This habit will make you feel better by the end of today

A totally unselfish wellness hack

The United Nations World Happiness Report came out last week, sparking the usual flurry of headlines about how to live like those in the Nordic countries that always top the list, and the usual handwringing about how the United Kingdom and the United States have both slipped down the ranking, yet again.

Being happy (or at least, not unhappy) is vital for good health - you can’t eat, move, sleep or rest well if you’re depressed. And, although the methods used to compile the World Happiness Report may be in dispute, there is one thing on which everyone agrees: kindness is key.

But kindness needs a rebrand. These days, it’s associated with vacuous social media types who tell us to #BeKind (if you’ve ever met these people in real life, you’ll often find that their kindness appears to be reserved for hashtags).

So I call on Bernadette Russell, whose new book Conversations on Kindness charts her quest to do something kind for a stranger, every single day for a year.

‘I gave away cakes, books an…