Mind Over Matter Psych Talks | Season 1 Episode 4 | Written Reflection

It’s a beautiful, sunny morning here in Montana. There’s something about being surrounded by snow capped mountains, sunlight spilling through the valleys and little streams running between the trees that makes you pause for a moment. Everything a little slower. A little quieter. Perhaps when the world around you goes quiet enough, you start noticing things you’d otherwise rush past.

Lately, I’ve been thinking about good deeds. Not the polished, applause worthy version we sometimes picture, the fundraiser, the headline making rescue, the grand gesture. I mean the everyday kind. The good deed that happens in an ordinary interaction, that nobody else notices, and that is easy to overlook precisely because it rarely feels significant enough to count.

That’s actually something I’ve had to rethink in myself, and it starts, as a lot of things do for me, with where I first learnt that giving was something you did rather than something you felt.

Growing up, the world could feel quite harsh to me, but my community often felt warm, and a lot of that warmth was tied to church and religion. That was where I first learnt that a good deed wasn’t a feeling. It was an action. I remember watching my family make offerings at church, even during times when I knew money was tight. They were not giving because they had plenty to spare, but because giving was part of what they believed in. Every mass, without fail, there would be an offering. I watched people pray for the world, sacrifice their time and show up for people who needed them. I became heavily involved in my own religion too. My family are very passionate Catholics, but there was also something about service itself that appealed to me. I was an altar server for years, and looking back, it was one of the first responsibilities I experienced that felt completely selfless. There was something satisfying about doing what needed to be done without expecting anything in return.

In psychology, that description matters more than it sounds. A good deed is generally understood as an act intended to benefit someone else, regardless of whether it benefits you too. The benefit to another person is the defining feature, not the size of the act or the effort behind it. I didn’t have the language for that as a child serving at the altar, but I understood the feeling of it perfectly well.

Then life happened. Some of what I experienced hardened me. I stopped attending church as much and started making excuses, growing less connected to that part of myself. Prayer, interestingly, never really left. It had been instilled too deeply for that. I think sometimes we don’t completely lose the habit of doing good for others. We just lose our connection to it.

For me, that connection started returning during COVID. I began thinking about concrete things I could actually do for other people, small good deeds that might create a little more lightness during a period that felt incredibly heavy. I became involved in community projects and volunteer work, some of it genuinely difficult, because when you spend time around people who are struggling, you can’t remain untouched by what you see. It brings you face to face with how much people carry.

Then came the riots in Durban. A lot of the hard work my family had been involved in was destroyed, and watching that happen was painful. But what stays with me just as strongly is what happened afterwards. A group of us in the community came together to protect what we could and rebuild what had been damaged. That wasn’t one good deed. It was hundreds of small ones stacked on top of each other, someone bringing food, someone offering a spare pair of hands, someone simply showing up for a second day when it would have been easier not to. I felt fulfilled, but not in a superficial way. I wasn’t simply helping other people. I was helping my own family too. There was a genuine sense of purpose in knowing my actions were part of something bigger than my own circumstances.

That experience is a useful place to bring in some of the psychoeducation, because most of us are working from a very narrow definition of a good deed without realising it. In psychology, good deeds fall under the broader umbrella of prosocial behaviour, meaning any voluntary action intended to benefit another person or group. That includes helping, sharing, comforting, cooperating, volunteering and offering emotional or practical support. Researchers studying prosocial behaviour have consistently found that it does not need to be costly, planned or visible to qualify. A five second act, such as holding a door or offering a genuine compliment, meets the same definition as a much larger gesture.

What differs is not whether something is a good deed, but its scale, its cost to the giver and how visible it is to others. Some good deeds are small and momentary, while others are sustained and structural, such as long term volunteering or fundraising. Some cost us very little, while others involve real sacrifice of time, money, comfort or energy, which is closer to what psychologists specifically call altruism, helping that comes at a cost to the giver. And some are witnessed and socially rewarded, while many of the most meaningful ones are not witnessed at all. I mention this because I think most of us quietly believe a good deed only counts if it scores highly on all three of those. It has to be big, costly and, ideally, seen. That belief makes good deeds feel rare and difficult, when in reality the vast majority of prosocial behaviour that shapes daily life is small, low cost and invisible.

This year, I’ve been trying to become more intentional about my own good deeds, and my journal has actually played a surprisingly important role. One of its prompts asks me to write down a daily act of self care alongside a daily good deed. At the start of the year, I found the good deed section far harder than expected. I would sit there wondering what I’d actually done that counted, because I’d created a very specific idea of what a good deed was supposed to look like. Something grand. Something significant. Something worthy of writing down. Eventually, I realized I was making it far more complicated than it needed to be.

Once I started paying attention to the smaller moments, the entries became much easier. Letting someone go ahead of me. Leaving money in a vending machine for a stranger. Holding a door open. Complimenting someone. Checking in on a person having a difficult time. None of it was particularly remarkable. Most of it took almost no effort. But perhaps that’s exactly why it matters. We often assume we need more time, money or resources before we can meaningfully contribute to someone else’s day. We imagine a good deed as something requiring a sacrifice large enough to be noticed. My journal made me realize I was overlooking the opportunities already sitting inside my ordinary day.

One of those overlooked opportunities is verbal appreciation, particularly at work. Someone helps you, covers something for you, makes your day easier, and because everyone’s busy, it’s easy to move straight on to whatever’s next without acknowledging it. I’ve noticed that in myself too. We sometimes assume people know we appreciate them, but there’s something different about actually saying it. Telling a colleague, thank you, you really helped me today, costs almost nothing, but it lets them know their effort wasn’t invisible. Psychologically, this matters more than it sounds. Feeling appreciated has been linked to a stronger sense of belonging and reduced stress, and expressing genuine gratitude tends to strengthen the relationship between the two people involved, not just the mood of the person receiving it. It is a good deed that works in both directions.

Good deeds become slightly more complicated with strangers, of course, since there is no relationship to rely on and no obligation to fulfil, just a choice to be considerate. Even something like being a courteous driver has become part of my own thinking here. We spend so much time surrounded by complete strangers on the road, each absorbed in their own deadlines and frustrations, with no idea what kind of day the person beside us is having. That doesn’t mean becoming an endlessly patient saint behind the wheel. But there is a real choice in how much hostility we bring into an interaction that could otherwise stay entirely neutral. Sometimes a good deed is simply deciding that another person’s mistake doesn’t need to become your anger. There are bigger, more structured ways of practising this too. Volunteering, soup kitchens, beach clean ups, reading with children, supporting a local organisation, fundraising or contributing financially can all be meaningful ways of turning concern into action. I’ve also become particularly interested in a quieter form of this, supporting people who are already doing good work within their own communities. Sometimes a good deed isn’t about leading everything yourself. Sometimes it’s recognising someone else’s effort and helping them continue it.

It helps, at this point, to separate a few terms that tend to get used interchangeably. A good deed is an action. Kindness is closer to an attitude or disposition that often produces good deeds. Compassion involves noticing another person’s suffering and responding with care, which may or may not lead to a concrete act. Altruism refers to helping someone at a cost to yourself, regardless of the motive behind it. In everyday life these overlap constantly. You might notice a colleague is struggling, feel concern for them, which is compassion, and then offer to help with their workload, which becomes a good deed. If helping requires you to give up your lunch break or take on extra pressure, it edges into altruism too. I find this distinction useful because it reminds us that a good deed isn’t simply about being a nice person in the abstract. It involves attention, choice and behaviour. You can feel compassion all day and never turn it into anything. A good deed is what happens when that feeling becomes an action, however small.

There is a tendency to think of good deeds as something soft and purely emotional, but there is an interesting psychological side to it too. Research into prosocial behaviour has explored its relationship with wellbeing, social connection and meaning, and helping others is often associated with positive emotional experiences and reduced stress. There is even a term commonly used to describe the positive feeling people can experience after helping someone else, the helper’s high. But I don’t think good deeds should be reduced to a psychological hack for feeling better. That misses the point entirely. If I help somebody purely for the emotional reward afterwards, the act can start to feel transactional, another wellness strategy to optimize because it makes me feel good. For me, there is something far more meaningful in the fact that a good deed takes us outside of ourselves. We spend so much of life inside our own heads, thinking about our problems, our disappointments and the things that haven’t gone the way we wanted. Shifting attention toward somebody else’s experience offers a different perspective. Someone else needs help. Someone else needs encouragement. Someone else might simply need to know they’ve been noticed. Sometimes we have the capacity to give exactly that.

Our capacity for good deeds is also influenced by what is happening inside us. When we are stressed, overwhelmed or preoccupied, our attention can narrow, and we can become more focused on getting through our own day than noticing what someone else might need. That doesn’t necessarily mean we’ve become less caring. Sometimes our own emotional and practical resources are simply being used elsewhere. This is one reason I find it more useful to think of good deeds as a practice rather than a fixed personality trait. It means we can become more intentional about it. We can learn to notice more. We can become more aware of how we respond to people, recognise when stress is making us impatient, and choose differently when we have the capacity to do so. Nobody wakes up one morning and simply becomes a better person. Reflective practices such as journaling and mindfulness can help us notice our own behaviour and how we respond to other people, and that noticing is often the first good deed of the day, the one we do for ourselves before we can offer anything outward.

My journal has made me pay attention in a way I wasn’t before, and if anything, it makes me question myself more honestly rather than proving I’m a good person. Was I actually paying attention to other people today? Did I notice an opportunity to help? Did I express appreciation, or assume people already knew? Did I do something because I wanted to, or because I wanted recognition? Did I have enough capacity to give without completely neglecting myself?

That last question matters more than it might sound, because the same journal that asks me to record a good deed also asks me to record an act of self care, and I like that they sit beside each other. There is a version of doing good for others that becomes exhausting when we forget that we’re included in the equation too. We can become so focused on being useful, generous and available that eventually there is nothing left. That isn’t sustainable. Taking care of yourself doesn’t make you less generous. Sometimes it is exactly what allows you to show up for other people without resentment or the feeling that you are constantly sacrificing yourself. Boundaries are part of that too. A good deed does not require saying yes to everything, tolerating disrespect or ignoring your own needs. Sometimes the most useful thing you can do for another person is help them. Sometimes it is stepping back and letting them take responsibility for themselves.

Moving between very different environments has also made me notice how much our surroundings shape whether good deeds happen at all. There are places where people feel more connected to community because community is necessary, and places where independence is valued so highly that people can go through an entire day without a meaningful interaction with another person. Neither experience is simply good or bad, but I do think there is something we risk losing when efficiency becomes more important than humanity, particularly in a world where more interactions are automated, reduced to transactions or filtered through screens. Sometimes the simplest way of creating space for a good deed is remembering there is another person on the other side of the interaction. Not a username. Not a customer. Not the person slowing you down. A person, with a history, a difficult day, something they’re worried about, and probably a few things you’ll never know they’re carrying.

I don’t want good deeds to become something performed when there is an audience. I want them to quietly shape how I move through ordinary life. That doesn’t mean becoming some endlessly selfless version of myself. I can still have boundaries. Still say no. Still be frustrated. Still prioritize myself. A good deed doesn’t require being endlessly available. The riots taught me what collective good deeds look like when people have no choice but to come together. My upbringing taught me what generosity can look like when people don’t have much to give. My work and volunteering have shown me what happens when you sit close enough to other people’s struggles to realise how much everyone is carrying. And my journal has taught me something simpler still. I don’t have to wait for the next big moment. There are opportunities for a good deed scattered throughout an ordinary day. Sometimes I notice them. Sometimes I don’t. The point, for me, is to keep getting better at noticing.

Maybe changing the world isn’t always about doing something extraordinary. Maybe sometimes it is about making sure the person who crosses your path today leaves the interaction feeling a little more seen than they did before. Perhaps that’s a good enough place to start.

Mind Over Matter.

Disclaimer: This article is for general psychoeducational and informational purposes only. It reflects personal experiences and perspectives and is not a substitute for individual counselling, psychological assessment, diagnosis, or treatment. Where personal experiences are shared, identifying details have been changed or omitted to protect privacy.