Kindness is key: how to be friendly during the festive season!

What can you do?

The little things often make more difference than you might think. It’s usually enough just to smile at someone or pay them a compliment and you will really make their day. If you look back over your own experiences, you will soon see that it didn't always take much to make your day better: maybe a particularly attentive person on the bus gave up their seat for a child, you got a friendly “thank you” when you held the door open for someone or you received a particularly nice message.

Especially during the cold winter months, bringing a bit of warmth to people’s hearts is a real blessing. We would like to show you 3 steps to filling the festive season with more contentment and positive thoughts.

Step 1: Be kind to yourself.

If you are kind to yourself, you will automatically be kinder to other people as well. We do know that it’s not always easy to find some nice words to say to yourself. People often tend to be very critical towards themselves. However, it is also possible to practise self-love! The first step to achieving this is to forgive yourself a bit more and to understand that nobody is perfect.

During the Advent period, try to repeat or make a note of the following phrases on a daily basis:

• “I will enjoy and appreciate this time of year and all the joy it brings.”
• “I am surrounded by people who love me.”
• “I am brave, strong and self-assured.”

Step 2: Be kind to the environment.

It’s probably not the first thing you would think of, but our environment also needs our attention and love during the Christmas period. There is always a lot of waste during this time: decorations, wrapping paper and food. This makes it easy to make more sustainable choices during the festive season! Here are three ideas:

• Wrap gifts in brown paper or old newspapers and get creative with twigs and pine cones!
• Rent a Christmas tree instead of buying one.
• Don’t buy material presents and give each other the gift of time spent together instead.
• Don’t buy gifts online, support a local business in your home town instead.
• Use sustainable decorations, such as dried oranges, cinnamon sticks and wooden figures.

Step 3: Be kind to others!

To round things off, we have put together a little list of friendly gestures, which you could use over the festive season.

• Pay an unexpected compliment just because it does a lot of good.
• Leave someone a lovely note, for example on a colleague’s desk or in a friend’s handbag.
• Sort out some clothes and donate them to others.
• Make a delicious recipe for your loved ones. We have put together a few recipes for you.
• Really listen to someone and give this person your full attention.
• Get in touch with an old friend, who you've been thinking about for a long time even though you have drifted apart.
• Do some voluntary work. In many places, you can just give a couple of hours of your time. The good feeling it gives you will stay with you for a long time afterwards.
• Make an Advent calendar for someone.
• Support a charity that helps people in need.

Doing good deeds makes people happier.

So you can see that there is always room for doing some good, even if it’s just simple and small gestures. As well as being kind, if you would also like to make the most of the Advent period to be more mindful, we have a few more tips for you to help you achieve more mindfulness in your life. At YOGI TEA® we wish you a magical Advent period and hope that we can accompany you throughout the winter with our speciality teas.