Giving someone a compliment. Donating to a food drive. Holding the door open for someone. Helping the elderly with their groceries. Telling the truth. These are all random acts of kindness that people do on a daily basis.

Even if you’ve never done any of those things, I’m sure that you have felt the positive effects that kindness has. Being kind can give you some kind of a high and it is proven that witnessing an act of kindness produces oxytocin, or the love hormone, which lowers blood pressure and improves the health of your heart. With that being said, oxytocin also increases our self-esteem and optimism.

Witnessing acts of kindness or participating in them has positive effects that are experienced in the brain. Kindness can improve your mood significantly and makes it more likely for you to want to participate in it. At the same time, engaging in acts of kindness produces endorphins, which is the brain’s natural pain killer.

“Kindness can jumpstart a cascade of positive social consequences. Helping others leads people to like you, appreciate you, to offer gratitude. It also may lead people to reciprocate in your times of need. Helping others can satisfy a basic human need for connecting with others, winning you smiles, thankfulness, and valued friendship,” said Sonja Lyubomirsky, Ph.D., professor of psychology, University of California, Riverside.

Kind people have 23% less cortisol, the stress hormone, and age two times slower than the average population. They can also reduce anxiety. During four weeks, University of British Columbia researchers assigned people with high levels of anxiety to do kind acts for other people at least six times a week. The researchers found that doing nice things for people led to a significant increase in people’s positive moods. It also led to an increase in relationship satisfaction and a decrease in social avoidance in socially anxious individuals.