Monday, February 11, 2013

Guest Blogger: 40 Random Acts of Kindness before I turned 40: To Make a Difference and Live a Life of Significance

Our guest blogger this week is Christy Brasher.  We all met Christy through our Women Unlimited Program as she was one of our fellow classmates.     Christy is going to share with you her amazing journey of paying it forward through 40 random acts of kindness.  We have decided to do things a little differently for this next blog. Since February 11-17th has been officially labeled “Random Acts of Kindness ” week, we will be sharing with you, each day, a part of Christy’s amazing experience.  We hope Christy’s story will inspire you as it has us.



“Never doubt that a small group of committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” -Margaret Mead
I am now 40 years old. Wow (insert pause).  Saying that aloud is an accomplishment.  I knew that this was coming.  I knew that this milestone was approaching; last year, in 2012, I turned forty.  The BIG 40!  This is a significant birthday.  This one was right in line with all the other right of passage or significant birthdays (16, 18, 21, 30 and then 40).  This is one of the birthdays that sometimes cause people to struggle because frankly, FORTY sounds very foreboding!  Growing up, forty was seen as the summit of the proverbial “hill” and all birthdays following were considered the downward slope of that same “hill”. 
I began to do some self examination and reflection and I realized that there were some goals in my life that I had not yet accomplished.  In looking at where I was and my place in the world, I had the level of success that I had wanted to attain by this age and a certain number of things completed.  I am a single mother of two wonderful kids who know how much they are loved.  I have a close relationship with my family and we spend a great deal of time together.  I have a wonderful, loving man in my life and we have the best adventures.  I am blessed and happy.  Professionally, I have achieved the level of success that I wanted.  I have a challenging and rewarding position with my company and I have opportunities.  I obtained my degree later in life and graduated from Middle Tennessee State University as an adult in 2010. I was not dreading this birthday however; I did feel a strong need to meet the significance of this birthday head on.  This was the challenge: make the events surrounding this birthday as significant as the “40” milestone was in my mind.  I started to look for ideas and the suggestions I received varied.  I posed this challenge to my family and friends.  Some suggested that I do forty things I had never done before, such as sky diving or zip lining.  Some suggested reading forty books or visiting forty places.  I thought about these suggestions, but they didn’t align with my values or priorities (as fun or interesting as they sounded).   I continued thinking about what I wanted to do to match the significance. 
As part of a leadership development program (Women Unlimited, Inc.), one of our workshop sessions, “Power of Priorities”, was to look at our priorities and ensure that they were in alignment with our daily activities.  The purpose was to confirm that we were investing our time and efforts in activities important to us and that will reap the most value for ourselves and our goals.  The key was also to ensure that we have a “Full Life” (This is what was previously understood as “Work Life Balance”).   This was an interesting exercise that I had performed before but this time was different.  I really stopped and thought about it because of my approaching fortieth birthday milestone.   I made a pie graph and segregated my 24-hour day into work, travel, sleep, family time, etc.  The second part of this exercise required us to look at a list of over a hundred values and determine our top five.   The first value that I identified was having a strong commitment to my close and loving family.  That is an easy one for most people.   I felt very comfortable with the time and quality of time that I spend with my family.  The rest of the values are as varied as we are as individuals.  I looked at this list and the next value that I identified for me was to make a difference and live a life of significance.  This one is hard to define and even harder to realize.   The Gandhi quote “Be the change you want to see in the world”, Aesop’s quote “No act of kindness, however small, is wasted”, and Theodore Roosevelt’s quote to “Do what you can, with what you have, where you are” began to resonate with me.  I decided on random acts of kindness, forty in all.  I had found my goal.  This was the challenge that would best define my significance.  I was meeting forty head-on with forty individual random acts of kindness!  I had no idea the actual impact and the real significance of my own challenge. 
“Random acts of kindness” is an actual movement and is defined as a selfless act performed with the intention of helping or cheering up individuals or a group.  The phrase comes from a quote by Anne Herbert that says, “Practice random acts of kindness and senseless acts of beauty”.  They can be spontaneous or planned and can present themselves in hundreds of ways.   I had read the book Pay It Forward by Catherine Ryan Hyde and loved the idea of doing things for other people with no expectation of reciprocation.  I have always practiced this concept in some form all my life.  What made this different?  I was intentionally aligning my goals and time with my personal value system.  I was acutely aware of what I wanted to accomplish and focused on the challenges ahead.
This week is officially Random Acts of Kindness week.  Over the next seven days I would like to challenge you to do a random act of kindness.    I would like to ask you to be intentional with a goal of at least one Random Act of Kindness this week.    I will share you with my journey and tell you some of the individual experiences that I had and the result and impact. 

Check in tomorrow for Day #2 of 40 Random Acts of Kindness.
~Christy Brasher, guest blogger

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