Category Archives: Selflessness

A Successfully Selfless Sunday

Posted on by under Selfless, Selflessness, Success, Volunteering

So as many of you may have read, it was my birthday at the weekend and my friends and I thought we’d do something different this year. Every year I end up going to a bar, drinking more than is usually responsible and regretting life choices for a long time.

This year we planned something a little different. You can read about the plans here.

Due to some questionable planning on my part, we didn’t make it through the whole list, but what we did achieve made me really proud. Proud of myself for making such wonderful selfless friends. Proud of my friends and my family for being so willing to get stuck in and for giving up their Sundays to make other people smile. Proud of the public for not only taking part but paying it forward.

14202869_10157468570045381_449719334_o

Some of Carl’s best cards!

The main thing that we did for the day was writing out lots of positive, motivational and inspirational messages and hand them out to people along with a flower and a few chocolates.

I knew from the get-go that we weren’t going to change the world with this small act of kindness, but it brightened an otherwise very grey London day, for us and the people we were handing gifts out to.

14274498_10157468569990381_1204078969_o

My beautiful team of volunteers for the day

One of the most exciting things that I’ve seen is that friends who live too far to join in in person carried out their own acts of kindness wherever they were as well. I’ve been getting letters, texts, messages from people all over the place telling me about their random acts of kindness for other people. You can see some of the examples below! One thing, that I know is the case for lots of my friends, is that these random acts of kindness aren’t unusual for them.

So many of my friends spend all their time and energy trying to make other people’s lives better but it’s really rare that a truly selfless person will list out all the things that they’ve done other people.

They rarely  get to see the impact that they have on the world and that breaks my heart a little bit. So my final birthday wish is for you to be a little bit selfish so that you can make sure to spread more selflessness. I wrote a whole post about it ages ago and it’s important to me that you recognise the amazing things and impact that you have on the people around you and the world.

All the cards we wrote out
Amy getting ready to spread some love!
Katie and her infectious smile!
The selfless dream team

Good deeds don’t always get recognised, but they deserve to be. Often they do, of course and that’s great. But sometimes people won’t notice that you’ve held a door open, or paid them a really nice compliment or helped them in any way.

So to all of my friends and family, the worlds teachers, campaigners, activists, doctors, engineers, youth workers, fast food servers, bus drivers and everyone in between, celebrate your contribution to the world, give yourself a pat on the back sometimes. If you’ve helped someone smile today, you deserve it. Kindness deserves recognition, even if it’s from yourself.

Recognition today goes out to all of my friends and family who helped me to spread some cheer. Those who came on the day, those who donated items for us to use, those who carried out their own acts of kindness in response to this all deserve my gratitude and appreciation, as well as all my birthday well wishers. You helped give me the perfect birthday!

Every act of kindness will be appreciated. I appreciate kindness wherever it’s come from. I want to celebrate kind acts that you’ve carried out. Comment them on here, or tweet me. Have yourselves a wonderful, kind week.

A

 

The Recovery Part 8: Success In Selflessness

Posted on by under #cheerupchallenge, Anxiety, Appreciation, Campaign, Depression, Happiness, Life, Little Things, Mental Health, Recovery, Selfless, Selflessness, Social, Volunteer, Volunteering

Now, I know what you’re thinking. Why the f*** is this guy sauntering back onto the web to tell us things when he ditched us for so long. Well that’s totally fair. I’ve been pretty shitty when it comes to blogging the last few months (not that I was particularly consistent before).

Well the short version is that I was taking a break from blogging as I’d run out of things to talk about. I’m sure everyone was getting rid of hearing about my recovery (though I’m clearly writing about it still) which is still ongoing, though I am doing better. Panic attacks are limited now to bed time when I have too much time to think (so I’ve been playing retro Pokémon games to fall asleep faster with less panics). Social anxiety is lessening, though please don’t put me in a room with a whole load of people I don’t know and tell me to socialise. I will cower in fear, hide in a corner and most likely hyperventilate.

My reason for writing this post is that I feel as though I’d lost my way with this blog recently. It started as a blog about volunteering and has become more about my mental health than anything else. I am certainly looking at diversifying the content that I put up here to include things that I find interesting (I hope you’re all ready for Nerdpocalypse) but again, lots of it won’t have anything to do with volunteering.

However I have a few projects in the pipeline which will be happening in the next few months and I’m super keen to share the first one with you. I’ll soon be turning 25 years old. A quarter of a century. I’m really lucky that, at this milestone, we generally don’t start to have gammy legs and broken backs. I’m reasonably healthy and able. So for my 25th birthday, my friends and I are coming up with a list of 25 random acts of kindness which we’ll carry out on my actual birthday. 25 is quite a lot and there are only so many hours in the day so we’re looking at doing small, thoughtful gestures. Here’s the list so far:Diem.jpg

  1. A meal for a homeless person
  2. Help an old person/person less physically able with their shopping or cross the road
  3. Sing for the sick
  4. Sing for random people to put a smile on their face. 
  5. Write and distribute positive notes to strangers
  6. Tape some coins to a vending machine for the next person
  7. Give strangers a flower
  8. Pay for a coffee for the next person in the queue
  9. Community clean up
  10. Pop up yoga session for people
  11. Give Blood
  12. Give random people a compliment

We only have 12 things so far so we’re needing lots more! I’m hoping for a huge group of people who can help me tick off every item throughout the day and I’m reaching out to everyone on the internet to help out. It’ll be taking place in London on Sunday September 4th, likely starting from Croydon first thing in the morning. I’ll surely need help carrying things from my  house through Croydon and into London.
If you’re interested at all, just pop a comment down and/or email me. 🙂 I would love to get someone along to help to document the day via video and social media as well.

I’ll be tweeting out using the hashtag #SelflessSunday.

It’s sure to be a Spectacular September Sunday of Successful Selflessness so please join me for part of or all of the day and help me celebrate my birthday in the best flipping way possible!

I hope you’re all feeling happy, healthy and loved.

A

#FastForAFriend

Posted on by under #fastforafriend, Change, Eid, General Ranting, Iftar, Islam. Ramadan, Open, People, Religion, Respect, Selflessness

A couple days ago I was talking to a good friend of mine, Uzma, and we were talking about how her Ramadan was going. At the end of our conversation, she challenged me to fast for a day. Today was that day! Last night, I posted a simple Facebook status and a single tweet. The reaction that I got on social media was massive. Tweets of good luck, thanks, prayer and tips on how to get through your first day of fasting. The messages were from strangers, friends of friends and long time friends. I even got a tweet from SuperSaf (one of my favourite YouTube tech reviewers) which was amazing! I had complete strangers tweet me and message me on what Ramadan means to them. The sense of community that I felt from these people has been incredible.

The absolute sheer good, the positivity and the kindness that exudes from the Muslim community is immeasurable. All the time, it’s incredible. Not just during Ramadan. I’ve been invited to iftars by complete strangers on Twitter and Facebook. In Manchester, they’ve been doing huge iftars for the homeless in the centre of town. Selflessness is a huge part of Islam.

I’m not religious and I don’t think I ever will be but I do appreciate the values that Islam and all religions hold and that’s community, peace and justice for all. These last two days I’ve experienced first hand those principles.

The whole point of this exercise was for me to learn more about Ramadan, Islam and the community and hopefully share it with the internet world to disprove all the utter nonsense in the media. The “Muslims” you see terrorising people on TV are absolutely not Muslims. If you really think that those of ISIS represent the majority then please, fast, talk to Muslims in your area, open your mind to what the religion really represents.

I’m going to end it here. I can’t articulate exactly  I’m sleepy, hungry and Uzma has just sent me this:

I’m going to break fast now a little bit early as my food is going cold.

Thank you to the entire Muslim community locally and online for welcoming me into the family. I hope you have an amazing Ramadan and I’ll hopefully be around to celebrate Eid with you all too! 🙂

EDIT: I also want to make sure I send a huge thank you to Zahrah. She looked after me during the day and did a live stream interview with me about Islam and Ramadan.

Campaign Bootcamp Blues

Posted on by under Adventure, Anxiety, Appreciation, Campaign, Campaign Bootcamp, Change, http://schemas.google.com/blogger/2008/kind#post, Kindness, Life, Little Things, Mental Health, Positivity, Selflessness, Volunteer, Volunteering

So I made it home this morning around 1am after a very long and very tiring week at Campaign Bootcamp. The last two posts I’ve written were written while I was there and they mostly focused on my anxiety and how I was coping with that throughout the week. This post will be slightly different. Campaign Bootcamp is obviously a huge deal. It costs the best part of £3000 to take part per-individual and has training from some of the best campaigners around. It’s also in massively high demand with around 250 applicants and only 34-ish places. So in appreciation of this great training and community, here are the top 4 things that I’ve taken away from the week.

1. Knowledge

Okay, so this one is a bit of a cheat. Knowledge is super broad and you do learn something new every day but I’m talking about vast amounts of knowledge and information. Whether it was about values, theories of change, other world issues or existing campaigns, I learned more than I expected to. Lots of that knowledge came from within the group itself and it was all made so accessible for the less experienced campaigners in the room. So even though it might seem like a bit of a cheat, it’s important to remember that knowledge is power. The more you know…

Learning outdoors in the sun is the best way to do it. 

 2. A Kick Up The Arse

When I arrived at the training we all had to introduce ourselves for one minute. And while everyone else went up and spoke about themselves and all the campaigning that they do, I spoke more about the fact that I wasn’t currently a campaigner. I’m more of a teacher, instructor and supporter. However, now that I’ve spent the week with some of the most ridiculously experienced and passionate campaigners there are, I feel like I’ve been given renewed energy for running campaigns rather than just supporting them. Keep your eyes peeled for more. 
A nice chat by Shami Chakrabarti was certainly… Sharmi-ng! HEYOHHHHHHH!

 3. Resilience

The first two days were particularly difficult for me this week. I am not a huge fan of meeting new people, especially all at once in a place where I’m not comfortable! I had to take myself away for an hour or so, the first few evenings to recover a little from panic attacks. I was very close to leaving and not coming back. However, everyone was so supportive and so open and welcoming. I also remembered over and over about the opportunity and how hard it is to get on to bootcamp. I resolved to stay, even if I didn’t speak to anyone the rest of the week, I would stay. I even managed to put up with all the forced dancing!
A circle of dancing. Not tribal at all.
Luckily, MJ had a ukulele so I managed to feel better pretty swiftly. But I really had to work to stay there and be resilient. If I hadn’t forced myself out of my comfort zone I’d have missed out on some of the greatest people I’ve ever met! 

 4. People

I wanted to learn a lot and start putting things in to practice in my own life, work and campaigning. I met some of the most incredible people this past week. I knew calibre was going to be high when I walked into that room and I knew there would be people with more years of experience than I’d been alive for. I even got to meet and have lunch with Shami Chakrabarti.
What I really wasn’t expecting was to feel such love and warmth from people I’d only just met. Throughout the week I got talking to a bunch of people about everything they’ve been doing and why they do what they do but also about what they love to do when they’re not working or campaigning. 
Even besides that, there were some people who I was able to mess around with for no reason. People I was able to complain to/with. People who I was able to avoid dancing with. The culture was incredible and I knew at any point I could walk up to anyone and start a conversation with someone without feeling like I was being a pain in the arse. 
A little camp fire quiz session with Olivia the quiz master. 

So despite the rocky start and the crazy brain making things just that little bit harder, I’m glad I got on to Campaign Bootcamp, I’m glad I stuck it out and I’m so glad to have met everyone that I did. I’m actually feeling a bit lost without 30+ people around me at all times but I’m making the most of it by watching Blue Planet.

Oriana and Dora, the best buddies a guy could ask for!

Finally, Rachel, Tamara-Jade –

Well Well Well-being

Posted on by under Appreciation, Happiness, Health, http://schemas.google.com/blogger/2008/kind#post, Kindness, Mental Health, Selflessness

Last night was a good night. Last night is the kind of night that helps to keep my mind at ease. The crowd, the beer, the band, the lights, the bass pulsing through my chest, the camaraderie and the new friends. Music brings individuals happiness. Live music brings people together to share in their happiness and I love it.

I’ve said it before and will always remind people that I love music whether it’s listening, playing or attending music things. The reason I talk about it so much? Because it makes me happy. No matter how angry, sad, lonely I feel music always helps make me feel better. It ensures my mental well-being.

It’s not just music that does this for me though. The people and things that I love will always ensure my well-being. When I feel at my lowest, when my depression hits me the hardest there are a few things I turn to. The first is usually music and alongside that a nice dose of fantasy be it in the form of videogames, books, tv, film, comics. The two combined take me away from my thoughts for a little while and give me some breathing room. Following that, I talk to my friends. They bring me back to reality but it’s not the “reality” that I saw before. It’s one that reminds me that I’m lucky to be where I am with the people I have in my life rather than a hopeless one.

The final thing in my arsenal of well-being is to do things for others. Nothing makes me feel better than helping someone. The smile that you see on their face when you’ve done something for them that they really needed. Cheering someone up when they’re feeling down. Most of what I do is about making things better for people whether it’s the mood of an individual or society as a whole.

So what’s the message I hear you ask? Well, it’s simple really. Find the things that you love. Do those things. Find your version of my chest pulsing music, my ukulele, my fantasy worlds, my supportive friends and my gifts to others. If you don’t know what your equivalents are, don’t worry. The best way to find out is to just do things. Simple as.

Anyway, to sign off, here’s a little dose of my happy to you.

Kindness Is Key

Posted on by under Change, General Ranting, Happiness, Kindness, Respect, Selfless, Selflessness, Social

As I sit here at work with virtually nothing to do while I’m covering this event, I got to thinking. I’ve reached the ripe old age of 23 and it feels like throughout my very short life, things have gone downhill constantly. Not me. The world. Every day there are more and more conflicts over more and more ridiculous things. Sexism, racism, ageism and all the other “isms” are coming to light and are causing more and more tension between groups.

The issues are becoming common knowledge and the people are becoming more and more angry about it. Some people react to it admirably and try to solve the many problems through peaceful, sensible and responsible means. Others however are getting angry and are generating more and more hate. So what do I think is the key to solving the world’s problems? Simple. It’s a combination of things.

Empathy is essential and knowledge is power. Many people in the UK are getting angry at those bloody immigrants stealing our jobs and our benefits. Working all the jobs whilst also not working at all. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion but how much is your opinion really worth if you don’t do any research and refuse to learn, forever remaining ignorant? If you’re pissed off about immigrants, talk to them, calmly. Listen to stories of why they’re here. Learn the difference between asylum seekers and refugees. I’ve used immigration as an example, but the same rules should apply to all other kinds of things (racism, feminism, sexism etc.). Understand other people and be open to listen. Do not pity, just try to understand. Put yourself in their shoes before you make a judgement.

The most important thing in my opinion though, is kindness. Kindness is key!

We’re a species designed to live in groups. We don’t leave our offspring to fend for themselves once they’re born. We also don’t call them our offspring. We congregate in social groups whether in person or online. We’re constantly finding ways to make being a part of a group easier. However, if you’re in a group, you tend only to stick around people who show kindness and those who are unkind to members of the group are shunned and exiled. Why should this be different on a larger scale? If you show kindness on a larger scale, to everyone you meet, bonds form and they form strongly. It creates a chain reaction of kindness and it makes people act differently towards one another.

https://youtube.googleapis.com/v/rr6lsTgZKAQ&source=uds

“But Alex, nice guys finish last! What’s the point?”. Welllllllll not quite. Being kind puts people in your corner and people will look out for you. In fact, the guys at ASAP Science have made a video about how nice guys actually finish first! Check it out. Society thrives on kindness. There just simply isn’t enough of it around at the moment. We’re fueled by hate and anger because it sells papers and gets people watching the news. We’re in a virtually endless cycle of anger but it is possible to break out of it. Just be kind and watch how things change for the better!

A

The Karma of Kindness

Posted on by under General Ranting, Kindness, Positivity, Selflessness, Volunteering, Work

I talk a lot about kindness in people. There are some people who completely agree with everything I say about kindness and my opinion that everyone would be instantly happier if they treated everyone else with respect and kindness. It often starts a chain reaction of kindness and I feel like this is something that I’ve been benefiting from for a few years now.

From the day I realised that I was not a particularly good person was the day that my luck started to change. It feels like I transformed overnight. The second I tried to be a better man it was like happiness and kindness followed me around showing me how to make people smile. I know, I know, this is a bit wet and sickeningly sweet enough to give you diabetes, but I think it’s important to realise the importance of karma.

I volunteer a fair bit and I work in the third sector and the mission I’ve set myself and one that’s shared by all the charities and organisations that I’m a part of is to spread kindness. Through my hard work, I’ve got jobs, new friends and family and a much more positive outlook on life in general. This pays off. I mentioned in a previous post that I’m now surrounded by positive people and it’s incredible.

I’ve been working on this blog for a few weeks now and the people who share in my mission to spread kindness have been reading it and have got it up to nearly a thousand page views in no time! If I was a horrible person preaching kindness, I doubt many people would bother to read it or if they did, they would probably berate me for not practising what I preach! Through working hard to be kind, people have not only read, but they’ve shared this blog and helped me to come up with things to write.

My film crew 😉

I’ve been asked by the Youth Media Agency to join their network and have been searching for someone to create a logo for me. I posted up on Facebook and asked if anyone could create one for me and unfortunately none of my friends could, however, the people I’d met on my quest for kindness knew people who might be interested. In the end, a lovely gent, Chris, someone I’d never met, spoken to or even knew existed made a beautiful logo for me which you can see on this here blog (I also edited some templates and their HTML to include some of my own pages and links to my instagram and twitter accounts which I’m super proud of!). A huge thank you to Chris for doing that for me and to Naomi for introducing me! 🙂

Karma has been blessing me with multiple opportunities recently. Most notably I was chosen to be the case study for vInspired’s Big Give campaign. I was lucky enough to be chosen by the team at vInspired to feature in a video about my journey from school to my job now! It’s a fundraising campaign to raise funds for more programmes like Team v which has helped me in crazy good ways. I had some fantastic people helping out, friends from school, from volunteering and more. A big shout out to my favourite kiwi, Zahrah and Q for helping out with the shoot as well as the other vInspired staff for chipping in! Keep an eye out for the video coming soon. I even got to film some of my songs with Tristan, who was willing to get his gear back out, mics, lights, camera to film my self-written songs. Once I hit 1000 page views I might even post them up! 🙂

All in all, this post was a little bit about karma, a little bit about people I know and a little bit about the great things I’ve been able to achieve by being kind. So, be kind, genuinely kind and you’ll notice the kindness being returned to you in spades.

Also, you might even get to see views as spectacular as this.

A

The Volunteer Effect

Posted on by under Change, Happiness, Positivity, Reflection, Selflessness, Success, Time, Volunteer, Volunteering

In the jobs and volunteer roles that I have had I’ve noticed a definite shift in various aspects of my life and the lives of those around me. We don’t always realise how much things have changed until you just stop for a second and reflect on the years gone by! I’ve spent my weekend off thinking about all the things that have made me who I am today. A lot of these changes have come in the last few years and I’m sure they’re going to have a huge impact on my life from here on out.

A lot of these changes came about after I started to volunteer and since I started, I’ve felt a definite shift to the positive for various reasons. I wrote a blog on my LinkedIn profile about the benefits of volunteering recently, you can have a read here.
The benefits that I’ve written about in that blog are due to the Volunteer Effect. Volunteering effects people in different ways. For some, like myself, it has a profound effect on everything that I do.

The volunteer effect has made me consider the people around me before I do things. Even the little things, like whether or not I wash up, or what kind of food I eat in the office (I try not to eat overly smelly food!).

I was a very different person years ago, I was rude, obnoxious and generally not a very nice person. This is going back to secondary school. Some people say it was just a phase of teenage years and that’s fine. A lot of teenagers act out, but I don’t feel like I should have used it as an excuse. Between 2008 and 2012, after leaving my secondary school, I endeavoured to change who I was for the better. Stop stropping, be nicer and less of a drag on the people around me.

It’s only when I started to volunteer after dropping out of uni did I feel like I was succeeding. Not only were my decisions affected, my mood improved and I was excited to do stuff. All kinds of stuff, whether it was voluntary, work, social, everything seemed better. Despite volunteering for causes which were shocking, unjust and heart breaking the main thing that helped me see things differently were the people I met along the way. All these people working their arses off to help and I could see the smiles on their faces while they were doing it.

The Volunteer Effect for me is hard to describe with words, it’s benefiting me in so many ways (which I believe is best described in my LinkedIn post above) while I’m benefiting others and hopefully they go on to pay it forward. For me, the Volunteer Effect is simple, it’s a chain reaction of good. To finish, have a little look see at the image below. This, to me really embodies what volunteers do for the world. They want to make people happy. It’s just a bonus that it usually makes them happy too.

A

Selflessness is…

Posted on by under Family, Friends, Fun, General Ranting, Health, http://schemas.google.com/blogger/2008/kind#post, Life, Selfishness, Selflessness, Social, Work

Balance is key to a good, healthy, fun and happy life. The work-life balance is always one which is tough to get a hang of. The friends-family balance is just as tricky (at least I think it is anyway). Everything in life is a delicate balance, the see-saw effect means that too much of any one thing makes life a bit crap!

A lot of people I know have a pretty unhealthy work-life balance. I used to as well. One of my jobs from a few years ago would keep me busy from around 8/9 in the morning well into the 8/9 in the evening realm. I loved my job, but I ended up neglecting my social life and barely looked after myself. Needless to say I got pretty ill and ended up having to miss a few days of work. In my attempt to be selfless I ended up not being able to help anyone.

It’s taken me a few years to force myself to be able to fully adequately balance my work-life. I try as best I can not to work out of hours and to make sure I take back all my extra hours. It’s not always easy when there’s a lot to juggle and when you’re finding it hard to focus. My depression often makes it hard to focus, especially if I’m going through a particularly rough patch. What’s important to do here is to ask for help and to look after yourself.

Remember this: you can’t help anyone if you’re dead.

If you want to continue to be selfless and to help others, to look out for those that you care about, to stand up for those who aren’t able to, you’ve gotta look after yourself first. Go see a show, visit some nice sites, listen to some music, just do something to look out for yourself.

This might sound like a selfish notion, but I don’t see any problem in being selfish every once in a while if it allows me to go out there at my best and help people.

Selflessness, like every other part of life is a balancing act. Too selfish and you’re a bell end. Too selfless and you won’t be in any fit state to help anyone.

I hope for you workaholics, super socialites, recluses and never-indoors-ers this blog will be able to give you a nudge to make sure your life is balanced. I promise you it’ll be much more fun.