Remember when I told you about my friend and her awesome philosophy of asking “How Can I Help?” last month? Well, she may claim not to be a writer, but clearly she is a doer and a thinker because this last weekend she sent me a text, proposing the idea of using the good old blog here to promote a little goodness in the worlds around us. Because let’s face it – even when we live and work side-by-side with people on a daily basis, we all lead our own lives and have our own perspectives colored by those lives, which means we all see the world a little bit differently.

And as you may also remember from my last post, perspective and positivity have been rather challenged in the first few weeks of 2016 for our little family.

So, naturally I said, “Yes! Yes, please!” to this idea of hers and started thinking of how this perspective shifting project could come to life. I’m not one to tweet (although I do hashtag every now and then on FB and now on IG), but I loved her idea of using a common hashtag so we could, after a few weeks, search by it and see the trail of goodness created and noticed by people in our lives.

Because she’s a fan of my sign and family mantra, she suggested #bethegood as our hashtag.

Again, I was totally on board (you guys! that one was too easy!).

At first I thought we needed to put together some sort of service project or collection of donations and document that here as the kick-off for this little Spread Goodness campaign. There are so many places and people in need of help, it wouldn’t be hard to do, except then I looked at how our own year is going and realized that spreading goodness, for me, is going to have to come at no-cost for the time being. B and I have always been ones to include giving in our budget and that’s not going to change, but until we get our own funds in better shape after the latest rounds of The Joys of Adulting, it seems best if our #bethegood is energetic or coming from what we already have on hand at the house.

Thankfully there are lots of resources to help a tired mama’s brain out when it comes to generating ideas of no-cost service to others. The two the Welschies are going to use first are The Random Acts of Kindness Foundation and Do Nice. Be Kind. Spread Happy. The first is a Facebook page dedicated to sharing inspirational stories and ideas of ways to treat yourself and others to a little (and often free) love. So great! The second is a book we got our kids for Christmas created by the founder of wwww.366daysofkindness.com, and now that the Littles have read the book cover-to-cover, we are ready to have them start selecting and implementing the ideas from it. Also so great!

So here is where you all come in to this project. We – my dear friend Leah and I, along with my family and hers – want to encourage you to participate, too. Take ideas from the web or of your own creation. Then do them. Literally BE the good in the world around you, and take a moment, when you can, to share it with the #bethegood hashtag on whatever social media platforms you use. That way we can all work together to show that there are simple but powerful ways to connect with and care for each other. Get your kids or your family involved, too, so the ripples of this go as wide as they can. You can share this post to help spread the word and the good.

And here is the other way to play – especially if you aren’t one to toot your own horn, so to speak. If you see someone else doing some good in the world, for you or for others, snap a picture or write a status and share that, too.

Here’s some good that came into our lives just this morning:

Last night it snowed just enough to be bothersome this morning (but not enough to keep my teacher hubs or Kinder son home – boo!). Ben had time to sweep the steps and front sidewalk but not enough to tackle the driveway. Just as he was getting ready to leave, a relative to our neighbors across the street finished up with his 4-wheeler in their drive and came scooting over to scoop ours out in less than 5 minutes, too. Without asking and without payment. Just a friendly neighborly gift, delivered by someone we know only in passing, not even by name. That my friends, is being the good in a simple but real way.

So what good are you doing? What good are you seeing? Please join us over the course of the next several weeks to change our perspectives, to seek out kindness and goodness, to share all that we do and see with the world. #bethegood !!