

Various studies have been done to examine how acts of kindness can move through communities. One explored how kindness can be contagious through the mechanism of positive conformity.

Love and kindness can promote a positive worldview

Have you ever noticed how when you’re in a negative mood, you’re more likely to pay attention to and remember things like the person who cuts you off in traffic than the person who lets you change lanes in front of them, for instance? It often works the same way with positive moods and interactions. 

The events we experience throughout our day can color the way we view the world and others around us. When we exercise our power to put more good into our communities, we’re likely to have a more positive worldview overall as a result.

How love and kindness have direct benefits

Sometimes it’s easy to identify the direct benefits of spreading love and happiness. If you would find it more enjoyable to see the benefits manifest in front of you, here are some more ways to spread love and happiness that you might want to try: 

• Volunteer for a non-profit: Volunteering allows you to get hands-on with an issue you care about. For example, if you’re donating time to an animal shelter, you’ll see the happy critters benefiting from the time and energy you’re spending. You can also find volunteer opportunities that give you valuable career experience. 
• Buy or make food for a family in need: If you see a family asking for help with food, you might bring them a warm meal or take them grocery shopping. It’s often best to reserve this act of kindness only for those who have explicitly asked for this type of aid to avoid accidentally offending someone. 
• Look for community requests: Community boards and newspapers sometimes feature requests from those in need. Looking for requests like these that you can directly fulfill can allow you to bring joy to your neighborhood in unexpected ways.

Support for when feeling or spreading happiness is difficult

It’s not always easy to view the world with a positive attitude and feel motivated to do for others. Mental health conditions like depression, for instance, can make it difficult to take care of yourself at times, leaving little energy for giving to others. The effects of past trauma may also impact a person’s ability to relate to those around them in a positive way. 

Therapy is one of many ways of spreading love and happiness to yourself

Spreading love and happiness to others can be challenging if you don’t do the same for yourself first. If you’re facing challenges that are making it hard for you to be the positive force in your community that you’d like to be, speaking with a therapist may help. They can provide you with a safe space to express and process your emotions and can help you learn healthy ways to cope with any mental health challenges you may be experiencing. 

How to find a therapist 

If you’re interested in connecting with a therapist, you have options for how you can go about it. In-person providers are available in many areas if you’d prefer traditional, in-office sessions. Or, if you’re having trouble locating a provider nearby, can’t travel to and from appointments, or would simply feel more at ease speaking with someone from the comfort of your own home, you might consider online therapy. 

With a virtual therapy platform like BetterHelp, you can get matched with a licensed therapist who you can speak with via phone, video call, and/or online chat from anywhere you have an internet connection. Research suggests that both in-person and virtual therapy can offer similar benefits in many cases, so you can typically choose the format that’s most convenient for you.