1. It's in our nature

Animals can be instinctively selfish, evident when birds squabble over food, with the most courageous or brutish often flying off with the biggest scrap.

However, many more collaborative relationships exist in nature.

For example Oxpeckers, who perch on large mammals eat ticks, dead skin, and other parasites. The birds get food, while the mammals get pest control.

This sort of reciprocal altruism is common in the animal kingdom and is based mainly on the expectation of a personal return. 

For example, Vampire Bats share their food with those who had an unsuccessful hunt with the expectation that the favour will be returned, those who renege on the deal are blacklisted by the colony.

We are not so different, giving with expected return is the backbone of our capitalist society. Loans with interest ensures that resources can move fluidly through an economy so they can go where they will work the hardest allowing the whole economy to grow and prosper.

Humans are hardwired in many ways to engage in altruistic behaviour through theories like inclusive fitness, which suggest that helping others, even at a personal cost, ensures the survival and reproduction of shared genes. 

We do good because it also helps us.

The greatest wealth is to live content with little, but giving to others brings the greatest riches of all. — Plato

2. Building Social Bonds

Historically, giving to others has strengthened social bonds, making groups more cohesive and more likely to survive and thrive. Historically, groups formed in part to protect against overly aggressive and destructive individuals, ensuring that kindness prevailed over time and for the most part the bad guys nastiness left the gene pool.

Humans have historically given to others because of social bonding. Giving to others strengthens ties between individuals and groups, making the collective stronger and more likely to survive. Research has found that altruistic behaviours are present in all human societies, indicating that kindness is a universal human trait.

By promoting cooperation and mutual aid, giving helps build a sense of community and belonging, which is essential for a stable and thriving community and society.

3. Physical Health Benefits

Acts of kindness and altruism have been shown to improve physical health. Helping others reduces blood pressure and cortisol, a stress hormone, which directly impacts stress levels.

These changes can lead to better blood pressure and heart health.

Research in volunteering, a good proxy for kindness, is associated with a longer lifespan; older adults who volunteer have a 44% lower mortality rate over a five-year period than those who do not. 

In the worlds longest happiness study done by Harvard, they found that relationships were one of the biggest predictors of a long and happy life. Kindness and giving to others is a great way to maintain strong bond with others.

Engaging in altruistic behaviours can thus contribute to a healthier, longer life.

4. Mental Health Benefits

Spending money on others promotes happiness more effectively than spending it on oneself.

Research replicated across various studies and countries (rich and poor) shows that people experience more joy from giving to others than from spending on themselves.

Volunteering and acts of kindness lead to higher life satisfaction, a greater sense of purpose, and lower rates of depression and anxiety. 

Altruism activates reward areas in the brain, creating a positive feedback loop that enhances overall happiness.

5. Creating Positive Ripple Effects

You never know the ripple effect your small gesture can have.

Kindness can inspire others to act similarly, creating a chain reaction of positive behaviour. While the immediate impact of a kind act may not always be visible, its long-term effects can have a butterfly effect opening new opportunities that can be unpredictably far-reaching. 

Kindness makes us better people and contributes and makes everyone have a nicer time. Smile and the whole world smiles with you.

In a world increasingly detached and digitised, it's easier than ever to get caught up in your own goals and personal development to the detriment of helping others. 

Reflection can be a powerful tool to help you find a balance of self development that doesn’t become selfish.

Modern life has many of us so detached from the outcomes of our words, it is easier than ever for people to be dicks without consequences.

Some people fall into this trap perhaps because the digital world flips our natural tendencies and online unkindness has a sort of attention-grabbing virality about it that encourages the opposite of love and kindness.

However, by actively choosing kindness and giving, we can counteract these tendencies and create a better world for everybody.

As Ryan Holiday says, "We do it because it's right, because people deserve kindness, and because kindness makes us better."

 1. Consider Your Future Self

The other day, I bumped into an old friend in the park. He was still in the same place in life as when I last saw him three years ago—same job, small city centre flat, no girlfriend, and a live-for-the-weekend mentality. After catching up with our mutual friends, he expressed his frustration, saying,

“Bloody hell, you lot are making serious moves. I’ll be honest, I hadn’t planned to live past 30, and now in my mid-thirties, I don’t have much to show for it. I’m a bit annoyed actually.”

This friend had embraced a hedonistic mindset of living fast and dying young. In the short term, he was kind to himself by indulging heavily. However, he neglected his health and failed to build a solid foundation for the future. Now, he wants to escape the party lifestyle but has nothing to fall back on.

Don’t borrow happiness from the future. Make choices today that are friendly to your future self.

 2. Negative Emotions are Unsustainable Fuels

Anger, disgust, and disappointment in yourself are not sustainable fuels. While they might provide short-term motivation and energy to achieve results, in the long run, they are detrimental. Just like the dirtiest fuel sources, these negative emotions will eventually harm you and those around you. Berating yourself into burnout doesn’t help you or your goals.

3. Be Your Own Best Companion

Spending a holiday with someone persistently negative is hard work (I've been there). Everything seems to be a problem, and it's even worse if they are rude and egregious to others. Nothing is ever good enough. The only person you will never have a holiday away from is yourself. You are inescapable. So treat yourself with kindness, rationality, and fairness, just as you would a friend.

People see massive gains from working with the right coach in almost every area of life. This is because we often have unrealistic expectations and a poor understanding of our actions and abilities. Coaches help cut through the nonsense, providing factual and helpful advice because they are detached and can be objective.

So, how can you be your own coach?

Treat yourself like a friend or loved one and give yourself advice accordingly. That’s why in our tried and tested daily system, we don’t write responses to prompts like ‘How could I improve?’ or ‘What could have gone better today?’ Instead, we write advice for our future selves

This approach solves a few things:

1. It prevents us from writing about insignificant issues that won’t matter in the future. We don’t sweat the small stuff.
2. By maintaining a close relationship with our future selves, we have more incentive to set ourselves up for success. We make healthy decisions that are kind and avoid behaviours that will make our future selves suffer.
3. It means treating yourself like a friend, offering helpful and rational advice that stands the test of time. You extract lessons from your experiences, hoping they will make you a better person.

This journaling prompt has personally helped me remember lessons such as:

‘relationships are your most important asset, don’t neglect their investments’ or ‘remember not to attach your happiness to external outcomes’ - direct quotes from my own personal Evolve Journal.

Being kind to yourself is an act of self-discipline; it’s not something that comes naturally to me. However, since I started reflecting regularly in this way, my automatic reactions have shifted, and my self-talk has become similar to the advice I would give a friend.

I no longer beat myself up; instead, I aim to build myself up.

Make yourself better—that’s what friends do.

- Freddie, Co-founder of Evolve Journey 

We all rely on habits and systems to get through our daily lives. The average person is said to make about 35,000 decisions every single day, that would easily become VERY overwhelming if we didn’t have habits to put us into auto pilot. In fact, Gerald Zaltman, a Harvard Business School professor, suggests that 95% of our decisions occur in the subconscious mind.

That is why most of us from an early age have ingrained healthy habits that keep our lives in good order. For example, brushing your teeth every day is a simple and effective way to take care of yourself. A missed day here and there won’t automatically qualify for a new filling, but consistently neglecting teeth will certainly lead to negative outcomes for your health, self-confidence and eventually your dentist bill.

So, if you’ve missed brushing your teeth one night you’re unlikely to throw caution to the wind and abandon canine care altogether. In reality, you’re much more likely to do the opposite with a longer brush, as an apology to make up for your sins. Instead, you will launch into a morning assault, flossing and brushing until squeaky clean.

But why are other healthy habits so different when we fall off the horse?

The quitting smoker has one fag and sees it as an excuse for a 20 year relapse. One missed gym session turns into 5 as the habit fades into a distant memory.

Journaling, which is essentially a toothbrush for your mind can also fall into this category if we aren’t careful. Often people use a guided journal to help with all things productivity, gratitude and habit tracking. Sometimes holidays serve as a break from journaling as there is no productivity to be had, just pure relaxation (like me below on holiday in Vienna).

There’s no problem with this, apart from when you come back to reality and the journaling habit that once served you so well has fallen by the wayside.

This blog post is inspired by two conversations with friends. The first came after I enquired how she was getting on with her Evolve Journal, her reply intrigued me. She openly shared how consistent she'd been the first two months and had felt a lot of benefits. But, after returning from holiday, never picked it back up. Only a couple days later a different mate, who I know for a fact had been religiously gyming for months, explained how it had taken him 2 months to get back into the gym after a holiday. 

We wouldn’t have this approach with our teeth, and for good reason. So why do we do it with other healthy habits?

Not doing things we know we should, can eventually end up weighing heavy on us. Building up a sort of ambient anxiety that grows the longer we put off what we know deep down we should be doing. This might be a culmination of little lies to ourselves or just the sheer fact we feel we are moving further away from our idealised self.

Despite the feeling of knowing you should do it, there’s a kind of psychological difficulty there to pick things back up.

A disruption in routine can be all it takes to add a little friction to a habit that means it doesn’t get done. Don’t feel bad about this, it is just the way humans’ hard wiring and our habits work.

The running shoes get put away and out of mind. The journal makes its way from the top of the bedside table and into the drawer.

The good news though, you have agency over your decisions and knowledge like this can be the extra tricks and motivations to judo flip your outdated hardwiring and consciously adapt.

If you recognise you have a healthy habit, that serves you well, it makes sense to continue with it.

So if you’ve fallen off a healthy habit that used to serve you well recently and you’d like to form it again here’s some guidance below.

1. Habit stack.

Simply find a habit you already have and attach the habit to it. Supplements with your first glass of water during the day. Stretching whilst brushing your teeth. You get the drift.

2. Remove friction to encourage and add friction to discourage.

Want to watch less TV in the evenings so you have more time to focus on other things? Create friction by removing the remote’s batteries. Unplug the TV from the wall. You’ll be amazed at how easily this additional friction disrupts the muscle memory of switching on the TV. It turns the action from automated to considered. Of course, then the inverse is true: build your new habits, make them as easy as possible, and on the days when you are really time-poor, make sure you complete a minimum viable effort. The equivalent of 10 press-ups or 1 page read.

3. Add it to your calendar

If it's not in your calendar, it's not going to happen. Assign time in your calendar to carry out your healthy habit and stick to it. Treat it like a meeting, turn up and do what's expected. If you have a holiday coming up, assign time in your calendar for when you get back. If your habit is fitness related, book a class you enjoy or arrange to go on a run with a friend you wouldn't want to let down - accountability is key here. 

4. Reward yourself

Gamifying your life and adding incentives is a great way to gain extra motivation to carry out your healthy habits. Just make sure the rewards aren’t bad habits themselves. If you reward yourself with something naughty, it will often end in a net negative.

These actionable tips rely on your reflections and having the presence of mind to notice when you have slipped out of good habits. Regularly journaling and writing down your most important healthy daily habits is a very effective way to turn yourself into your own accountability partner. So next time you have a holiday and you want to slip back into your healthy routines, make a conscious effort to keep journaling and you will experience the powerful domino effect it will have.