Impacting the community around us is something that L and myself strive to do nearly every single day. We love the quote by Gandhi “You must be the change you wish to see in the world.” To us, this quote means that in order for your vision of helping others you must make that change happen instead of relying on others to make it happen for you. Community giving is how we want to change the world. We feel as if we all can learn from one another no matter what walk of life we come from.
We are changing the world around us by simply doing random acts of kindness. We’ve filled up an individuals tank of gas without question. We’ve paid for someone’s meal when he was the only one in the diner. We’ve paid for fitness bikes to an elementary school for furthering children’s learning. Amongst many other things!
Taking that active role and outreaching to others is an amazing feeling. But, that’s not why we do it. We don’t try turn the situation to ourselves for our own gain. We feel as if we are placed in a unique role to help others and our community.
We firmly believe in helping others any chance we can get because how cool would it be if everyone had that same mindset and seven billion individuals coming together versus staying to themselves?
Each year for Christmas, L and I have gotten one another a $100 Visa Gift Card that has to be spent on someone else. We will pay for someone’s food behind us at the drive-thru or place a gift card on a gas station pump saying enjoy! : ) These small things add up to the world being a better place.
Rockstar Finance Community Giving
In recent news, Rockstar Finance had a 2018 Community Giving Event. They gave out $2,000 to bloggers who wanted to impact others.
Check out Rockstar’s Community Fund to see what good they are up to in the world!
Bloggers had to submit how they would use the funds in their communities. L and I were selected to help out our community with four $25 Amazon gift cards. We are truly honored to be a part of this event!
We have decided to continue our Random Acts of Kindness with the use of our gift cards. To offer an idea of what these acts look like, we recently bought a stranger a meal in a diner. It was just the two of us in Cheyenne, Wyoming. We told the waiter what our plan was and we paid his bill along with ours and left before he knew.
Another random act was paying for a tank of gas for an individual. The person had just lost their job and needed money to get back home. We ended up talking for a little bit and they were in America from India to “chase the American dream.” We had the card ready to help them out.
Our Giving to Others
With the $100 Amazon Gift Cards, we hosted a “Friendsgiving.” This is where you invite your friends over for Thanksgiving to celebrate. L and I were driving home one day and I said: “this might be ignorant of me but do Germans, Italians, and Spaniards celebrate Thanksgiving like we do here in America?” I didn’t really know to be honest because I felt as if it were an American holiday.
Living near an Air Force base, we invited the Germans, Italians, and Spaniards who are here for training before returning to their homeland. This simple and small gesture of inviting over some new friends that we probably would not have talked to if we hadn’t has impacted our community to bridge that cultural gap.
We had hoped this would change their viewpoint on their time in America. Also, that they could look back on their time here with a positive note and carry on a new tradition of “Friendsgiving” in their country. Now, when we see some of our new friends we have something in common and that cultural barrier is down. We can have more meaningful discussions and learn about one another.
We’ve found out that we all are the same on the inside. We just want to be included. Everyone here was leaving town to be with their families while those from other countries couldn’t do that. Opening the door to a hot and warm meal with good discussion is all that it takes to make your community that much better. “Why don’t more people do this?” is what we thought afterward.
When we travel we want to be included in that country, right? That’s the whole reason for traveling. So, why not invite others to your home to do the same for them?
Make the World a Better Place
We are not telling these stories to “toot our horns” but rather to generate ideas of how you can spread good, too. We are firm believers in actively making decisions to make the world around us a better place. Random acts of kindness can do just that! This can mean anything from picking up trash to making someone laugh. I think most of us get so wound up in our own personal lives that we don’t stop and look at how others are doing.
Oftentimes, the simple things in life mean the most, such as giving a compliment or buying coffee or tea for someone. We challenge you to make the world around you a better place – starting today!
Just imagine if seven billion people in the world did one random act of kindness every day to help another person. That’s two trillion five hundred fifty-five billion random acts of kindness each year (2,555,000,000,000)! Take a second to imagine how awesome the world would be around us if that happened. Why not start today?
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Love this! I try to do random acts of kindness when I see an opportunity, but I really like your idea of giving $100 to your spouse that has to be spent on others.
We love this as well! The gift of giving to others and seeing joy to them has more lasting effects than a material gift to us.