Feel Better, Live More with Dr Rangan Chatterjee - BITESIZE | Why Kindness is the Superpower You Didn’t Know You Had | Claudia Hammond #375

Starting point is 00:00:00 Today's Bite Size episode is brought to you by AG1, a science-driven daily health drink with over 70 essential nutrients to support your overall health. It includes vitamin C and zinc, which helps support a healthy immune system, something that is really important at this time of year. It also contains prebiotics and digestive enzymes that help support your gut health. It's really tasty and has been in my own life for over five years. Until the end of January, AG1 are giving a limited time offer. Usually they offer my listeners a one-year supply of vitamin D and K2 and five free travel packs with their first order. But until the end of January, they are doubling the five free travel packs to

Starting point is 00:00:51 10. And these packs are perfect for keeping in your backpack, office, or car. If you want to take advantage of this limited time offer, all you have to do is go to drinkag1.com forward slash live more. Welcome to Feel Better Live More Bite Size, your weekly dose of positivity and optimism to get you ready for the weekend. Today's clip is from episode 312 of the podcast with Claudia Hammond, an award-winning broadcaster, author, and psychology lecturer at the University of Sussex. In this clip, she brings us some of the psychology and neuroscience on why kindness matters and shares a simple practice we can all do to notice and create more kindness in our daily lives. You wrote something that really caught my attention.

Starting point is 00:01:54 Behaving compassionately improves the lives of others. It also improves our own lives. There are measurable boosts to health, both mental physical behaving kindly can act as a buffer against burnout and stress and improve our well-being it brings us happiness it can even help us to live longer that's a pretty good sell for kindness isn't it yeah it really is you know that kindness does so many things for us that why not do more of it because there is good evidence about all these things so there's lots, say, where they stop people in the street in the morning and they give them, it's done in Canada, they give them $5 or $20. And then half the people are told, spend it on yourself sometime today and meet us again at five o'clock. The other half of the people are told,

Starting point is 00:02:40 spend this on someone else. You could give it to charity, you could buy something for somebody. And when they meet them at five o'clock, they then give the mood questionnaires. And the people who did something for someone else are in a better mood. Their wellbeing is higher than the people who did something for themselves, even though they got a free thing, you know, they got a present, but yet doing it for someone else is even better. There's so much interesting research from psychology and neuroscience as well on kindness. And I thought, well, let's look at that research and see what are the benefits and how can we go about having more of it and being a bit kinder? I think if you ask people on the street, do you want to be kind?

Starting point is 00:03:15 They'll probably say, yeah. I think we all know it's good to be kind. What I think is powerful about the research you've put together is that it goes beyond just it feels good it's the right thing to do as you say there's there's a lot of research psychology neuroscience and we've already mentioned you know protective against stress and burnout right can help us live longer it's not just about it's the nice and right thing to do is it it's much more than that yeah it definitely is you know we need it it's okay to say that it's a good thing and that it

Starting point is 00:03:50 will benefit us as well as other people and to find ways of doing more of it and of being kind more often but it can be in really small ways as well and what i want people to know is that even those really small ways can really make a difference to people. So just chatting to someone in the shop who happens to be in the queue next to you, that could be the only person they chat to all day. That could be the conversation that really makes them feel a little bit better that day because it was their only human contact and they were feeling lonely. You don't know the impact that really small things that you do can have. And there's really interesting research on talking to strangers. And lots of this has been done by Gillian Sandstrom, who's a colleague of

Starting point is 00:04:30 mine at Sussex University. And she has found that people are often nervous about talking to strangers because they're afraid the other person won't like it and that they're going to bore them and that the other person would wish they weren't speaking to them. And then when she does experiments where she gets people deliberately, she tells them, you must go and talk to, you know, five different people today and then ask both sides whether they like it. Actually, it turns out they nearly all like it and that most people do like it and that they don't judge us badly. So most people are afraid they'll be judged badly by the other person. And it's just not true at all. You know, it just isn't. And so even just talking to a stranger, I would count as an act of kindness.

Starting point is 00:05:08 But it can be a really wide range of things. So it hasn't got to be, you might think of helping someone, you know, picking something up for them that they've dropped or showing people the way and things like that or giving people a present. But it can also be forgiving someone who's said something, done something to upset you. It can mean spotting that somebody is left out of a conversation or left out generally of something social and bringing them in. Or just noticing that somebody is unhappy or really listening, truly listening to somebody who is trying to tell you something important. All the way to volunteering or, you know, doing amazing things or heroism.

Starting point is 00:05:47 And in a way, it's everything from cups of tea to heroic acts that save lives and, you know, everything in between. But those small things really do matter. We know that we have, you know, evolved to cooperate. And this is why humans are so successful. They cooperate with each other. And that involves kindness. We want to be kind, but sometimes it's difficult to do that. And so what I want to do is give people the evidence to

Starting point is 00:06:08 say, you know, we want to be kind. That is your urge. And you're right to have that urge, because look at all this evidence. It will even get you the things you want. It will improve relationships. It will improve mental health. It can improve your workplace. So why not do it? your workplace so why not do it is kindness is it innate to who we are are we kind people or is it something we have to practice and develop you know that i'm really fascinated by your view on that we can practice and develop and become kinder so it is something we can and we can develop more empathy for people and it's like a skill that you can learn and you can improve at. But I think we already have the predisposition to do that. And so if you look at these experiments with, you know, two year olds and people will think of terrible twos and two years just have tantrums and never care about anyone else.

Starting point is 00:06:59 And yet there's these lovely experiments. I really love the videos of these where they'll have like an adult who's trying to carry a whole pile of books and open a cupboard door. And even two-year-olds will go and open that door for them very often. And then they have it so the two-year-old is playing with a game they really like, and they will abandon the game in order to open the door. And then they have it so the two-year-old is playing with a game they like and has to climb over obstacles to open the cupboard door. And many will still do it. You know, they want to be kind. They have been called indiscriminate altruists.

Starting point is 00:07:27 They'll be kind to anyone. It's not just because there's something in it for them. So they'll be as kind to other toddlers as to adults, and adults might give them more stuff. So they will be kind to them too. Now, obviously not all the time, because we have all seen those tantrums, but they can do it and want to do it.

Starting point is 00:07:41 And I think if you look at how the brain's reward system works when it comes to kind acts and altruism, we can see that the brain rewards us when we are kind. So I do believe that we have evolved to be kind and to be rewarded for doing that, which is why it feels good when you are kind, because our brains are, if you like, built that way. We've evolved to have that reward system that makes us feel good when we're kind because being kind is so useful to survival because kindness builds relationships. Relationships help people survive. Yeah. Is it important that we actually specifically have a practice whereby we can actually recall three kind things that happened to me today? that kind of thing.

Starting point is 00:08:25 Yeah, I think that could work really well, just as the three, the gratitude works, or the studies where people just think of three nice things at the end of the day, and that that improves people's wellbeing. And that's all based on Martin Seligman's work. I mean, while I was writing the book, I kept a sort of kindness diary, where I noted down things where I was either kind or thought about being kind and didn't do it, or where people were kind to me or where I noted down things where I was either kind or thought about being kind and didn't do it or where people were kind to me or where I just saw them and the moment you start trying to notice you notice more and more and it builds on itself and so I suggest people should be a kindness twitcher you know look out for it because we because the bad things are always going to be

Starting point is 00:08:58 more salient and the world is not as bad as we think. I imagine by keeping that kindness diary bad as we think. I imagine by keeping that kindness diary, you're putting your spotlight and your attention intentionally on kindness, saying this is something I value, this is something I'm going to look out for. But also, presumably, you're going to do more acts of kindness because that's where you're putting your attention. Yes, it's almost priming you to do it and to be ready to do it, which is also a thing you can decide to do. You can decide, well, the next time I see somebody who looks a bit lost or confused, maybe I'll say, you're all right. Do you know where you're going? Do you want a hand?

Starting point is 00:09:40 Yeah. Coming back to this innate capacity to be kind, to be compassionate, to forgive, maybe we've got a lot say, well, I couldn't do that myself. And this is what happens with the heroes. So I talk about all sorts of people who have done such a kind act that they save someone else's life often at expense to themselves. And they will always invariably say in the research, they say, I only did what anyone would have done. And yet we think, well, you didn't, did you?

Starting point is 00:10:20 Because you did the special thing or there were loads of people on the platform and you climbed down and got help to the woman who'd fallen off the platform. Everybody else didn't climb down onto the live rail and did that. So you did do something different. But that actually seeing heroes

Starting point is 00:10:33 as something special might make the rest of us less likely to do it because we sort of think, well, I wouldn't be able to do that. And instead that maybe we should think, well, maybe I could, maybe if there is a situation and one piece of research

Starting point is 00:10:45 suggested there might be a situation five times in your life where you can do something heroic to decide in advance, well, I am going to do it. You know, I'm going to step forward and be that person. And of course, we'll never know until those things happen. Yeah. Really, really powerful. Really, really powerful. So have you got a few practical things that people can think about right at the end of this conversation one way of being really kind is to really listen so when someone is telling you a story you know not to be half distracted on your phone or looking over their shoulder to see who else is at this party but to really listen and really really make it at that moment they should be the center of your world so at that you know, really listen to them is a really kind thing to do.

Starting point is 00:11:27 If you want to become more empathic, you need to believe that for a start that it is a skill where you can improve at that. And to reading novels has been shown. You know, there's really good research from Canada on how people who read novels, their empathy improves. Because what better way to get an insight into the world of somebody you don't know at all you know who maybe live in a very different world from you and to find out what they're feeling what they're thinking then reading novels is a really good one to do there and then if you want to be kinder to think yeah the little acts do count as well it doesn't have to be something huge but don't let me stop you if you want to do something huge but also to

Starting point is 00:12:02 think about how you might be kindness and to be sort of true to yourself in how you might be kinder. So you haven't got to start, I don't know, volunteering somewhere if that's really not your thing. Maybe instead you'd rather donate some money to charity rather than volunteer, that's okay. But what are the areas where you could be a bit kinder? And to just try to think in every situation,

Starting point is 00:12:23 can I leave this situation a little better than when I got here? Love it. Hope you enjoyed that bite-sized clip. Hope you have a wonderful weekend. And I'll be back next week with my long-form conversation on Wednesday and the latest episode of Bite Science next Friday.

Feel Better, Live More with Dr Rangan Chatterjee - BITESIZE | Why Kindness is the Superpower You Didn’t Know You Had | Claudia Hammond #375

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