Welcome to the happiness podcast. I'm Dr. Robert Puff. Kindness, why does it matter to be

kind and does it have any impact on our happiness? That's what we're going to look at in

today's episode.

When I was in the third grade, I had a friend of mine, and we used to mess around a little

bit. And I remember one day we were playing around, and I took one of his pencils and I broke it. But immediately afterwards,

which I didn't see coming, he started crying because he was pretty upset that I had broken

his pencil. When I saw his tears flow and he ran away, I felt horrible. I thought,

what did I do? Was that his only pencil? Could he perhaps not afford any more? I didn't mean to make him cry. And I went home and I

remember laying in bed that night I said, okay, I don't like what I did. I hurt my friend's

feelings a lot and I'm going to do something to make it better.

So what I did is the next day I brought him, I think it was like a roll of pencils perhaps five or

six because my grandfather had worked at a university as a janitor and he had a lot of pencils, so I brought him a roll of pencils,

and then for the next month every day at school I brought him a pencil.

Well why is this story relevant to happiness? I mean we're here to learn

about happiness, not about how to be kind, but really the two are very intertwined.

And let me explain. Well let's's start with, when we're not kind, we're going to get one of three reactions.

The first one will be from the other person is one of neutrality.

They may not share it with us that we are being unkind. They may say nothing at all, but we may know and they may know that what we did was in kind.

That's the first interaction. The second interaction is they may like my friend cry and be very upset.

And we'll be able to see that upsetness through their tears and their really mournful response.

The third interaction can be one of anger.

When we hurt them, when we do something unkind, they in like turn do something unkind back to us.

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