Get ready for the weekend with these lovely reflections and recollections of kindness from our first guest blogger, Stefani Beckerman! You can find her spreading the good word about the coolest up-and-coming orgs on the website she co-curates, Fresh Charities. (They featured AOK back in October!)
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KINDNESS: Spreading, in a vast number of ways, the intention to help selflessly. A collaborative effort to transform the dark holes of the world into light.
I connected with AOK months ago. After a mutual contact put us in touch, we realized that between our web endeavors, career woman/entrepreneurial spirits, and general perspectives on life and how we want to live it, we should find some common ground to help the other, because in doing so we could also help our own causes!
I was given the opportunity to guest blog months ago as well. Unfortunately, life tends to get in the way and finding the space to sit down and focus on outside projects is sometimes harder than we would like. On top of that, I’ve been spinning with anxiety about WHAT to talk about. I am so lucky to witness small and large acts of kindness multiple times a day. But for some reason, the subjects that came to mind didn’t seem “big” enough. They didn’t seem important enough. Then I realized there shouldn’t be so much judgment on what message I am trying to send. It should just be about expressing what acts of kindness exist in my world and why they are meaningful. So, it became easy, I would just start with what’s right in front of me: how I got to this point of writing this.
I moved to LA two years ago and was immediately welcomed into an amazing community of women led by Life Coach Andrea Quinn. Andrea leads a life-changing accomplishment group that offers the tools to focus our energies on creating the steps to accomplish our dreams. The group meets once a month for nine months, and once you graduate (complete the 9 months and receive all 9 spiritual tools) you become part of an email listserv of all the women that have previously graduated and all the women that will graduate in the next groups. So, whenever you want or need something, you have a huge network of people right at your fingertips. All of which whose willingness to help is remarkable. Directly and indirectly these women offer support, a deep belief in each other, and an outpouring of non-judgmental love that shines a light so bright you have to take a deep breath when you receive help from someone in this group who, at many times, you may not even know by face.
Someone in the group sent a mass email promoting the AOK blog, I reached out to the sender because it resonated with my website,www.freshcharities.com, an online community that connects users to fabulous non-profits by allowing them to search easily and find which organizations resonate and ignite the inspiration to get them involved and take action. The sender connected me with Katherine and Lynn in an introductory email not more than 10 minutes after she received my inquiry. Next thing I knew the AOK team and I were setting up a call and VOILA in under an hour new collaborations were made between inspired, smart, motivated people trying to save the world. And, in our connectedness we are empowered to make a difference and find any and all ways to unite everyone with the same mission.
Kindness is laying the foundation for big changes in this world. It’s banning together to make the world a better place; to give people the opportunity to offer their voice and then actually listening. Seeing kindness makes you smile, feeling kindness, when giving and receiving, makes you feel full. Whatever your path is, taking the steps in your journey with kindness in your ride overshadows any darkness. When light overpowers dark, truly amazing connections are made and it is in the collaboration of that strength that we progress as a community.
Thank you AOK for casting your light on the world and giving everyone and everything an open-invitation to exist together in that light!
