Practice kindness and it will improve your mental health

Kindness ensures psychological well-being, protects against anxiety and stabilizes mood, according to British writer Leon Logothetis, who explains how to rediscover this quality that enhances communication with oneself and others, as he personally discovered in his travels across a hundred countries.

Writer Leon Logothetis on his motorbike with sidecar on one of his excursions. Photo courtesy of Leon Logothetis

For British adventurer, motivational speaker, television presenter, philanthropist and writer Leon Logothetis, “the greatest gift of humankind is kindness,” a quality that enhances the relationship between different people and each person with himself.

After becoming a stockbroker in London “where on the outside I looked like I had it all, but on the inside I felt uninspired, disconnected and chronically depressed”, he left it all for a life “on the road”, in a life-changing radically inspired movie. “The Motorcycle Diaries” (2004) as he admits).

for more than a decade, Logo He visited nearly a hundred countries and traveled to every continent, searching for, finding and bringing to light the “good side” of humanity, all shown in full in the documentary TV series “Memoirs of Good.” The protagonist, which has been broadcast on platforms such as Netflix, Discovery Plus, and BYU TV.

In that TV show, Logothetis travels around the world on a motorbike with a sidecar and a Volkswagen Beetle “motivated by the generosity, kindness and help of strangers”, accepting not their money, but listening to their stories, and helping these good people. people to realize their dreams.

He notes that on his adventure around the world, receiving kindness and kindness, he found the essence of humanity and learned about the bonds that bind people everywhere.

“I discovered that when we humans compare ourselves based on our similarities instead of focusing on our differences, we start creating a brighter future,” says Logothetis.

In his latest written work, “The Power of Being Kind” (the Spanish version of “Go Be Kind”), he proposed “Twenty-eight and a half adventures that will change your life and the way you see the world,” a set of daily teachings and exercises to train our ability to be kind and sympathetic It communicates with others and ourselves, he explains.

Kindness leads you to the path of happiness

“When you begin to practice the art of being kind, you begin on the direct path to happiness,” says Logothetis.

Kindness is not something that is thought but rather felt, and “when we feel it, either by giving or receiving it, we feel happier and less alone. This is a fact.”

“I believe that kindness is an innate quality in every person. However, as it happens with all human traits, we must cultivate this quality as much as possible so that we can feel all its effects,” Logothetis tells EFE.

“It is easy to be kind when everything is fine and people treat us with respect. But what if we try to be kind when things do not go as we would like and the person in front of us has an attitude, words or behavior that is far from good…? Well, that Not that easy,” he ponders.

Logothetis has a simple trick he shares with EFE to be kind in those unpleasant situations: It consists of “looking at the person we find unpleasant or unpleasant and pretending to be just a girl or boy.”

“If you can do this, it will be easier to treat “not good” people with love. If this tactic does not work, then perhaps it is time to get out of the situation in which you have been living with this person for a while … ”, he recommends.

What stops us from being kind?

Although the difficulty of expressing kindness often lies not in others but in ourselves, Logothetis warns that he devotes one of the exercises or “everyday adventures” in his book to discovering “what’s stopping you from being kind?”

To find out, he recommends that you complete a “check” in writing and quickly (in thirty seconds maximum), consisting of determining which of the following options may be causing our difficulty in being kind:

1. “I am terrified to suffer if I share my heart with the world.”
2. “It pisses me off that the world is so cruel sometimes!”
3. “I’m a shy person and I don’t really know what to say.”
4. “I’m not shy, but I still don’t know what to say.”
5. “I don’t want to be embarrassed, or worse, to be rejected.”
6. “I feel like I live on a lonely planet.”
7. “I feel like a lonely fox.”
8. Another possibility: …

Once we discover a cause that sabotages or undermines our ability to be kind, we must stay “there, a second with our response, even if it hurts a little,” because “whatever prevents you from communicating with others is itself preventing you from being truly happy.”

Answering a book exam puts us in touch with “that dark place that we all have, that great wound that separates us from the world and gets in our way every time we want to get close to someone else, every time we want to be true to ourselves.”, according to Logothetis.

The author admits that his great wound was loneliness for a long time, and that he was able to heal it through communication with others, thereby moving from pain to happiness, and adds: “This is my condition, now it’s your turn!” (to discover your wound).

“When you discover that wound and get it in writing, put it somewhere you can look and think about how you can start healing it today to become happy,” he says.

He asserts that change is something that takes time, “not happening overnight”, but “it can start now”.