#44 The Ripple Effect of Kindness
In this episode, Roy and Catherine explore how small acts of kindness ripple outward. Roy’s approach is less about grand gestures and more about how he lives day to day, letting a car pull out from a side street, stopping at a crossing even when he doesn’t have to, and in business or community settings, always asking how he can help someone rather than how he can sell them something. He points out the ripple effect isn’t really about immediate payback, it’s that the person you helped goes on to help someone else, who helps someone else, and eventually it circles back around to benefit him anyway, even though that was never the point. Catherine builds on this with a piece of research Roy sent her, that rudeness spreads like a virus, making the person on the receiving end more likely to be rude to others for up to 24 hours, and that kindness works the same way in reverse. She illustrates it with life on the narrow country lanes near her home, where drivers who meet head-on often have to reverse a long way to let each other pass, and nearly everyone does it with waves, smiles and good humour rather than frustration. She shares a specific story of meeting a fuel tanker on one of those lanes, telling the driver she couldn’t reverse because she’s a woman, only for a passing farmer to jump in and reverse her car for her, the two of them then praising each other so warmly it felt like a scene from a TV show. She also describes a quieter form of kindness, making genuine eye contact with people who are anxious or frightened, recalling a garden centre reopening after Covid lockdown where the masked, visibly anxious staff visibly relaxed once she made a point of smiling and greeting each of them directly. Her closing point is that kindness, including kindness toward yourself, costs nothing and changes how you feel and sleep that same day.
Timestamps
0:02 — Introduction and today’s topic: the ripple effect of kindness
0:25 — Roy: living it day to day and the ripple that comes back around
1:18 — Catherine: kindness as contagious, country lane courtesy, and the tanker story
5:59 — Closing thoughts and sign-off
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[Speaker 1] (0:02 - 0:25)
Welcome to episode 44 of Different Points with my co-host Roy Colan and myself Catherine Llewellyn. So today's topic is the ripple effect of kindness, which is such a nice topic. So Roy, in relation to the ripple effect of kindness, what ripple effect of kindness will you create?
[Speaker 2] (0:25 - 1:18)
I think it's more how you live your life, that just do the right things. Like it might be something simple that you're leaving the car come out from a side street. You know, you're stopping at the pedestrian crossing when you don't have to.
Sometimes people, I know some countries, they make it a rule when there's not traffic lights on them, but you're just kind of letting people go. And everything you do, like when you're, like say if I'm on business meetings and say if it's in a community, it's never, how can I sell them something? How can I do it?
It's like, how can I help this person? And it's never just that they let me back. It's just, it's like the ripple effect is like, they feel so good, they might help someone else who helped someone else.
And before you know it, it's come back and slapped me in the back of the head and now I get benefit from it, but never. And I think just try to do it with everything that you're doing in your life.
[Speaker 1] (1:18 - 5:58)
Beautiful. You actually sent me a link the other day, Roy, for a little video on TikTok, where someone had done some research and discovered that rudeness is like a virus. That if you're rude to somebody, it's almost like that person catches the virus and they're more likely to be rude to other people for anything up to 24 hours.
But the same works with kindness, that you can catch kindness like a virus. And one piece of kindness can help the other person be kind to other people for a good 24 hours. How he did the research, I have no idea, but it was a very, very interesting little thing, quite uplifting, I thought, because he was saying the main thing to remember is we have the choice.
We always have the choice to be kind. And something I love around here is when there's lots of little narrow country lanes around here, so you're going to come across other vehicles and it's going to be tricky to get past each other. And sometimes one of you has to reverse for a mile down a twisty lane before you can get past.
Most people around here are kind in relation to that. They'll pause, they'll wave, then smile, do a little grimace, you know, and then do the reversing and then wave and go past. And it's all fantastic.
Or if you're passing people, you know, everybody waves. If I'm out walking, a car comes past me. I wave, they wave.
No idea who they are. It's just a really, really nice thing that makes such a difference. And there was a very funny situation.
I was driving to visit my brother and I was going down one of these very narrow up and down country lanes that the sat-nav had taken me on. I shouldn't have been on it. I should have been on the main road, but I was there.
I was coming down the hill and there was this massive tanker coming towards me, some sort of fuel tanker. And I thought, what are you doing on this lane? And I stopped and the guy got out and said, you've got to back up, you've got to back up, you know, with a Welsh accent, which I can't do.
I went, I can't back up. I'm a woman. I can't reverse.
And then a farmer comes running up and he said, well, I'll reverse for you. No, no, no, no, no. So I jumped in the car, reversed up.
The tanker went past. The farmer came up on his tractor and said, you were brilliant. Well done.
Brilliant. I went, you were brilliant. You were great.
And we both, it was a bit of a love fest in the middle of this lane, in the middle of nowhere, you know, and then you come out of the lane and you think, did that actually happen? It was the sort of thing that happens on a TV show or something. You think, does that happen in real life?
Yes, it does. Where suddenly people go, no, I'm going to be kind now. And I just think, you know, you mentioned being actually being kind.
Something I've found is very kind often is to just make eye contact with somebody in a situation where they're frightened or worried. When we had the lockdown regime over here, there was a garden centre that had been closed and then they opened for the first time. But they all had masks on and I walked in and you could tell they were all really, really anxious.
They were wearing masks and it was like they were afraid to look anyone in the face. So I just made a point with each one of them of just looking them in the face and smiling. I wasn't wearing a mask and just looking in the face and just smiling and say, hi, how are you?
And by the time I left, the atmosphere was really different. They'd all relaxed. Not because I'm special in any way, but because there was a moment of kindness there and they were able to go, oh, I can relax because they were keeping each other wound up by being so anxious.
And it just softened it down a bit. And I think that's something we can all do. You know, the wave, the smile, gentle eye contact, not staring like some mad, you know, fanatic.
Exactly right. Not like that, Roy, beautifully demonstrated. So, yes, the ripple effect of kindness, I think it's really, really important and we can all do it in any moment and also to ourselves.
We can be kind to ourselves. So be kind to yourself today, be kind to other people and just see how good you feel and how well you sleep tonight. Thank you for watching and listening and have a wonderful day and see you next time.
[Speaker 2] (5:59 - 6:00)
Take care.
