Sara Frederick––The inspiring power of the fallen

The inspiring power of the fallen 

By Sara Frederick for North Valley Magazine

This summer, my kids and I always drove home from camp through an intersection loaded with supermarkets and condominiums.  As I slowed for traffic one day, I saw a grey-haired woman on the sidewalk with her head on her walker.  She stood up, shuffled three steps, and put her head back down.  My dashboard thermometer showed a balmy 103, and at the pace she was going, it would take her 20 minutes to walk to the closest store.  Despite having my kids in the car, I realized that the risk to this woman far outweighed my own discomfort.  We spun the car around and loaded her in for a ride.

I couldn’t figure out what inspired me to do something so out of character, but it felt good.  A month later, I drove past a yellow truck with “Yarnell 19” handwritten on its back and I remembered that I had seen it outside the camp that hot day.  Could it be that the simple reminder of heroic actions taken by our Arizona firefighters inspired me to “pay it forward?”

Seeing that truck made me feel good all over again, so I looked into why that might be. Research in positive psychology has found that “committing” random acts of kindness does in fact increase people’s level of positive emotion – even if the acts are anonymous, and especially if five acts are done on the same day.

Since loading a stranger into your car every day isn’t an option, here are some other small ways to perk up our lives together:

1. Pay for the coffee for the person behind you
2. Water a vacationing neighbor’s plants
3. Hold the door for a stranger
4. Say hello to someone in the elevator
5. Give a cold bottle of water to a someone who might need it

About Sara Frederick

I’ve lived the successful American Dream, graduating from an Ivy League school and working for an investment bank in their Tokyo, Hong Kong, and New York offices. Life threw me a curve ball when my father suddenly passed away and I felt compelled to reevaluate my priorities. I trained as a life coach and served as a teaching fellow for the popular Positive Psychology course at Harvard. Now at the age of 35, I write on mind-body wellness from my home in Scottsdale, where I live with my husband and two small children.