Ringing in 2025 with Kindness: A Powerful Force for Personal and Community Healing

Photo by Tim Marshall on Unsplash

By Leah Harris

January is National Mental Wellness Month, and it also happens to be the time of year when many people make New Year’s resolutions. While these resolutions typically involve individual acts of self-improvement such as going to the gym or reading more often, research suggests that taking a vow of kindness for 2025 (and beyond) could also greatly improve our quality of life, while also having a positive impact on the world around us.

According to recent story in NPR, “When we make acts of kindness a habit, it's also good for our health.” Experts say that that demonstrating kindness, especially towards others, lowers our levels of cortisol, the body’s main stress hormone, generating a more positive emotional state of mind.
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While acts of kindness towards ourselves are important, there may be even more positive benefits from an “other-oriented” approach to well-being. A 2024 paper in the International Journal of Well-Being discussed research examining the comparative effects of performing acts of kindness for oneself versus for others. These studies indicate that other-oriented acts seem to have a more powerful effect on happiness than acts that are primarily self-oriented. The authors of this paper seek to gently challenge what it calls the “oxygen-mask” assumption, which says one must “put on their own oxygen mask before helping others,” and seeks to advance an “other-oriented” model of well-being, emphasizing our interdependence. 

Study after study shows that people experience more psychological benefits from giving than from receiving. This research also further explains the enormous value of peer support, which emphasizes relationships based in mutuality, where both people are giving in the exchange. 

Further, as the authors of the International Journal of Well-Being paper point out, when we over-rely on self-improvement as a strategy for well-being vs. other-oriented strategies, we might deprive people of an effective intervention that could improve their lives and health, “based on the erroneous assumption that are not motivated or ‘strong’ enough to take care of others and should prioritize taking care of themselves first.” Even when someone may not feel motivated to perform acts of self-care, or may not have access to massages or yoga classes, they can still improve their well-being by practicing small acts of kindness towards others.

The scientific consensus is that it can do our mind, body, and spirit enormous good to do good for others. "Volunteering or doing an act of kindness can distract you from some of the problems that you might be having, so you might be a little bit less reactive yourself," Laura Kubzansky, professor of social and behavioral sciences at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, told NPR. “It may help to give you more perspective on what your own problems are."

For further exploration:

• When kindness becomes a habit, it improves our health (NPR)
• Rosset, E., El-Jor, C., Kotsou, I., & Shankland, R. (2024). Getting outside of ourselves: Towards an other-oriented model of psychological health. International Journal of Wellbeing, 14(2).
• Being kind to strangers is good for you. Why it's healthy to help others. (Yahoo! Life)
• Boost your mood: Harness the power of volunteering and kindness (UC Health)

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Leah Harris is a non-binary, queer, neurodivergent, disabled Jewish writer, facilitator, and organizer working in the service of truth-telling, justice-doing, and liberation. They’ve had work published in the New York Times, CNN, and Pacific Standard. You can learn more about their work at their website and follow them on Instagram.