12. What's the 'Rabbit Effect'?

Rabbits

For the ‘Live Up To You’ 2020 project we post one little wellbeing idea/suggestion/technique each week that you and your friends are welcome to self-experiment with in your life and see how it works for you. This wellbeing concept is around kindness and how it impacts our health outcomes.

How can one group of rabbits have better health outcomes than other groups of rabbits in a research study? Was it their genes, different diets, different exercise regimes? Turns out the key factor was they were looked after by a researcher who held, talked and played with them in a kind and caring way?

Follow this link to a really interesting article in Psychology Today about the ‘Rabbit Effect’ a termed coined by Kellie Harding. This is a link to a Radio New Zealand Interview discussing her book about Kindness and the study on rabbits that reveals the secrets to living a longer life.

What gets in the way of us being kind? Well I know for me when I get busy, overloaded and overwhelmed I’m less likely to take notice, slow down and see beyond myself and it appears I’m not the only one.

The ‘secret sauce’ to relationships really is kindness and it is also a powerful stress buffer that we could all tap into if we just slowed down and paused long enough to reconnect with what we know makes us happy and healthy.

So if you would like a few more ideas about how to add more kindness into your life. Here is a link to Live Up To You’s Project 2020 ‘HumanKIND’ Post which has lists of kindness acts you can do and templates you can use.

Special Thanks to Steffi Post who shared the ‘Rabbit Effect’ with me.