Upworthy: Good People

When was the last time a small act of kindness changed the trajectory of your day—or your life? In Upworthy: Good People, editors Gabriel Reilich and Lucia Knell argue that goodness is not rare or random; it’s everywhere once you know where (and how) to look. Drawing on 101 first-person accounts curated from the Upworthy community and organized into six themes, they contend that everyday people—strangers, teachers, kids, neighbors, caregivers, travelers—consistently choose compassion, often with split-second decisions that reverberate for years. The book makes a countercultural claim: in a media ecosystem optimized for outrage, story is a powerful antidote. Tell true stories of care, and you recalibrate what people expect from one another.

The editors’ core contention is simple and bold: people are fundamentally good at heart, and a single, well-timed gesture can become a lifeline. But to see this clearly, you have to notice what goodness looks like in the wild—what it feels like to be the recipient (or giver), and why certain moments matter so much. That’s what this collection offers: a field guide to the anatomy of kindness.

What This Book Covers—and Why It Matters

The book’s six sections map where goodness most often shows up. In “The Kindest of Strangers,” you witness instant, decisive care—like the anonymous businessman who sat beside law student Amy B. after her father’s sudden death, moved her to an earlier flight, and held her hand all the way home. In “Learn by Heart,” teachers and mentors transform identity with a sentence, a system tweak, or a well-placed smile: Mrs. Bean normalizes a kindergartner’s eye patch by saying his “eye is on vacation,” and Mr. Ashman lets a speech-anxious student whisper quiz answers at his desk. “It’s the Little Things” reframes minor gestures as major medicine: a janitor shares his lunch with a starving recruit; a shop owner forgives a trumpet rental and leaves a note—“Tough times never last. Tough people do.”

“The Kids Are All Right” shows young people leading with instinctive empathy—from a grade-schooler who tells her mom “I’m staying awake in case you need an emergency hug” on the night of a funeral to the vote that crowns two girls prom “queens” at a Catholic school. “When I Needed It Most” is the book’s quiet center of gravity—nurses, neighbors, landlords, and taxi drivers step into grief and medical crisis with life-giving practicality. And “Away From Home” takes kindness global: a Yucatán farmer rides buses across Mérida to return a lost bag; a San Francisco stunt double takes a stranded teen home for the night; a New Yorker shelters an Australian backpacker for a week.

A Counterweight to Doomscrolling

Why do these stories land so hard? Because they restore your “social expectations” (behavioral scientist Nicholas Epley has shown we underestimate how much strangers value connection; this book is living proof). They also embody Barbara Fredrickson’s “broaden-and-build” theory: positive emotions widen your sense of possibility and build durable resources like trust and resilience. Read enough of these and you start scanning for chances to help, not threats to avoid.

The editors present goodness without varnish. These aren’t savior myths; they’re granular, name-rich moments that feel verifiable because they’re ordinary. A Costco parking-lot meltdown ends with a stranger quietly stacking toilet paper. A biker in leather retrieves a toddler’s broccoli plushie in a busy crosswalk. A florist’s driver offers a crying law student a spare bouquet at a red light. These are “small stakes” scenes with high emotional leverage.

From Anecdote to Invitation

Importantly, the anthology functions less like a highlight reel and more like a user manual. You see patterns: good people notice, ask, and act. They preserve dignity (the man who waited 45 minutes in his car beside a crash victim, eyes averted to grant privacy). They lend their reputation (a gate agent re-seats a nervous flyer; a neighbor leaves a note—“We will adjust together”). They turn private burdens into public rituals (a widowed couple’s friends invent “Shabbirthday” to celebrate their daughter’s short life; a surfer invites thousands to add their loved ones’ names to his board for “One Last Wave”).

Thesis in a Line

“The book of human decency continues to be written every day. Let’s all keep adding stories to it together.”

How to Read This Book (and This Summary)

You can treat these as bedside stories or as design patterns for doing good. In the pages ahead, you’ll see: (1) how strangers become lifelines in minutes; (2) why educators are disproportionate changemakers; (3) how “little things” produce outsize benefits; (4) what kids model about courage and kindness; (5) what compassion looks like under maximum pressure; and (6) how hospitality travels across borders. We’ll also extract practical moves you can use tomorrow, connecting the book’s micro-moments to broader research (compare Rutger Bregman’s Humankind and Adam Grant’s Give and Take).

If you’ve ever suspected the world is kinder than your feed suggests, these accounts will feel like confirmation. More than a mood boost, they offer a playbook: notice the person at the edge of the room, default to help, preserve dignity, and let small acts compound. This is optimism with receipts.

Strangers often decide your day. In this collection, they also decide outcomes: flights caught, spirits lifted, lives literally saved. The pattern you see again and again is swift, tuned-in action—help that requires no permission slip, no backstory, just attention and nerve. Think of it as the three-beat rhythm of effective kindness: notice, normalize, and navigate.

Notice: Seeing the Person Inside the Moment

Law student Amy B. sits on the floor at LaGuardia, her father newly dead and her life shattered. Hundreds pass by “according to social contract,” but one briefcase-toting commuter breaks formation. He asks if she’s alone, hears the whole story, and disappears—only to return with an earlier flight. Then he sits across the aisle, holds her hand, and delivers her to her ride at the curb. He doesn’t introduce himself; the help is the point. Years later, airports feel less lonely to her because of one nameless man’s attention.

Or take Anita H., stranded in Times Square on 9/11 with phone lines jammed and parents overseas imagining the worst. She and a friend trespass into an emptied office and find one man at one desk. Without hesitation, “Marty” hands over his phone so two teenage girls can make transatlantic calls—then vanishes from their lives. Ordinary settings—a terminal, a lobby—become sanctuaries when one person decides to notice.

Normalize: Lowering Defensiveness and Shame

Kelly S. spills her rage in a Costco lot, toilet paper tower toppled by a speed bump after another brutal day with an abusive boss. A stranger doesn’t flinch; she runs to help, matching the task (stacking TP) to the need (dignity). No pep talk, no judgment—just presence. In a Phoenix museum, an elegant man in a white dashiki frees a toddler’s stuck arm with a whisper and a pop; a single mom, previously spiraling, feels the universe is on her side again.

Normalization can be as simple as a sentence. In a St. Louis taco shop, two women admire a cancer survivor’s close-cropped hair and call it “brave.” Their unsolicited delight lets her leave the wig at home for her son’s wedding. Across stories, the most healing words are often matter-of-fact (“You can just eat—it’s OK,” a biology teacher whispers to his nauseated pregnant teen student) or playful (“Live to give,” a stranger grins after hauling luggage up Chicago steps).

Navigate: Moving People From Stuck to Safe

“Pay It Forward” is more than a movie title here; it’s an operating procedure. A driver skids into a snowdrift in upstate New York. Four strangers arrive with shovels and flares, dig the car out, push it to a safe turnout, and refuse repayment: “Just pay it forward.” An off-duty teenage firefighter rides up on his bike after a catastrophic crash, finds a barely detectable pulse in a woman presumed dead, sprints to the station for oxygen, and keeps her alive until EMTs arrive. A janitor in Atlanta taps a starving Army recruit and hands over his lunch: “You can eat whatever you want. I don’t need it.”

Navigation also means “get you where you’re going.” In Chicago’s O’Hare, after Sue R. learns her father died, a stranger follows her to the bathroom, places a hand on her shoulder, and wordlessly stands by until she can breathe again—then slips away. In Brussels, when a pair of broke travelers have their devices stolen, three locals chain together a rescue: one guides them to the tram, another calls the host, a neighbor takes them in. The throughline is practical mercy—get them unstuck now, sort feelings later.

Design Principle

Kindness scales when you shrink the ask. If you can’t solve the problem, solve the next step: a phone call, a ride, a seat, a sandwich, a sentence.

Why Strangers Matter So Much

You expect love from family; it heals. But unexpected, attuned help from strangers carries a unique force. It edits your mental model of the world (compare Rutger Bregman’s Humankind, which argues our default is trust, not suspicion). It affirms that help can arrive unbidden and that you, too, can provide it. Nearly every narrator in this section becomes more likely to help later—the “airport angel,” the snow-shovel crew, the taco-shop complimenters echo forward in the reader’s own choices.

The upshot for you: begin where you are. Make eye contact with pain. Offer the specific, smallest next thing. Don’t overexplain or overown. And when in doubt, act like the people in these pages: step in, steady the moment, and let the gratitude belong to the other person, not to your bio.

Again and again, educators in this anthology perform quiet miracles—not by delivering grand speeches, but by making deft micro-adjustments that unlock a student’s dignity. If strangers rescue you in the airport, teachers often rescue you in identity formation. Their lever is language; their fulcrum is belief.

Name the Difference, Remove the Stigma

On his first day of kindergarten, Gabriel (yes, the book’s coeditor) wears a patch over his “lazy eye.” Mrs. Bean clocks the social risk and preempts cruelty with one line: “This is Gabe—his eye is on vacation. Any questions?” By normalizing the difference, she turns a potential target into a running joke and keeps the class focused on connection. Years later, Kelley S. recalls Ms. Bennett, who met a shy poet’s secretly placed verses with exclamation-point praise, then returned a bound volume titled “The Poems of Kelley Shields.” New identity issued.

Adaptive teaching shows up everywhere. Mr. Ashman lets a student with selective mutism whisper Latin answers after class, honoring learning without punishing anxiety. Mr. Cook tells a dyslexic sixth grader to read slowly and bans mockery—teasing stops overnight. A science teacher, Mr. C., defuses a perfectionist’s spirals with a recurring question: “How does this movie usually end?” (Spoiler: not with an asteroid.) That mantra carries her through college with a 3.8 GPA.

Use Content as a Mirror—Then a Map

Great teachers don’t just “cover” material; they choose texts that say, “I see you.” In Great Neck, a strict drama teacher, Mrs. Rose, assigns Oscar Wilde and then fearlessly explores the subtext of a persecuted gay genius, giving her student Mark H. the language to become himself. In Toronto, Mr. Antonovich turns a sweltering summer class into a listening room and drops the needle on Leonard Cohen—an initiation into art as inner life. In White Swan, Washington, Ms. Pastrana becomes the first teacher of color her student ever had, proof that the dream to teach is not a fantasy but a path; decades later, that student graduates from Antioch’s First Peoples’ Education Program and returns to the classroom.

Then there’s Mr. Griffiths in Wales, a former rugby player with a “thunderous baritone” who helps a dyslexic, displaced 12-year-old build a solar-powered trike from bamboo, then quietly enters it into a national engineering competition. It wins. The trophy unlocks university entry, and a career. As Dan Heath argues in The Power of Moments, peak experiences deliver “defining moments” that reshape self-concept; these stories show teachers engineering such peaks on purpose.

Protect, Provoke, and Partner

Some teachers guard the vulnerable; others provoke the complacent—many do both. Mrs. Lanza, a tiny ninth-grade English teacher with an outsized moral core, calls out misogyny in the hallway in real time and models how to confront harm. A Texas teacher suspended for including a same-sex spouse in her “Get to Know Me” slideshow sues—and wins—pressing the district to ban discrimination. Meanwhile, a history teacher-coach in 1973 says “You bet!” when a girl asks to play on the boys’ football team; a fourth-grade teacher drives a student across Phoenix for a month so he can finish in her class.

Playbook Move

Swap one-size rules for right-size supports. Change the format (whisper answers, submit poems), change the frame (“eye on vacation”), or change the stakes (enter the contest). The message is the same: you belong here.

Why This Matters for You

You don’t need a classroom to use these moves. If you manage a team, parent a kid, or lead volunteers, ask: What’s the smallest accommodation that preserves standards and restores dignity? What one sentence could stabilize someone’s identity? (Adam Grant’s Give and Take notes that high-impact givers target help to what others truly need; these teachers are case studies.)

Most of us remember a teacher who spotted who we were before we did. This book doubles as a thank-you note to them—and as a prompt to become that person for someone else.

Some kindness stories read like epics. Others look like…lunch, a phone call, a sticky note. The cumulative point in “It’s the Little Things” is that micro-acts aren’t micro at all. They change physiology in the moment (slowing a racing heart) and biography over time (redirecting careers, repairing identities). If you’re looking for leverage, start here.

Consistency Beats Intensity

Tommy M.’s Uncle George calls him about ten times a day—every day—role-playing lifeguards or M*A*S*H characters and always closing with, “You’re the best guy I know.” On paper, it’s a trivial ritual. In practice, those calls become scaffolding that holds Tommy up through breakups and setbacks. Regular, low-effort signals—texts, voicemails, check-ins—accumulate into safety nets (think John Gottman’s “bids for connection,” scaled to nephews).

Likewise, a neighbor’s two-sentence card—“We will adjust together :)”—reframes an overwhelmed mom’s move into an apartment as a shared project, not a private failure. And a biker who stops a sea of traffic to rescue a toddler’s fallen broccoli plush teaches a child (and his mother) that strangers see you—and act.

Tiny Costs, Outsized Returns

A janitor at Hartsfield–Jackson doesn’t have a CSR budget; he has a lunch pail. He gives it away to a hungry recruit who will remember the taste of that sandwich for decades. A Goodwill shopper in St. Louis notices a teen’s panic at the register and buys the $49.99 prom dress after a cashier insists on a higher price—then refuses repayment so the girl can buy “beautiful accessories.” A florist’s driver spots tears at a red light and hands over a bouquet. As behavioral economists note, the perceived value of a gift is measured less in MSRP than in meaning weighted by timing.

Then there’s the handwritten letter found years later by trumpeter Ruffin J.: a music shop owner who secretly forgave the rental balance during hard times. He adds a single sentence that could hang on a kitchen wall: “Tough times never last. Tough people do.” That note pushes a sixth grader to keep playing—and pay it forward.

Micro-Creativity During Macro-Crisis

In COVID lockdowns, high school art students can’t visit dementia residents for the Opening Minds Through Art program, so their teacher, Melanie K., pivots to mail. Students send posters; residents write poems back; students then draw over residents’ abstractions. The exchange becomes a call-and-response of personhood: “I’m still here.” Elsewhere in San Francisco, Curtis K. posters his block for “Pancakepalooza” and flips flapjacks for 75 masked neighbors. The food matters—but the real nourishment is connection-by-design (compare Priya Parker’s The Art of Gathering for ritual craft).

Rule of Thumb

If it takes you under ten minutes and under ten dollars, and you’re on the fence—do it. Your small effort may be the largest thing in someone’s day.

Compliments and Permission Slips

Social psychologist Nicholas Epley shows we underestimate how much strangers welcome compliments. This book validates that: the women who admired a chemo survivor’s haircut liberated her from her wig on her son’s wedding day. A bar manager who says, “I don’t want to see you back here,” reframes a 19-year-old’s “failure” job as a launchpad. A mom at the gate brings a NICU mother a tote of socks and notes: an emotional permission slip to feel celebrated while grieving.

You can operationalize this: carry a few note cards; write “You were kind when it counted” and hand them out. Compliment specifically (haircut, grit, project, patience). When you sense someone needs a micropermission—“You can eat in class,” “You can cry here,” “You can go first”—offer it out loud. These aren’t “little things” at all; they’re everyday power tools.

One of this book’s sweetest reversals is how often kids become the teachers. They don’t overcomplicate kindness; they demonstrate it. The result is a crash course in attunement: see what’s needed, offer what you have.

Brevity as Bravery

Few declarations rival a toddler’s one-word check-in. Gerry M.’s daughter, Mina—tiny glasses and perfect curls—used to yell “HAPPY!” whenever she felt it. Is there a more compact family diagnostic? Meanwhile, a four-year-old in a California fairy-garden saga writes to “Sapphire,” the adult neighbor who became her resident fairy during lockdown. When the little girl ends a note with “I love you, Sapphire,” the bereft writer bursts into tears—a reminder that direct affection is generous, not naïve.

Elsewhere, a five-year-old tells her mom she’s “busier than you” when asked to fetch a crayon, and another christens a pigeon a “street chicken.” These lines do more than charm; they re-enchant the everyday. If you manage a household or team, consider adopting a kid-style clarity: state gratitude in one word; rename the mundane to make it new.

Peer-to-Peer Rescue

At an outdoor festival, a preschooler freezes at the top of a tall inflatable slide. An older girl kneels beside him and says, “I’ll go with you.” Down they go—fear alchemized into fun. Backstage at The Nutcracker, a six-year-old sobs after tripping twice as a snow angel. Her peers form a huddle: “We all fall down sometimes. You’re not alone. We’ll be together.” The second-night routine goes flawlessly. These moments illustrate a powerful truth (echoing Carol Dweck’s growth mindset): confidence is contagious when kids model it to one another.

Then there’s the prom vote that crowns Jenny and Kate—two studious girls, one with a visual impairment—the dual prom queens at a Catholic school. Teachers expected the usual popularity script; students rewrote it, loudly affirming care over clout. Sometimes the kids are all right because they insist on a better “we.”

Small Bodies, Huge Hearts

Grief brings out kids’ quiet courage too. In South Africa, after a grandmother’s funeral, eight-year-old Jamie pads into the cold “icebox” bedroom and whispers to his mom, “I’m staying awake in case you wake up feeling really sad and need an emergency hug.” In the Hudson Valley, a butterfly landing on a car door becomes a teachable moment when a little girl connects it to a dead fish—her mother’s grandfather’s physics lesson on energy now translated into a four-year-old’s cosmology: life moves through beautiful living things.

Kid Wisdom

Use simple words, share often, huddle up, and have the courage to go first.

What You Can Borrow

Adults can practice “youth moves.” Keep a two-sentence compliment in your pocket. Name feelings without hedging (“I’m scared,” “I’m relieved,” “I’m happy”). Offer to accompany, not just advise (“I’ll walk with you to HR,” “I’ll sit with you while you call”). Celebrate effort out loud after a stumble. Promote the helpers publicly (as those prom voters did) so kids—and colleagues—know what earns applause.

If this section had a slogan, it might be: Don’t grow out of your instincts. Grow into them.

What does help look like when the stakes are maximal—medical emergencies, fresh grief, mental health crashes, or existential loss? In these stories, compassion is practical, dignifying, and often anonymous. It doesn’t fix the unfixable; it steadies you while you face it.

Do the Urgent Thing, Now

When Santiago P.’s father’s heart rate plummets in the ICU, a black-hoodied taxi driver in torrential LA rain drives like a “bat out of hell” to fetch critical medical paperwork—then refuses payment: “Just go save your dad.” Because of the speed, doctors diagnose fast enough to intervene. A landlord texts a grieving family—“Please don’t send November’s rent”—buying space to breathe and mourn. A pharmacy owner named Harry sits a shaking mom at the counter, pours tea, slides a lemon doughnut across, and says, “Just breathe,” while he fills her asthmatic son’s prescriptions. This is trauma-informed care in the wild.

Financial kindness shows up too. During the 2022 formula shortage, a fellow mom named Katie repeatedly sources and front-buys rare Enfamil Enspire Gentlease for a new adoptive mother, driving hours and refusing repayment. Small logistics; massive relief.

Presence Over Platitudes

After her father’s death call at O’Hare, Sue R. collapses in a bathroom. A woman touches her shoulder and simply stays until the sobs subside. No advice, no “at leasts.” When a mall stranger tells a would-be hygienist after a failed entrance exam, “I don’t know what you’re going through, but it won’t last forever,” the line becomes a life mantra; she graduates cum laude. A financial aid officer ends a disability call with “You got this,” and the sentence becomes ballast. The lesson mirrors palliative care research: people in pain need witness and words that strengthen agency, not explanation.

Mental health support shows up in family form too. After a bipolar II diagnosis and a terrifying crash, Lucia’s brother Dwight flies cross-country the same day—stays six months, cooks, breathes with her, prescribes jazz and Love Island, and gets her into treatment. Big love, delivered as small routines, reopens a life.

Rituals That Hold Love and Loss Together

Some grief needs new containers. Myra and Matt Sack invent “Shabbirthday,” combining Shabbat and birthday to celebrate their daughter Havi through 57 weekly parties before she dies of Tay-Sachs at two. Friends Blyth and Charlie—who lost a daughter to the same disease decades earlier—send weekly poems on Wednesdays (the day Havi died) and model a survivable way forward: you can’t fix devastating loss, but you can keep inviting your child into every week.

Care Tactics

Move money out of the way (waive a bill, buy the thing). Make the call or the drive. Sit with, don’t solve. Create rituals that say, “This love continues.”

Your Role When It’s Hard

If you’re supporting someone in crisis, imitate these moves. Offer concrete help with a time box (“I can drive you at 3,” “I’ll bring dinner Tuesday”). Speak one strong sentence of faith in them. Protect their dignity (the man who waited in his car beside a shaken driver for 45 minutes, eyes averted, thumb up). And when you’re the one hurting, accept help as mothering-for-mothers Lisa D. did when a Texan seatmate insisted, “Let me hold your baby—you have to eat your dinner.” The world gets lighter when you let someone else carry a corner.

Travel throws you into dependence on strangers; this book shows how often they meet you with care. From Mexico to Iceland to Hoboken walk-ups, hospitality appears as quick logistics, spare beds, and reputational loans. The pattern is consistent: someone sees you as “ours,” not “other.”

The Gift of Escort

New to Mérida, Michele L. loses a bag with cash, passport, and documents. Don Eladio, a 70-something farmer who can’t read and navigates by landmarks, finds it, rides multiple buses, asks dozens of strangers, and waits hours at her gate. He refuses a reward and takes only bus fare home so his wife won’t worry. In Reykjavík, with luggage lost and buses delayed, a woman in a sedan materializes at the depot, hears “no taxis,” and says, “OK, let’s go!” She chats, drops the student at the small airport, and drives off with a wave: “Gleðileg jól—Merry Christmas!”

In Brussels, a man notices two travelers walking in circles with a thousand-yard stare and personally shepherds them—ticket window, right tram, walking directions—then a neighbor houses them when the host is out. And in Texas, a Vietnam vet in a “Curly Fries” T-shirt redraws a young Coast Guardsman’s 23-hour drive into a 30-hour soul-saver, mapping diners and small towns (“See the real Texas”), teaching him that peace can arrive via county roads and ZZ Top.

Shelter, Sans Strings

A stunt-double named Emma plucks an 18-year-old from a missed-connection spiral at SFO and takes her home to a tiny yellow house with movie props and hairless cats. They eat fried chicken, laugh, and sleep safely; in the morning, Emma delivers her to the gate and scores a seat next to her nephew. In Hoboken, Audrey, an accountant fresh off a late night, blocks a harasser at Port Authority and says to an Australian backpacker, “Hostels are rough—come stay with me.” A “week with strangers” becomes a lifelong bias toward believing the world will catch you.

Reputations That Lubricate the World

In a Pennsylvania airport, a man from San Juan clocks a young Puerto Rican newcomer in sandals and a tank top shivering in December snow. He buys her a winter coat, lends wool socks, verifies her car service, and hands over his number “in case you get into trouble.” Another traveler in London walks a hugely pregnant stranger across multiple Tube blocks, then quietly retraces his steps back. A Greek motorcyclist blocks traffic so a mom with a stroller can cross a lightless road. These gestures amount to social “oil”—they reduce friction, risk, and fear for someone who doesn’t yet belong.

Hospitality Rule

Extend what you can spare: a ride, a room, your phone, your map, your courage. And when safety requires caution, pair help with verification (call the parent, show ID, wait at the curb).

Why It Matters

These vignettes echo the ancient ethic of welcome—xenia in Greek, “guest right” elsewhere (see Priya Parker’s work again, and Alain de Botton’s The Art of Travel on how travel resets attention). They teach you to be the person who spots the lost look, walks someone to the right door, or opens your home. They also invite you to trust wisely. As one narrator puts it: “The flip side of my ambition that year was gratitude. And it was too enormous for words, in any language.”

Reading these stories without changing your defaults would be like watching a cooking show and never cracking an egg. This final idea turns the book’s patterns into a practical playbook you can use today. Think in moves, not moods: specific behaviors that make someone else’s day lighter within two minutes.

1) Notice Out Loud

Kind people narrate what they see: “You look like you could use a friend” (Holly to a grieving freshman). “Are you OK? Is someone coming for you?” (the roadside sentinel). “Can I give you a hug?” (the pharmacist to a woman with ME/CFS). Practice this in low-stakes settings: compliment a haircut, a clever bag system, patience with a toddler. Per Epley’s research, recipients appreciate it far more than you predict.

2) Shrink the Next Step

If the whole problem feels big, solve the next inch. Move someone to an earlier flight; lend your phone; print a map; walk them to the right tram; carry the stroller; stack the toilet paper. When in doubt, ask “What would make the next 10 minutes easier?” (Harry the pharmacist answered it with tea and a doughnut.)

3) Protect Dignity

Help that preserves agency sticks. Sit nearby with eyes averted. Offer two choices (“red or blue paint?”) to a resident with dementia. Frame difference as normal (“eye on vacation”). When you can, make the solution invisible, like the optometrist who “made a mistake” so a poor teen could leave with aviator glasses that changed how she saw herself.

4) Carry a Tiny Kit

Stock your bag with note cards, granola bars, $5 gift cards, spare phone chargers, travel tissues. Keep a few phrases ready: “I’ve got time; want a hand?” “Would it help if…?” “I can wait with you.” These props and lines convert good intentions into action in under a minute.

5) Ritualize Your Care

Make connection predictable. Call the same time each day like Uncle George. Host pancake mornings for your block. Send Wednesday poems. Celebrate hard anniversaries with small ceremonies (“Shabbirthday”). Rituals are care on repeat (echoing James Clear’s habit science: what you schedule, you sustain).

6) Advocate With Your Reputation

Use your status to unblock someone else: vote for the overlooked, write a reference, re-seat a nervous flyer, cover a fee, or, like the landlord, waive a month’s rent. These moves are “reputational loans,” high leverage with low cost to you, life-changing to them.

Two-Minute Drill

Today, do one of each: a compliment, a carry (hold a door, tote a bag), a connect (text someone “Thinking of you”), a cover (pay a small bill or tip big), a calm (sit with someone upset).

7) Tell the Story

Kindness begets kindness when you name it. Share the tale of the biker who saved the broccoli, the shopkeeper who forgave the trumpet, the woman who said your hair is “so cute.” As the editors say, “goodness grows with contact.” (This mirrors positive psychology’s “capitalization”—reliving good events together boosts well-being.)

In short: Be someone’s proof that people are good. The bar is lower than you think, the impact higher than you’ll ever know.