I’ve talked about random acts of kindness and paying it forward here before. Seems that it’s about to go mainstream with the efforts of Chris Rosati. Let’s jump on this bandwagon!
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There are a lot of variations on this idea, none of them are originally mine. Until now. I’m calling it #commotiongrant
UPDATED: Seems we needed to clarify what my twisted mind had hatched. Here’s how it works. You are given $20 bucks and are asked to do something good with it. You feed the homeless, buy a care package for a soldier, use the money to buy gasoline and mow every senior citizen’s lawn in the neighborhood, etc. You get the idea. You then give two other people $20 each and tell them to use it to do something good. So, you hand them $20 and they spend it on a good work. They then take $40 of their own, give $20 to two different people and ask them to do a good work and then bless two other people. It cascades. #commotiongrant can be considered as a reverse pyramid scheme. It starts out narrow and goes very wide very quickly.
The person that told me about this gave me $20 and told me to do something nice with it. I did. A good friend had suffered a loss in their family and they were hurting. Out came the $20 with my suggestion that they take their husband out to breakfast and remember all the great times with the dog that had passed away that evening.
Would I have done that if I hadn’t been handed the $20 earlier that day? Unlikely. But it felt so good to do it. I’m planning on doing it again. You see, that’s what the butterfly effect can do: I get $20 and then I give $20 to two people as well as doing a good deed. Those two people do it as well. That $20 doubles. The next time out, it quadruples. And so on. (Unlike Congress and their outlook, it adds up to real money around the third level.)
Better than even that, they tell people about it and those folks (some anyway) do the same. Next thing you know all sorts of people are handing out $20 bucks to two people and asking them to pay it forward.
The change this can effect will be small to you. But to the recipients it will be huge. Not just the monetary impact, but the fact that you will be growing that spirit of giving within others. Opening their minds to the simple act of helping others is pretty huge.
Today, before 2 pm, give two people $20. I’ve got one more person to give mine to and I’m going to have it taken care of before 8 pm Wednesday.
I’d love it if you’d report back to me via the comments on what “good deed” you did for another. Keep paying it forward and if you tweet or use Facebook, use the hashtag #commotiongrant and tell everyone about it via social media.
Let’s rock the world with kindness.
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