Thanks to the suggestion of another Doing Good Together family, we’ve started a doing good journal. We call it “Our Kind of World” and it has helped redouble everyone’s efforts to notice the good that happens everyday.

For more than a year we have taken time to reflect on two important questions:

• Who have you helped today?
• Who helped you today?

We are quite relaxed about our definition of “help,” counting nearly any act of kindness, from a stranger’s smile to a politely opened door. Kindness and helping have become regular topics of conversation in our house, if not every day at least a few times a week.

Now all of that help is recorded in our journal, right after a few opening pages of inspiring quotes and our family mission statement.

Some days one or all of us struggle to write anything down. When we do, whichever family member had a difficult time nearly always leads the conversation the next day.

The thought process goes like this:  I may not have had anything to offer yesterday, but I went out of my way to help someone today. I would know. Sometimes I’m the one who didn’t notice or initiate any kindness. When this happens, I see the same motivation in myself as in the kids. We intentionally weave kindness into the next day.

Adding the journal helps the kids pay greater attention to kindness. Even at six and four, they seriously want to add something to “the book.”

It also lightens the mood on those particularly bad days. You know, when the world feels like an awful place and you got picked last for first grade gym class and your best friend was absent so you had no one to sit with on the bus. On those days, you can look back over the list and see the good you’ve put into the world, and the good others have done for you.

It sounds like a small thing, but it has already helped brighten the end of a dark day.

If you’re not interested in impromptu journaling, consider checking out The Giving Book, which inspires acts of kindness and serves as a scrapbook for good deeds.

Have you introduced kindness and helping into your dinner conversations? How is going for you?

Tags: Big Ideas, Free, Healing Habits, Strengthening Our Family

About Sarah

Sarah Aadland is striving to make family volunteering a meaningful habit for her family of five. Join the conversation as she ponders what they may (or may not have) learned and looks for helpful information about raising compassionate kids.Though she plans to one day put her Masters in Public Policy back to work for social justice, she sees family volunteering as a way to build a stronger community, a better world, and a more connected family. In addition to her children, Sarah tends a large garden, a small flock of chickens, and a habit of mindfulness amid the necessary rituals of parenting.

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