Kindness Challenge Day 14: Do Something Unexpectedly Nice For Someone

This is Day 14 of the 14-Day Kindness Challenge held in Nov 2012, where we do different acts of kindness for 14 days. The challenge is now over but you can do the tasks in your own time. Visit the overview page for all the challenge tasks.

Hello everyone! :D Welcome to Day 14 of the 14-Day Kindness Challenge! ;)

We are on Lianhe Zaobao /  联合早报!! (Nov 13 issue)

The Kindness Challenge is in the media again!! This time, we are on the Nov 13 issue of Lianhe Zaobao/ 联合早报! It’s the largest Singapore-based Chinese-language newspaper with a daily circulation of about 176,000!!

Check out page 13 of the papers. :) It’s about the great success of the Kindness Challenge and how we have amassed over 800 participants around the world, hence proving that locals (and people around the world) are indeed kind. Thanks QH for the great coverage! :)

World Kindness Day in Singapore! (and Meeting the Singapore Kindness Movement Team)

In case you didn’t know, yesterday, November 13, was actually World Kindness Day!

I was invited by the Singapore Kindness Movement team to join them for their World Kindness Day celebration. It turns out that they had actually gotten wind of the 14-Day Kindness Challenge at PE pretty early on, which was quite a pleasant surprise! Anyway so I went to the event at Vivocity to meet up with them and enjoy the performances at the same time.

Enjoying a performance by Baracude Batucade from Ngee Ann Polytechnic. A solid performance!

To be really honest, with the recent media coverage and the larger readership of PE today, nowadays I can’t help but wonder if I get recognized while outside. I was so positively surprised when Wanxuan, a long-time PE reader and participant of the Kindness Challenge, suddenly appeared beside me when I sat myself down in the Amphitheater!!

I seriously can’t even believe how she managed to spot me in the sea of people—I told her she had such sharp eyes (like an eagle!!)! We then chatted while enjoying the lovely sing, dance, and humor performances. (Thanks so much for your lovely company, Wanxuan!! :D )

I was further flabbergasted when I got recognized by two other readers—one of whom runs a personal development website himself! I mean like, HOW?!?! I ended up having a really fantastic conversation with Shun-Jian (which lasted for over three hours), after which we agreed to meet again, soon.

By the way, I’m starting to realize a lot more people read my blog than I realize. It’s not going to change what I write and the things I share on PE, just that I have to start readying myself for the blurring of my public and private lives very soon.

With beautiful Yan (a PE reader ♥), Myself, and authentic and earnest Shun-Jian (a PE reader who runs a personal development website himself!). Thank you for your wonderful support, love, and kindness towards what I do!

After that, I met with the Associate General Secretary (Marketing & Corporate Strategy) of the Singapore Kindness Movement team, where we agreed to meet up early next week to discuss about the 14-Day Kindness Challenge at PE and collaboration opportunities moving forward. Look forward to further discussions in the future!

Me and the Associate General Secretary of Singapore Kindness Movement, Cesar (Balota). Such an honor and joy to meet the people of SKM directly! Look forward to possible collaboration opportunities ahead between SKM and PE.

My Day 13 Review: Give Someone a Treat

Day 13’s task was to: Give Someone a Treat.

So that I did! :D Met a very lovely friend for brunch after my Kiss92 segment in the morning (for those of you who missed my segment, you can listen to it at the Podcasts section—the episode yesterday was on how to handle criticisms), and gave him a treat!

Checking out at the cashier

We dined at Salad Stop!, one of my favorite food outlets! ;) I did an interview with the Salad Stop! owners last year as part of the Successful Businesses Interview Series. You can check it out here: Interview: SaladStop! – Healthy Meals for Modern People.

Preparing to eat. Going healthy with salads!

Sitting down, tucking in, and enjoying a beautiful morning to lunch conversation with my awesome friend. :) We are arranging to meet up again later this month—given that he is very much a corporate person, I’m planning to introduce him to one of the many entrepreneur events I go to.

This wasn’t the only treat I gave actually—I met someone for dinner today (unexpected, unarranged appointment) where I gave him a treat as well. That’s a double tick for me for Day 13’s task.

Of course, I won’t limit treats to just these two accounts—I’ve already adopted the habit of occasionally giving people treats ever since I returned from my world trip this year. Day 13’s task has merely expanded my threshold level of giving others treats. It has undoubtedly helped me to adopt an even more generous mindset surrounding money.

Now, let’s move on to our final act of kindness, shall we? ;)

Day 14: Doing Something Unexpectedly Nice

Have you ever received a surprise before? How did you feel when you received the surprise? Happy? Touched? 

Your Task: Do Something Unexpectedly Nice For Someone

Your task today is to do something unexpectedly nice for someone. :)

It doesn’t have to be someone you are close to. It doesn’t have to be someone whom you see every day (or don’t see every day). It doesn’t have to be someone with any relation to you at all even.

Simply pick someone, anyone, whom you want to do something nice for—with no reason whatsoever. Think about something nice which you can do for him/her—something that has meaning to him/her.

For example, I have already completed my task for Day 14 as I was meeting my intended recipients for the task on Monday—they are the hosts of Kiss92 Morning Show, Maddy, Jason, and Arnold, whom I do my weekly Monday Personal Excellence segment with! I’ll share more of the details (of how I went about doing the task) tomorrow, but essentially I made sure that my act of kindness for each of them was something meaningful and not just buy some random gift just for the sake of “doing it for the sake of doing it”.

Update: You can read about how I went about planning the gifts in Kindness Challenge Roundup post!

How about you? What is something unexpectedly nice you can do for someone? And how can you make it especially meaningful for him/her? (i.e. How can you personalize this action such that it has even greater significance for the recipient?) 

(Images: Hands holding red seeds, Girl receiving a surprise)