Kindness Challenge Day 3: Write 3 Thank-You Notes to 3 People

This is Day 3 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.

Good morning everyone!!!! :D Welcome to Day 3 of the 14-Day Kindness Challenge!!! :D

Over 740 Participants! Sign Ups Extended for Another 2 Days!!

We now have over 740 participants for the Kindness Challenge!!! :clap:

To accommodate for those of you who are late to the game, I’m extending sign ups for another 2 days!!

For those of you who have not signed up yet, please sign up NOW to be part of this worldwide movement. Basically, if your name is not on the official participants list, you are NOT signed up yet.

Here’s how to join NOW in just three seconds:

Challenge details: https://personalexcellence.co/blog/kindness-challenge/
How to sign up: https://personalexcellence.co/blog/kindness-challenge/#signup
Sign up here: https://personalexcellence.co/blog/kindness-challenge/#comment

Upcoming Feature in Lianhe Zaobao!!

I received a call by another media correspondent for upcoming feature of the Kindness Challenge! This time, it’s a journalist from Lianhe Zaobao, a highly popular Chinese morning daily in Singapore, and the publication is interested to feature the challenge AFTER it ends, to assess the outcome and impact to the members!!

What does that mean?? That means, let’s give the Kindness Challenge our VERY BEST SHOT over the next 12 days as we prove to the media and the world out there that this kindness movement has a place in our society and it has the power to move and mobilize people!!! Let’s DO THE DAILY TASKS to our best ability, POST OUR RESULTS (via the comments section), INTERACT WITH THE OTHER PARTICIPANTS (again via the comments section and shoutbox), and RALLY OUR FRIENDS AND FAMILY to join the challenge if they haven’t already! Once again, sign ups are open for another 48 hours! Let’s get moving people!!

Listen to My UFM 100.3 Radio Interview! (In Mandarin)

For those of you who didn’t manage to catch my UFM 100.3 interview live (some of you told me that the “listen live” widget on the UFM site didn’t work for you; sorry about that!), you can listen to it now! I got the recording from the station on Thursday, have done the editing yesterday, and uploaded the interview as a podcast earlier today. You can listen to it in my Media section.

The interview is partly about the 14-Day Kindness Challenge, and partly about my life, what I do at PE, and why I do what I do. It was a great interview and I really had a lot of fun with the deejays!! The UFM100.3 listeners were incredible and many of them have found their way over to PE, sharing very positive words of encouragement and support. Thank you SO MUCH for all your support guys!! ♥

Oh, haha, I don’t know why but lately the interviews would, in one way or another, bring up my relationship status and whether I’m seeing anyone at the moment. I thought it’s quite cute and funny! At the same time, I love that it’s (relationships) something that often resonates with the interviewers and audience!!

Day 2 Review: Give Up Your Seat To Someone

Day 2’s task was to give up your seat to someone (who needs it more than you do).

It proved to be really challenging for me as I was NOT able to give my seat up to someone despite overt attempts to make it happen. (!!)

The first challenge was that I was not able to get any seats when I got on the public transport, because it would be the peak hour and there would already be many people on the bus. The second challenge was that even AFTER I had painstakingly gotten a seat, there was no one (IMO) eligible for me to give up my seat to. The people around me were mainly young people and young adults; not really someone who would need the seat anymore than I would.

I then tried to innovate by thinking out of the box and thinking about the task in terms of giving up seats in general. However, because I’m a lady, people kept giving up seats to me at this social event I was at yesterday evening and no one was willing to take me up on my offer to give up my seat (which is understandable too; I think it would make the other party look bad if I were to insist him/her to seat down when he/she didn’t want to).

Regardless, I’m going to continue to work on this task for the next few days. I’ll update this space when I get to complete the task.

Update Nov 5 (Day 5): Yes, finally accomplished this task today! I got a seat on the train on my way to Kiss92 for my third episode on how to tackle procrastination, and was eyeing for someone whom I could give up a seat to throughout the 40-minute train ride.

Me preparing for my Kiss92 segment on tackling procrastination

First lady I offered to (looked like she was in her late 40s) refused—I actually think she was embarrassed that I thought she would need the seat, and she was pretty aloof in her rejection. I later offered it to another lady (looked like she was in her early 50s) who promptly thanked me and took it up, not before giving a pleasant look of surprise. :D

The first lady later turned around to look at me and smile at me, as if to indicate that she didn’t mean to be rude when she rejected my offer initially. When I left the train, I turned to say bye to her, upon which she responded in kindness too. What an awesome day! :D

Participants’ Responses for Day 2: Give Up Your Seat To Someone

…this morning, I was driving into work and I know one of my exit ramps will be crowded. So as I was getting into the exit lane, I saw the big semi truck trying to get in that lane as well. No one was letting him in as they don’t want to be stuck behind a slow moving truck on the exit ramp to another freeway.
So I decided to get into the lane behind him but then slowed down and made enough room to let him in. I’m sure the people behind me were mad, but I didn’t care. So I gave up my seat that way this morning. – Participant Ken. Awesome work, Ken!!!

This morning I needed to travelled from Clementi to Bras Basah, I observed some interesting things. While from Clementi to Raffles place interchange, it was very crowded but I could see people giving up the seats to the other needy people while I was standing inside the train. :angel: From Raffles Place to Dhobby Ghaut, there were so many empty seats that we could easily grab!
I offered a seat that I grabbed to someone who walked near to them. It turned out that the people smiled back at me and sat the other empty seat. I felt so great about it. – Participant Hendro

Usually I do not travel by public transport however today suddenly I felt like traveling with a friend of mine. I was super tired and luckily I got a place to seat. After some time i thought of the lady who was standing for the quite some time and i gave my seat to her.
Don;t know but i was suddenly feeling happy and not much tired. – Participant Hetal_S. Beautiful, simply beautiful guys!!

I am at home talking with my parents and don’t have any intention to go out today. I gave up my seat for my mum to use the computer instead.. ^_^ She was checking her email for a sec and it would be inconvenient for her to key in her user details while standing up. After that I resumed my computer use. – Participant wanxuan. What a beautiful interpetation of the task. Great work wanxuan!! :D

I was at home today but I was traveling recently to another city by train when I offered my lower-berth to a senior-citizen as in her ticket, she had an upper-berth marked to her. It was evident that it will be impossible for her to climb upto two-berths so I exchanged my berth with her!
…the sense of happiness and joy on the senior-citizen’s face was so great that I think it combated all the coldness that I generally feel on the upper-berth! – Participant Divya

Awesome work, guys!! :clap: Let’s continue to practice Day 2’s task in the following days ahead of the challenge!

Day 3: Thank-You Notes

Have you ever written thank you notes to others?

In every run of Be a Better Me in 30 Days, we would work on showing appreciation on Day 15, by way of writing thank you notes. It’s an incredible task every time the participants do it, for the thank you notes would elicit the most gentle and heartfelt of responses from others out of all the other tasks in the program.

Thank-you notes are a powerful way to express your love and gratitude for others. I think that there is no better thing than to openly express gratitude to someone whom you feel grateful for.

This is why I often express gratitude openly on PE. I would often thank all of you angels for being in my life; at the same time I receive daily messages of love, support, and encouragement from all of you. The pursuit of my work is independent of whether I receive these words of appreciation, yet they undoubtedly fuel me in my journey and growth, because it touches me to know that you guys care.

Today, your task is to express your appreciation to others.

Your Task: Write Thank-You Notes to People You Appreciate

Identify 3 people you appreciate. It could be for something that each of them have done for you or said to you at one point or another. It could be for something major or something small.
Write thank-you notes to each of the 3 people.
- These thank-you notes can be written in any format—email, thank-you cards, handwritten letters, SMS, social media sites, and so on.
- Try to go for the medium that can best convey your intent and sincerity with the message though; I tend to think a sudden SMS with a few words saying, “Hey, thank you for what you did for me yesterday” is a lot less sincere and impactful as a nice, long, handwritten letter on paper, put nicely in an envelope and passed in person.

Share Your Results!

Who did you pick for this task? How did you express your appreciation? What were their responses when they received the thank-you notes (where applicable)?

Check out the responses of other participants in the comments section!

After you are done with Day 3, proceed to Day 4: Sign Up For Volunteer Work (On Top of Whatever You Have Been Doing).

(Images: Hands holding red seeds, Thank you note)