World Kindness Day November 2025
November 13 is World Kindness Day.
People with or without mental health concerns benefit from kindness.
Practicing kindness in the form of gestures or acts (without expecting anything in return) has no known risks or harms (Nguyen & Lee, 2025).
The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates over a billion people live with a mental illness worldwide (2025).
Small acts of kindness might look like holding the door for a stranger, leaving a generous tip, preparing a meal for a friend or neighbor, volunteering for a charitable cause, or helping someone shovel their driveway after it snows: kindness can take many creative forms.
What is one way you can practice kindness today?
How can you practice kindness towards yourself? Kindness towards a friend? Kindness towards a neighbor?
Self-compassion is a way to practice self-kindness (What Is Self-Compassion?).
What’s neat about kindness is that is free and readily available for anyone to use (or accept) anywhere.
This World Kindness Day, strive to be kind to yourself or someone else.
If that works out, try again tomorrow and the next day.
Meet the Author:
Nicole Zegiestowsky, M.S. (she/her)
Nicole Zegiestowsky, M.S. (she/her) is a pre-licensed therapist at Stellar Insight Counseling with a master’s in clinical psychology from the University of Alaska, Anchorage.
Nicole is a LGBTQ+ and neurodivergent affirming therapist who works with clients struggling with anxiety, depression, trauma, and perinatal/postpartum mental health.
Read more from Nicole on the Stellar Insight Counseling Mental Health Blog.
If you live in Alaska and are seeking a new therapist, contact Nicole for a free 20-minute initial consultation and schedule an appointment today.
References
Nguyen, T. L., & Lee, J. Y. (2025). Kindness as a public health action. Communications medicine, 5(1), 122. https://doi.org/10.1038/s43856-025-00861-3
https://www.who.int/news/item/02-09-2025-over-a-billion-people-living-with-mental-health-conditions-services-require-urgent-scale-up