Oh, hello again! lovely to see you here. Would you like to take a seat? Can I get you a cup of tea?? Yes, I know, more sofas, but there’s bean bags too!
I’m glad to see you back. I’m here to tell you all about what we have done so far to spread kindness and smiles. The first of the large scale events that I arranged was Outrageous October back in 2017.
Why October I hear you ask? You are a very bright and perceptive human aren’t you? well, I chose October firstly because this is my Birthday month. It was in late September 2017 that I was starting to get my life back on track. I was on my way back to work which was daunting in itself after not being there for over a month. With the anxiety head on too, you are always worried about what people are think of you. I am glad that a friend gave me a lift in on my first day back as I’m not sure I would have made it in! but I made it through the day.
So I thought I would feel the fear and do it anyway. Right at this time I decided that I wanted to do something to give back the kindness into the community that I had received. At times like this you see what really matters, and that’s why I started some proper work on The Pif Smile.
So I sat down with some of my creative friends to create a plan of action to create a way to share some fun and make some people smile along the way. We sat down in a local pub to decide what kind of things I was going to do over the month of October. I decided that the best idea was to challenge myself to do kind acts for 31 days throughout October. These were to include Book drops, letters to random people, free coffee fridays and “Support Sunday” that gave a shout out to local charity events and some of the best charities that I have come across whilst building this Pif empire of kindness. (At this point it was just a metaphorical teepee and my bus seat on the way to the day job. But now I am currently working on it to make it bigger. Hopefully we will have an actual teepee soon!!)
One of the first things that I started to create were affirmation cards. Little notes with uplifting things written on them. My plan was to leave them around in various places for people to find. A little note in the day to act like the sun poking through the clouds. I was given this idea by a wonderful human called Jodie Ann Bickley who runs “one million lovely letters” She struggles with her Mental Health like I do, and decided to create something beautiful to help other people. She is a badass mental health advocate that is her authentic, beautiful self. If she is having a bad day, she will talk about it in the hope that it will make someone else feel less alone.
Her website, one million lovely letters is somewhere that you can nominate People for a letter. It is for someone who needs support with something (whether that they are going through, or you miss them) and jodi with her small band of lovely letter writers write and send the letters to the people who need them. in this increasingly digital world, isn’t it lovely when we receive something in the post that isn’t a bill?
As well as affirmation cards I decided to write some letters to people that I felt could do with a lift. I wrote them to my friends and I also sent one to Jodi. As she is a wonderful inspiring person, and I wanted to tell her that. and that she should never stop being herself as she is beautiful.
Anyway, I digress! That may be a common feature here! but then that’s me. Some other things that I did as part of the preparation was to spread myself over social media to get the idea out there and to set up two bigger events within the month. I decided to run a Flash mob afternoon tea for a care home and reverse trick or treating.
The reverse trick or treating was where some volunteers and I went to a care home with some home made cakes and ourselves to spend time with them. as not everyone can get out for tea and cake (which is one of my favorite things to do!) therefore we decided to take it to them. Three ladies and a baby (sounds like a good remake of a film, don’t you think??) turned up on the 21st October and wandered round Arden House Care Home in leamington spa; armed with cake and smiles to spend some time with the residents. We were given a trolly and took our cakes all around the home and spent some time with the residents. Cake is all well and good, but your time and attention is the most important thing you can give to a person. As we were going around we discovered that it was one of the residents birthday that day, therefore we insisted that we would not leave them without giving then a piece of cake. (as you have to have cake on your birthday, right??)
Every Friday throughout October, I did Free Coffee Friday. Which was inspired by a book called “Kindness :The Little thing that matters most” by Jamie Thurston. Jamie is another beautiful human that set up a charity called 52 Lives. which is a charity that does lots of acts of kindness for people that need it in their hour of need. (Can you tell I did a lot of research and reading whilst I was off??)
In her book she recounts of a incident that happened in a drive through coffee shop in America. It was where one person paid for a coffee for the car behind them. This small single act of kindness spiralled into a half an hour long pay it forward coffee marathon. a beautiful example of what a single act of kindness can do.
For final day of October I did reverse Trick or Treating. I decided to give away treats instead of getting them for myself. I had some sweets donated from a friend of mine as their involvement in Outrageous October. So I created some pails of sweets to deliver to some of my favourite local businesses. So I got up excessively early to deposit my surprises for the local places that I would be open early on that day.
Sooo…. that was the first one. I will be updating my Instagram account over the next few days with this year’s exploits that will be a foot.
The Pif smile 