RAoK 365: 16 free random acts of kindness

This time last year I was coming to the end of a year-long project called RAoK 365, in which I performed 365 random acts of kindness over the course of a year. I was joined in this by Claire and Phil, and I have to admit it was one of the most rewarding things I have ever done. We tried hard to do each RAoK only once, but some of them were just too good not to do every day!

When I was chatting about RAoK 365 with Laura at Karmageddon 10, and she said that she sometimes found it hard to think of things to do, so I thought I would compile a list of some of my favourite RAoKs. And as the holiday season tends to leave us all a bit poor, the first installment will be random acts of kindness you can do for free! Hooray!

Now, I know that RAoK contains the word 'random', but this can mean different things to different people - some people think RAoKs have to be spur of the moment and un-prepared acts of kindness, which does kinda make sense, and I'm all for people being kind whenever they have the opportunity, but some RAoKs may require more effort and even a bit of planning, and that's cool too. There are also people who think that 'random' means you have to do an act of kindness to a stranger, which I don't think is necessarily accurate - as long as the act of kindness is unexpected that makes it random - you don't have to just target strangers... though sometimes they are the most fun!

>>>free random acts of kindness<<<

1-16

compliment someone, and mean it

smile at everyone you see throughout the day

hold the door open for someone

let others onto a bus or train before you

help an old lady across the road

help someone with their shopping

make someone feel loved

lend someone your jacket in the cold

do an unexpected errand for someone

offer to weed a neighbours garden

babysit for busy parents

write a letter to someone you haven't seen in a while

leave a thank you note for the postman/milkman

inspire someone

hug a stranger

sign up to be a blood donor

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You'll get some more free RAoK ideas next week, and you can get more ideas from the Join Me forum, or from this book - for which I was a contributor!

Do you perform random acts of kindness?

Share your favourites in the comments!