A 12 Step Program for Kindness, To Snap Out Of Your Jaded Mindset
A year-long social experiment to explore kindness in the 21st century
Jessica Walsh and Timothy Goodman wanted more fulfillment from life; they felt like their daily routines and concerns were self-centered. To tackle this creeping feeling of indifference, they created 12 Kinds of Kindness, a 12-step experiment to combat apathy. As a year-long resolution, the pair took a vow to hold each other accountable and document the road to recovery, taking one bold step per month. As media-focused designers with social tendencies, they also designed the experiment so that others can participate, too.
Basing their plan on 12-step programs designed to change behaviors, such as The Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) 12 Steps to Recovery, they created a modern day and non-religious way that anyone can examine his-her life and attempt to become kinder. For a whole year, Walsh and Goodman opened their hearts, eyes and minds to become kinder, more empathetic people. Will all this goodwill rub off on them? Or, will they fall back into their regular habits?
As for testing the effectiveness of the plan, these two designers possess the talent and passion that it takes to make something amazing. The duo brought us 40 Days of Dating, a website that documented the pair’s experimentation with dating each other for an allotted 40 days in a mutual relationship. Deemed the “new form of web reality,” their last project gained valuable media attention, receiving more than 5 million unique visits, 14 million total visits and getting mentions from the likes of CNN, The Today Show and Time. Goodman spoke about the initiative at the PSFK Conference in 2014.
Both makers of the project put plenty of heart, soul and time into telling their story and creating a delightful web experience. The content will roll out on a daily basis for four to five weeks. Like 40 Days of Dating, the team documented the journey with writing, illustration, photography and a ton of video content. The creators share the entire story on the website:
“In the same spirit [as 40 Days of Dating], 12 Kinds of Kindness is a social experiment that uses mixed media to share a personal journey. It’s even rawer and richer in content than 40 Days was,” says Goodman.
Can people gain any empathy or perspective by talking to different kinds of strangers? The makers went out for two days and asked New Yorkers one simple question: “How can we help you?” They also hung signs up asking New Yorkers the same questions and recorded their answers.
Each creator faced someone who hurt them in the past to see if they could let go of the pain or misunderstanding. Goodman’s father abandoned him at birth, and he has never met him before. So they tracked down his father and Goodman met him for the first time.
Bystander apathy is a phenomenon. The makers hung missing people signs all over NYC and sat next to the sign for an entire day. Did anyone notice?
They did the same thing with missing dog signs and tracked the results.
Each designer took a personal insecurity of theirs and faced it head on. Walsh has an extreme fear of becoming a mother herself, so she did a trial period for parenting and attempted to take care of children by herself for a week. Goodman is extremely insecure about going bald one day, so he shaved his head down to the scalp.
The project creators write:
“Kindness is one thing we all have the ability to share, but why is it so difficult at times? How can we become less judgmental of others and ourselves? We tend to only see what we want, hear what we want, and align ourselves with people through a filter of our own experiences and tastes. Countless articles, books and beliefs tell us how to become kinder people, but how often do we really put the advice into practice?
We’ve all heard popular sayings like, ‘Treat others the way you would like to be treated’ and ‘Don’t judge another until you’ve walked a mile in their shoes.’ We wanted to take these sentiments and literally apply them to our own lives.”
If you want to snap out of indifference, you can make your own steps. Goodman and Walsh invite site visitors to participate in this experiment too. At the bottom of each of their 12 steps, the creators list suggestions of how you can make these steps your own. Whether it’s random acts of kindness, facing a fear or insecurity, being nice to your enemies, or paying it forward, they invite you to take this journey with them.
Site visitors can document their steps through a photo, illustration, typography or writing and posting it with #12kindsofkindness on social media. Then they will send artwork and free posters to their most engaged participants.
12 Kinds of Kindness shares an intimate look into our relationship with kindness and apathy in our absorbed 21st-century mindset and what each of us can do to become the better angels of our nature.
12 Kinds of Kindness | 40 Days of Dating
Originally published at www.psfk.com on January 20, 2016.