Tag Archives: lifting spirits

52+: Connections

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Hello! I’ve missed you! I hope this finds you safe, healthy, and doing mostly okay.

Since wrapping up 52Nudges 2.0 last year, I’ve been thinking a lot about what to do next. I’ll let you know when I’ve figured out how 3.0 will look (stay tuned). Meanwhile, I am feeling called to do a specific, short-term Nudging project.

Backstory: When we first started sheltering-in-place, I was really good at reaching out and keeping in touch with family and friends. Somewhere around January 3, however, I hit a wall. Hard. Every time I got ready to make a call or send a catching-up email, I felt like I had nothing to say.

“We’re fine. We’ve been fine. Nothing is different.”

So I stopped. And I started to feel super-depressed and even more isolated than before. And it’s going to be a while before we’re all vaccinated and free to go about our new “normal”. How can I mix things up and create new ways to keep my spirits up? Well, I’m going to nudge myself.

Introducing 52+: Connections

If you’ve followed 52Nudges in the past, you’ll know that I love making connections, and I always include nudges that inspire me to be creative in how I keep in touch with people. For this round, I’m going to be a little more focused and intentional in just this one area of nudging.

I hope you’ll join me.

Here’s how to prepare:

  1. Gather supplies: postcards, stamps, lovely stationery, stickers, your favorite writing pen, etc.
  2. Make a list of people. My list includes names of specific friends and family members, as well as types of people (a teacher, a teenager, a friend from high school, an elderly person who lives in a retirement home, an essential worker, a friend who lost someone to COVID, a neighbor).

In this next week, I’ll type up my list and tear those names/people into strips, wad them up, and put them in my special bowl. Each Sunday, I’ll draw one and come up with a way to connect.

As always with the nudges, feel free to make your own list, follow whatever nudge I draw, or just read along for the entertainment value. Don’t worry about what you might write or say; I’ll include prompts with each to inspire us all.

I look forward to seeing you back here next Sunday, March 7.

Affectionately,

Kathleen

Nudging: Do a Fairy Deed

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Background: Some people call it “random acts of kindness”. For whatever reason, years ago I started calling them “Fairy Deeds”. Maybe because it feels like there’s magic in it, as I flit in and out to deliver the gift.

The idea is to give something small that lifts someone else’s spirits. In the past I’ve left a bag with lemons and sugar with a note encouraging the recipient to turn a rough period into lemonade. I’ve mailed scratcher lottery tickets. I’ve cut flowers from my garden, tied them in a bow, and placed them on neighbors’ doorsteps (while engaging in a silly grownup version of “Ding-Dong Ditch” so they found the gift before it had wilted). The anonymous part of doing a Fairy Deed is important to me, in that it doesn’t set up the expectation of reciprocation.

This doesn’t need to be an extravagant act, and in keeping with the 52Nudges rules, it should be “cheap”. But if you have the means and the desire, go for leaving a ginormous tip for the gal who brews your morning coffee with a smile (and looks like she can’t take one more day of this pandemic). Have fun with it…because the secondary gift of this nudge is that it lifts the giver’s spirits too.