Be Kind: A 52-Week Journal for Practicing Kindness

By Houston Kraft

Celebrate a year full of intentional kindness with this essential workbook from the cofounder of CharacterStrong and author of Deep Kindness, Houston Kraft.

In Deep Kindness, Houston Kraft demonstrated the power of meaningful kindness in everyday life and provided actionable steps toward making the world a kinder, more accepting place. Be Kind: A 52-Week Journal for Practicing Kindness expands on the wisdom of its source material, providing you with fifty-two prompts, activities, and challenges to incorporate kindness into every week of the year. Each challenge brings thoughtful and intentional kindness to a single individual.

Activities include:
-Sending a formal Save the Date for a family hangout
-Creating a shared playlist with a friend with nostalgic songs
-Giving a secondhand compliment via family and friends
-Leaving an intentional voicemail packed with your favorite traits and memories
-And more!

Bring compassion and understanding into every area of your life and play your part in making the world a better place with this must-have workbook for spreading kindness.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Release date: Sep 5, 2023
• ISBN: 9781668027608

Houston Kraft

Houston Kraft’s job is to practice kindness. Over the course of eight years, Houston spoke at over 600 schools, organizations, and events globally. In 2016, Houston cofounded CharacterStrong, which helps schools teach critical social and emotional skills that lead cultivate kindness. They currently serve 7,500 schools across all fifty states and over thirty-seven countries. In 2020, Deep Kindness was published by Simon & Schuster and has been a source of practical kindness inspiration to tens of thousands of readers.

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Be Kind: A 52-Week Journal for Practicing Kindness, by Houston Kraft.

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Be Kind: A 52-Week Journal for Practicing Kindness, by Houston Kraft. Simon Element. New York | London | Toronto | Sydney | New Delhi.

[ THE PRACTICE OF KINDNESS ]

I was walking through the halls of a high school campus I was speaking at when I saw a poster that read, Throw Kindness around like confetti. It was not the first time I’d seen this saying—I’ve come across it in social media posts, on T-shirts, and in various school hallways—but for some reason, this encounter felt different.

Perhaps it was some particularly negative news cycle. Maybe the moment was painted by the students who had just confided in me about some horrific situation they were dealing with at home. Whatever the reason, I felt anger looking at this piece of paper in the fluorescent ninth-grade hallway.

Kindness, I thought, is much more complicated than confetti.

Right out of college, I started presenting in schools as a motivational speaker. I believe in the power of storytelling and connection and wanted to share a message about Kindness and hope. Over the course of about seven years, this adventure took me to around six hundred campuses all over the world.

Nearly every place I visited had some sort of motto or mission statement related to Kindness. Posters about being Kind exist in just about every school I’ve spoken at. None of them, I realized as I unpacked my poster-based frustration, talked about Kindness in a way that honored how hard it is.

I believe one of the most damaging narratives our culture offers us is the idea that Kindness is simple. Or easy. Or free.

Kindness is never free. It always costs us something. At the bare minimum, the practice of Kindness costs us time. Time spent reflecting or preparing to act thoughtfully. Time listening or empathizing. Time to hold the door