 My task was to knock on 10 doors and give them a treat — a "reverse trick-or-treat" kindness mission! I took a wicker basket and filled it with wrapped treats, including Emergen-C Joint Health packets, ThinkThin Crunch protein bars, and Kashi Honey Oat and Flax energy bars — all fairly healthy items.
The Smile Deck Card said to knock on 10 doors, but I took it a step further and knocked on all of the 30+ doors in my apartment building.
The results were on the whole quite positive. However, my ambivalence with doing this deed stemmed from my fear that the neighbors would be suspicious of someone knocking on their door inside of a gated building. This turned out to be the case with a number of neighbors, but that was part of the challenge for me — to maintain positive, giving intentions amidst people’s doubt and suspicion.
I found that first sharing my *feeling* associated with this act helped alleviate their barriers to openness (ex. "I decided to do something nice for my neighbors and thought you might like one of these treats"). With some people who were especially doubtful, I noticed that the interaction seemed very much out of my control. It was as if my intention combined with their energy yielded a specific type of outcome (breathing was quite helpful in between doors!).
In fact, as soon as one man opened the door and saw me holding the basket, he abruptly started to close it, saying, "I’m not interested." As he was closing the door, though, I quickly said, "No, I’m not selling anything; this is a gift." Hearing this, he opened the door again and seemed appreciative of the effort I made.
It’s almost as if having little to no agenda on my end was able to cut through people’s doubt and suspicion, to some degree. If, on the other hand, I were seeking to take something from them, I would not likely have been able to make as much of a connection with them.
So coming from a place of giving and seeking connection, I found it fairly easy to make people feel comfortable and to feel (what I perceived to be) positive sensations.
Thanks!
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Richard Whittaker
BloomBars: ‘This gets people because they think they’re coming to a bar and I never say we’re not a bar. I don’t think you have to serve alcohol and if you came here thinking that, I want you to feel like you were served something else. I want you to consider looking at that, at the value of what you get, at what the offering is. The idea was to have multiple bars that served books, vegan foods, and even causes; a ’cause’ bar that served different organizations every week. It was all about serving things that were feeding your soul in different ways.’
Taya Doro Mitchell is 
Sangha of Auspicious Companions 