Speaker 1: There's been considerable research in recent years showing that unkindness
Speaker 1: and incivility are contagious. But at the same time, there's
Speaker 1: also been a lot of research showing that kindness welcome
Speaker 1: to the one you feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have
Speaker 1: recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like
Speaker 1: garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think
Speaker 1: ring true, and yet for many of us, our thoughts
Speaker 1: don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy,
Speaker 1: or fear. We see what we don't have instead of
Speaker 1: what we do. We think things that hold us back
Speaker 1: and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking.
Speaker 1: Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort
Speaker 1: to make a life worth living. This podcast is about
Speaker 1: how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction,
Speaker 1: how they feed their good wealth. Thanks for joining us.
Speaker 1: Our guest on this episode is Donna Cameron, who has
Speaker 1: spent her career working with nonprofit organizations and causes as
Speaker 1: an executive, a consultant, a trainer, and a volunteer. She's
Speaker 1: the recipient of multiple writing awards. Donna has published numerous
Speaker 1: articles and in two thousand and eleven, co authored with
Speaker 1: Kristen Leather's One Hill, Many Voices, Stories of hope and healing.
Speaker 1: In this interview, Donna and Eric discuss her book, A
Speaker 1: Year of Living Kindly Choices that will change your life
Speaker 1: in the world around you. Hi, Donna, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 1: Hi Eric, thanks for inviting me. I'm delighted to be
Speaker 1: with you. Yeah. Your book is called A Year of
Speaker 1: Living Kindly Choices that will change your life and the
Speaker 1: world around you, And we will get into that in
Speaker 1: just a moment. But we're going to start the way
Speaker 1: that we always do, and that's with the parable. There's
Speaker 1: a grandmother who's talking with her grandson and she says,
Speaker 1: in life, there are two wolves inside of us that
Speaker 1: are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which
Speaker 1: represents things like kindness, bravery, and love, and the other
Speaker 1: is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and
Speaker 1: hatred and fear. And the grandson stops and thinks about
Speaker 1: it for a second. He says, well, grandmother, which one wins?
Speaker 1: And she says, the one you feed. So I'd like
Speaker 1: to start off by asking you what that parable means
Speaker 1: to you in your life and in the work that
Speaker 1: you do. I've always loved that parable, Eric, and I
Speaker 1: love that you asked this question. Two answers come to
Speaker 1: mind for me. One it's sort of a macro level,
Speaker 1: and one at a more micro level. The first one
Speaker 1: is that there's been considerable research in recent years showing
Speaker 1: that unkindness and incivility are contagious, literally contagious. They pass
Speaker 1: from one person to the next, just like a cold
Speaker 1: or the flu. If we experience unkindness, even if we
Speaker 1: only witness it and aren't directly involved, it causes us
Speaker 1: to behave more rudely in our next encounter. And I
Speaker 1: think that really explains a lot of what we're seeing
Speaker 1: in society these days. Incivility has become epidemic because we're
Speaker 1: feeding it. But at the same time, there's also been
Speaker 1: a lot of research showing that kindness is equally contagious,
Speaker 1: So just like a virus, it infects people who come
Speaker 1: into contact with it, and the same as as incivility,
Speaker 1: whether we extend the kindness, we receive it, or even
Speaker 1: just witness it, it's a catalyst for us to behave
Speaker 1: more kindly. So I think we have a choice in
Speaker 1: which wolf we feed. And this arena, it's a choice
Speaker 1: in which epidemic we want to spread. And then on
Speaker 1: on a more micro level, let me share this example
Speaker 1: from my career. I worked in the nonprofit world for
Speaker 1: for more than thirty years, charitable and philanthropic nonprofits and
Speaker 1: also nonprofit trade and professional organizations. And with the latter
Speaker 1: we sometimes worked with associations whose members jobs we're all
Speaker 1: about looking for mistakes, looking for errors, looking for abnormalities,
Speaker 1: jobs like building inspectors or radiologists or forensic accountants. So
Speaker 1: they spend their days looking for something to be wrong.
Speaker 1: And because they're good at their jobs, we're safer, we're
Speaker 1: in better condition. Um buildings meet construction codes, tumors are
Speaker 1: caught earlier, financial or regularities are identified, so they do
Speaker 1: really important work. But the problem comes if some of
Speaker 1: these people can't turn off that fault finding skill outside
Speaker 1: their job. They become people, and we all know them,
Speaker 1: the people who you go to dinner with them and
Speaker 1: they point out the typo and the menu, or they
Speaker 1: criticize the way their kid mowed the lawn. Rather than
Speaker 1: appreciating the fact that their kids bowed the lawn, they
Speaker 1: point out every flaw they see no matter how unimportant,
Speaker 1: because they just can't stop looking for errors. So they
Speaker 1: become people who are really good at seeing what's wrong,
Speaker 1: but they miss out on what's right. I call it
Speaker 1: playing gotcha with life, or or listening for the miss
Speaker 1: note rather than the music. I don't know if you
Speaker 1: know people like this, but they're exhausting to be around.
Speaker 1: And so with regard to them, I would say that
Speaker 1: in their jobs, they're feeding the good wolf, but when
Speaker 1: they can't turn off that critical sensor, they start feeding
Speaker 1: the bad wolf, right, And I would say that people
Speaker 1: in those careers maybe more so that way, but a
Speaker 1: lot of us have an inclination towards that. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of writing about, you know, the negativity,
Speaker 1: the negativity bias being a hardwired sort of thing, and
Speaker 1: it's just something I think that I certainly have to
Speaker 1: watch for in my life to make sure I'm looking
Speaker 1: for what is right versus what is wrong. And it's
Speaker 1: just a it's a matter of choosing what you choose
Speaker 1: to look for exactly, and it takes practice too, indeed,
Speaker 1: it does. So a year of living, Kindly talk to
Speaker 1: me about your year of living. Kindly tell me sort
Speaker 1: of what your idea was maybe talk a little bit
Speaker 1: about some of the things that you did during that year. Well,
Speaker 1: for years, actually decades, I've been really aware of the
Speaker 1: power of kindness. And I've been awed by people who
Speaker 1: are just genuinely kind ing we're around them, they just
Speaker 1: feels so wonderful. And I I'm a nice person, and
Speaker 1: I was certainly raised to be nice, that was my
Speaker 1: mother's mantra, but I was never told to be kind.
Speaker 1: And I started to really notice that there's a difference
Speaker 1: between kind and nice, and um, I would set an
Speaker 1: intention to be kinder, and it would fall by the
Speaker 1: wayside when my business got really busy or stressful, or
Speaker 1: just life got in the way. So in two thousand
Speaker 1: and fifteen, I decided to blog about kindness, and I
Speaker 1: called the blog a Year of Living Kindly, thinking I
Speaker 1: would just blog for a year about my own efforts
Speaker 1: to really live a kind life. Also, because I'm kind
Speaker 1: of nerdy, I wanted to do a lot of research
Speaker 1: into into kindness. I was seeing that there's a lot
Speaker 1: of studies now quantifying the benefits of kindness, and I
Speaker 1: wanted to explore and share those and just share what
Speaker 1: I was learning and observing about kindness, and for me,
Speaker 1: having a blog really was the solution. It held my
Speaker 1: feet to the fire. I had invited a few friends
Speaker 1: to follow the blog, so I know people were watching,
Speaker 1: and if I just let it fall by the wayside,
Speaker 1: that would be sort of a noticeable failure. So I
Speaker 1: blogged weekly about about kindness and I just learned so
Speaker 1: much and it was always on my radar. So it
Speaker 1: was an amazing year for me in terms of experiencing kindness,
Speaker 1: getting better myself at extending kindness, and seeing how much
Speaker 1: kindness there really is around us that we sometimes either
Speaker 1: take for granted or more likely we're oblivious to it.
Speaker 1: And then at the end of the year, the people
Speaker 1: who followed my blog encouraged me to continue writing it
Speaker 1: and to turn it into a book. And I had
Speaker 1: seen really early on that committing to and this wasn't
Speaker 1: something I was going to do for a year and
Speaker 1: then move on to learning salsa dancing or cooking Caribbean
Speaker 1: food or something. It really was something I wanted to
Speaker 1: commit to for as long as I'm on the planet.
Speaker 1: Can we dance and be kind? That's what I need
Speaker 1: to certainly do that. Yes, although I think a lot
Speaker 1: of people would say that my dancing is an unkindness
Speaker 1: for those around me. It's it's entirely possible that that
Speaker 1: case could be made. So you said, being nice isn't
Speaker 1: the same as being kind, and this is uh, for
Speaker 1: some reason, my mom's catchphrase the last few years, So
Speaker 1: tell me what the difference is, since we haven't had
Speaker 1: her on to tell us. Okay, I think nice doesn't
Speaker 1: ask a lot of us. We can tolerate someone and
Speaker 1: still be nice to them. We can be fairly indifferent
Speaker 1: and still be nice. We can be nice and not
Speaker 1: really make a connection with someone. But I don't think
Speaker 1: we can be kind and do any of those things.
Speaker 1: Kind really asks us to connect with the person we're
Speaker 1: dealing with. It asks us to really be vulnerable, because
Speaker 1: we're taking a risk. If we extend a kindness, it
Speaker 1: might be rejected. We might do it clumsily, we might
Speaker 1: call unwanted attention to ourselves. It takes courage to be kind.
Speaker 1: I don't think it takes courage to be nice. I
Speaker 1: think that's very much true. And when when I read
Speaker 1: that in the book, I I certainly felt a recognition there.
Speaker 1: And I won't go on record with how kind or
Speaker 1: not kind, I think I am, but nice is a
Speaker 1: big one. And and one of the things you said
Speaker 1: that I thought, really sum this up well, you said,
Speaker 1: extend yourself captures the essence of kindness. It also highlights
Speaker 1: the difference between niceness and kindness, that idea of extending
Speaker 1: ourselves beyond maybe what is comfortable exactly. Yes, there was
Speaker 1: a theologians uh here in Seattle. Uh He was a
Speaker 1: columnist for the Seattle Times, a motivational speaker, just a wonderful,
Speaker 1: incredibly kind man. And he used to hand out little
Speaker 1: cards with the words extend yourself on them. And I've
Speaker 1: carried one of his cards in my wallet for probably
Speaker 1: thirty years now. And Dale Turner is gone now. He
Speaker 1: was just a marvelous man. But I've I've tried to
Speaker 1: keep that, uh, that tradition alive, and I now have
Speaker 1: little cards that say extend yourself that I I give
Speaker 1: out whenever I have a chance to talk about kindness.
Speaker 1: But I think it really it does summarize in two
Speaker 1: short words, what kind of all about you say, Being
Speaker 1: kind means caring, It means making an effort, It means
Speaker 1: thinking about the impact I'm having in an interaction with
Speaker 1: someone and endeavoring to make it rich and meaningful, giving
Speaker 1: them what they need at the exact moment, without worrying
Speaker 1: about whether I get anything in return. And that's a
Speaker 1: beautiful sentence, and it's also a high bar. So talk
Speaker 1: to me about you in your year of living kindly
Speaker 1: and times that you come up short, and how you
Speaker 1: work with that, because it's seems inevitable to me that
Speaker 1: in anything we endeavor, any sort of extending ourselves, inevitably
Speaker 1: we come up short some of the time. Oh absolutely,
Speaker 1: unless someone is Mother Teresa or the Dalai Lama. We're
Speaker 1: never going to become perfect at kindness. It's really a path,
Speaker 1: not a destination. And I think for me personally, and
Speaker 1: it's going to be different for everyone, but for me,
Speaker 1: some of the barriers to kindness that I really needed
Speaker 1: to overcome and sometimes didn't were obliviousness, just not noticing
Speaker 1: that there's an opportunity in front of me to be kind,
Speaker 1: or even not noticing that someone is extending me a
Speaker 1: kindness and I may not see it, you know, something
Speaker 1: as simple as holding a door for someone. And then
Speaker 1: I think, also because I was raised by a mother
Speaker 1: who said never call attention to yourself. Sometimes doing something
Speaker 1: kind where I know I'm going to call attention to myself,
Speaker 1: whether that's stepping in if someone's being buoyed or um,
Speaker 1: you know, going and helping someone who needs help immediately.
Speaker 1: There's still sometimes a hesitation there because I know I'm
Speaker 1: calling attention to myself. But again, it's one of those
Speaker 1: things that gets easier with practice. If I were an
Speaker 1: inherently kind person, I wouldn't be doing this because kindness
Speaker 1: would just be such second nature to me. And I
Speaker 1: do know people like that, uh, and I want to
Speaker 1: be one of them. You say that there's a chasm
Speaker 1: between kindness and unkindness. Talk to me about what that is. Well,
Speaker 1: I think it's indifference. Really, it doesn't mean we're unkind,
Speaker 1: but that doesn't necessarily not being unkind doesn't mean we're kind.
Speaker 1: So someone who says, well, I didn't do anything bad,
Speaker 1: so that must make me a kind person, No, it doesn't.
Speaker 1: Kindness is more than not being unkind, and I think
Speaker 1: there's a lot of us who spend more of our
Speaker 1: time in that sort of indifferent stage. I don't know
Speaker 1: if you're old enough to remember back in the sixties
Speaker 1: when Kitty j. Genevise was murdered in New York and
Speaker 1: all of these people listen to her screams, but nobody
Speaker 1: did anything about it. And that's an extreme example. But
Speaker 1: you know, they weren't evil people, but they just didn't
Speaker 1: want to get involved, and kind of desks us to
Speaker 1: get involved. That the chasm is jumping in being willing
Speaker 1: to get involved, even if it's a bit of an inconvenience,
Speaker 1: or even if it's a bit of a risk. And
Speaker 1: that is certainly one of the things that can get
Speaker 1: in the way of being kind it being inconvenient. You
Speaker 1: list a bunch of other things that get in the
Speaker 1: way of our kindness. I'll just read the list and
Speaker 1: then I'll let you pick one or two that you
Speaker 1: would like to talk about. So fear, laziness, impatience, indifference, inertia, obliviousness, shyness,
Speaker 1: and habit. So those are some of the things that
Speaker 1: you list that get in the way of kindness. Maybe
Speaker 1: you could just pick one or two of those and
Speaker 1: and talk a little bit more about them. Well, I
Speaker 1: think fear is probably the biggest one because it comes
Speaker 1: in a lot of different flavors. It's the fear of
Speaker 1: being rejected the fear of doing it wrong, the fear
Speaker 1: of unwanted attention. That's a hard one for us. Fear
Speaker 1: often paralyzes us. And I'm just trying to take my
Speaker 1: fear along with me and stick it in my pocket.
Speaker 1: Acknowledge it, but move ahead anyway. Another one, and I'm
Speaker 1: not sure if you mentioned it is keeping score. And
Speaker 1: this one for me was a big ah. I started
Speaker 1: noticing how many times in our lives we keep score.
Speaker 1: So it could be something as simple as um, you know,
Speaker 1: with your spouse or your partners saying I emptied the
Speaker 1: dishwasher last time, it's your turn to do that, or
Speaker 1: we had them over for dinner last it's their turn
Speaker 1: to have us. I won't call her until she calls me.
Speaker 1: All these, all these silly things I I even encountered
Speaker 1: a woman who created this elaborate spreadsheet to track her
Speaker 1: Christmas cards. And uh she tracked the people she sent
Speaker 1: cards to and their names and addresses, but whether she
Speaker 1: received a card from them, and whether they signed it
Speaker 1: or included a personal note. And then at the end
Speaker 1: of the season she would go through and delete anyone
Speaker 1: who didn't send her a card so that they wouldn't
Speaker 1: get one from her the next year, And I just
Speaker 1: thought that was such a strange thing to do to
Speaker 1: our friends, to keep score that way. We never know
Speaker 1: maybe somebody's having a year where they can't afford to
Speaker 1: buy Christmas cards, or they're dealing with illness and they
Speaker 1: just can't do it. But to scratch a friend off
Speaker 1: off the list because they didn't send a card, that
Speaker 1: for me was just a real eye opener of Um,
Speaker 1: what do we get from keeping score? I think we
Speaker 1: just get grudges and resentments, And if we can stop
Speaker 1: doing that, it frees up our mind to to appreciate
Speaker 1: our friends and and appreciate our lives more. If Christmas
Speaker 1: cards were a criteria for friendship, I would have exactly
Speaker 1: zero friends. I'm I'm afraid I'm in the same camp.
Speaker 1: It's been a long time since I sent a card,
Speaker 1: and fortunately I still have some friends who still send
Speaker 1: them to me. Exactly. But the point is a really
Speaker 1: is a really important point, which is that to the
Speaker 1: extent that we are doing that, keeping score, not only
Speaker 1: does it limit our ability to be kindness, it does
Speaker 1: limit our ability and all out of cases to have
Speaker 1: good relationships. Because that's not the way things really work.
Speaker 1: You know, maybe ideally over a long period of time,
Speaker 1: there's some degree of mutuality in a in a relationship,
Speaker 1: I think for to have close relationships with people, there
Speaker 1: is some of that, but boy, it can be kind
Speaker 1: of out of whack at different times, or you know,
Speaker 1: one person is more there for the other than another time,
Speaker 1: and vice versa. And and uh and I agree. I
Speaker 1: agree keeping scores a surefire way to be unhappy totally. Yes,
Speaker 1: I guess obliviousness is another big one. Uh And I
Speaker 1: don't want to be one of those people who who
Speaker 1: adds to the conversation about always spend too much time
Speaker 1: on our devices and we're our heads are always in
Speaker 1: our screens, But really, what are we missing by choosing
Speaker 1: to be so connected? I see parents down at the
Speaker 1: park near our home. Instead of enjoying their kids playing
Speaker 1: in the park, they're on their phones. I think we
Speaker 1: need to always remember that when we say yes to something,
Speaker 1: it often means we're say, say, notice something else. So
Speaker 1: I just encourage people to find a balance with their
Speaker 1: technology so that it doesn't keep them from noticing other
Speaker 1: other things, noticing that opportunity to be kind, or someone
Speaker 1: trying to extend a kindness to them. Yeah. I love
Speaker 1: that line that when we say yes to one thing,
Speaker 1: we're often saying no to another. That's a really useful
Speaker 1: sentence to keep in mind, because it's totally true. And
Speaker 1: I have noticed often that I will do, not necessarily unkindness,
Speaker 1: but when I'm in the middle of doing something and
Speaker 1: somebody asked me something or does something, I often just
Speaker 1: sort of give a very you know, brusque. Is that
Speaker 1: the right way for that? Um, it's one of those
Speaker 1: I've read a thousand times. I don't know if I've
Speaker 1: heard it said, but I give that sort of reaction,
Speaker 1: and then often I stop and I pull myself kind
Speaker 1: of out of the immersion I'm in, and I go, oh,
Speaker 1: hang on a second, that's not how I wanted to
Speaker 1: answer that, or that's not the response I wanted to give,
Speaker 1: And that is a degree of oblieve bousness. I don't
Speaker 1: know's it's it's just being involved in something else, but
Speaker 1: I do recognize that mechanism that when my attention is
Speaker 1: really focused in one place, if there are people around me,
Speaker 1: they often then don't get the attention. Yeah, And it's
Speaker 1: a choice we make, and we can't always be paying
Speaker 1: attention to everything around us. That just isn't isn't realistic.
Speaker 1: But we also don't need to always be connected to
Speaker 1: our internet feeds or or whatever it is that's on
Speaker 1: our screen. Let that be a lesson to those of you.
Speaker 1: Don't interrupt me. Let's talk about some of the science
Speaker 1: about the health benefits of kindness. Um, David Hamilton's has done,
Speaker 1: you say to done considerable researching reports. There are five
Speaker 1: beneficial side effects of kindness. Let's have a couple of them. Well,
Speaker 1: there are quite a few, yes, And Hamilton's is he's
Speaker 1: a Scottish researcher and he's done quite a bit of this,
Speaker 1: and there's also been a lot of other research by
Speaker 1: by other universities. But when we experience kindness, our body
Speaker 1: produces the hormone oxytocin, which has been shown to lower
Speaker 1: blood pressure and reduce inflammation. It fights heart disease and
Speaker 1: slows aging. UH. Kindness has also been shown to reduce
Speaker 1: chronic pain and reduce depression. Another fascinating study that I
Speaker 1: found was that kindness alleviate social anxiety. So people who
Speaker 1: are painfully or even debilitatingly shy if they focus on
Speaker 1: kindness instead of their discomfort. It helps them to endure
Speaker 1: and even enjoy social situations. Uh. There's also evidence that
Speaker 1: kind people sleep better and that they live longer, so
Speaker 1: that's a lot of good health benefits. I think there
Speaker 1: are a lot of people who probably hear the word
Speaker 1: kindness and think, oh, well, that's sweet, it's fluffy, it
Speaker 1: sounds nice. You know, who's gonna who's going to argue
Speaker 1: with kindness? But then they may not really realize that
Speaker 1: there's a lot of evidence to show that choosing kindness
Speaker 1: changes our lives in so many ways, and I think
Speaker 1: if enough of us do it, it's going to change
Speaker 1: the world. Definitely has lots of lots of benefits that
Speaker 1: I've experienced in my own life, and I think that
Speaker 1: that social anxiety is really I've experienced that myself. By
Speaker 1: you know, I used to have to go to these
Speaker 1: networking events for work, and and I did never I
Speaker 1: never liked them, not liking them as a mild way
Speaker 1: of putting it in a lot of causes. And what
Speaker 1: I found, though, is if I went there and I
Speaker 1: looked for somebody else who looked every bit as out
Speaker 1: of place and lonesome and morose as I did, and
Speaker 1: I just went to that person and would just kind
Speaker 1: of talk to them and find out what they were about,
Speaker 1: and just kind of ask them questions and maybe try
Speaker 1: and include them if I knew another person. I found
Speaker 1: that as soon as I started doing that, the whole
Speaker 1: situation changed for me in a way that made it
Speaker 1: a lot easier for me to be there. Yes, and
Speaker 1: and you also made it a lot easier for them.
Speaker 1: That's a great kind You say that when I am unkind,
Speaker 1: it is probably more in thought than indeed, I exercise
Speaker 1: unkind thoughts more often than unkind actions. That's me talking
Speaker 1: about me. Yes, you know, I'm outwardly. Um, I do
Speaker 1: unkind things I don't think, but I still occasionally make judgments.
Speaker 1: I will say I'm a whole lot better than than
Speaker 1: I was because I'm more aware and I don't want
Speaker 1: to make judgments. But if I see someone in the
Speaker 1: grocery store who's totally oblivious and blocking the aisles or
Speaker 1: doing something, I might make a judgment. I try not
Speaker 1: to do that now, and I and I have skills
Speaker 1: and strategies for for avoiding that. But we often say, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm a kind person because I don't ever do
Speaker 1: anything unkind. But if you're thinking unkind thoughts, you still
Speaker 1: have ways to go. Yeah, you say that. For me,
Speaker 1: unkind thoughts seem to creep in when I am in
Speaker 1: the most ordinary of circumstances, surrounded by others who, like me,
Speaker 1: are just trying to get in, get out, and get
Speaker 1: onto the next thing. And boy, that is where mine
Speaker 1: comes from to mostly, whether that be like you said,
Speaker 1: somebody blocking me in a grocery aisle, or somebody who
Speaker 1: just seems kind of oblivious that there's anybody else around them, um,
Speaker 1: at the checkoutline, driving the car. All those are places
Speaker 1: for me that the judgments rush in very quickly, and
Speaker 1: I really have to sort of work to slow myself
Speaker 1: down a little bit and and kind of try and
Speaker 1: dislodge this idea in my mind that the entire world
Speaker 1: should move at my pace or my schedule, or is
Speaker 1: there the entire world is basically there just to get
Speaker 1: out of my way. But that's as I've been talking
Speaker 1: about kindness in recent months, I just can't count how
Speaker 1: many people have come up to me and said, I
Speaker 1: think I'm a fairly kind person, except when I'm behind
Speaker 1: the wheel of my car. And then all kindness flies
Speaker 1: out the window. And then others have said where the
Speaker 1: place that really gets to them is airports are travel,
Speaker 1: So I think you just congectu sent and crowds. It's
Speaker 1: sort of a natural way for us to pull our
Speaker 1: show up and and just want to resist. And sometimes
Speaker 1: thinking in advance about how you want to behave in
Speaker 1: those situations is all it takes to to help us
Speaker 1: get past that initial response of making a judgment or
Speaker 1: ignoring people. If we think in advance, while I'm going
Speaker 1: into a situation where they're often irritants, how can I
Speaker 1: how can I avoid acting them? And one of the
Speaker 1: great ones is to employ curiosity. Two. Instead of judging people,
Speaker 1: think about I wonder what's happening in that person's life.
Speaker 1: Are are they going through some sort of a stress
Speaker 1: that's making them be oblivious to the people around them.
Speaker 1: And one of the things I've noticed is that it's
Speaker 1: just impossible to be unkind and cure areous at the
Speaker 1: same time. That's an interesting observation. I have found that
Speaker 1: with many other things and curiosity, that curiosity is a
Speaker 1: great way to stop judgment. And and you're saying that
Speaker 1: judgment is a form of unkindness. It's interesting, there's a
Speaker 1: there's a chicken and egg here a little bit right,
Speaker 1: which is I certainly notice for me that when I
Speaker 1: am in a good mood or a better mood, or
Speaker 1: in a good space, like, it's so much easier for
Speaker 1: me just to be kind. It is just easier for
Speaker 1: me to let the people on the road do their thing.
Speaker 1: I'm kind of relaxed, and yet also kind of like
Speaker 1: you're saying, sometimes then the effort of stopping and really
Speaker 1: making the effort to be kind can sort of change
Speaker 1: the mood also. So I think this goes both ways.
Speaker 1: I think you're right, and I think we attract what
Speaker 1: we look for. So, you know, going back to the
Speaker 1: wolf parable, if we're looking for kindness and expecting kindness,
Speaker 1: that's more likely what we're going to find. And if
Speaker 1: we're expecting a situation to have some sort of offense
Speaker 1: or or challenge to us, then that's what we'll pick
Speaker 1: up on exactly. So in the book, you have lots
Speaker 1: of practices for living kindly, and I was wondering, as
Speaker 1: we come nearing our end of time, if you could share,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe maybe two three, four practices that you've
Speaker 1: found to be really helpful for you as ways to
Speaker 1: be kind. I think that you know, I know for
Speaker 1: me that doing something kind is on my I have
Speaker 1: sort of a master list of like an all occurt
Speaker 1: list of things that I do that I know are
Speaker 1: good for me, and it's there's a lot of things
Speaker 1: on the list, and I obviously don't do all of
Speaker 1: them every day, but kindness is one of them. But
Speaker 1: often it's helpful to have some concrete practice, like, Okay,
Speaker 1: I want to do something kind. What are some practices
Speaker 1: that you use. Well, one of them is very simple,
Speaker 1: and that's learning to pause. I think that's probably the
Speaker 1: most powerful kindness practice there is. We tend to sort
Speaker 1: of have knee jerk reactions to other people, and um,
Speaker 1: if someone says something to us that's offensive, we snap
Speaker 1: back in the same tone. And if we just learned
Speaker 1: to pause, it changes everything. Most of us have mothers who,
Speaker 1: at one time or another said, before you respond in anger,
Speaker 1: count to ten, and that was really good advice. So
Speaker 1: in that pause, we can think about who we want
Speaker 1: to be. We can think about what else might be
Speaker 1: going on that that made that situation seem offensive. We
Speaker 1: can think about what we want to get out of
Speaker 1: this interaction and how we can manifest that. One of
Speaker 1: the things that I try to ask myself going into
Speaker 1: a situation, especially something that's new or I haven't experienced before,
Speaker 1: is what is the kind response here? And just having
Speaker 1: kindness in my radar helps me choose wisely. Another kindness
Speaker 1: practice that we most of us, really need to practice
Speaker 1: is receiving graciously. Some of us are really really good givers,
Speaker 1: but we don't receive kindness real well, especially here. We're
Speaker 1: all raised to be independent and go by our own
Speaker 1: bootstraps and things like that, and so we don't ask
Speaker 1: for help when we need it, and we we often
Speaker 1: say no if someone offers us help and we really
Speaker 1: could use it. So learning to receive graciously, whether it's
Speaker 1: at gift or a seat on the bus or a compliment,
Speaker 1: we need to sort of change our look on that
Speaker 1: and look at it as if we receive graciously, we're
Speaker 1: giving a gift to the giver, we're helping them feel
Speaker 1: good about having given something. Yeah, that's one of those
Speaker 1: things that my wise girlfriend reminds me of, or doesn't
Speaker 1: does it necessarily remind me of, but but talks about
Speaker 1: from time to time, how how important that is, and
Speaker 1: your earlier idea about the pauses. It's back to that
Speaker 1: basic Victor Frankel idea of that. You know, there's a
Speaker 1: space between stimulus and response, and in that space is
Speaker 1: where all of our human powers of choice come. And
Speaker 1: the pause, the intentional pause, is just a way to
Speaker 1: create a little bit more space there exactly. I think
Speaker 1: that pause gives us the gift of grace. It's a
Speaker 1: beautiful sentence. Well, you and I are going to continue
Speaker 1: this conversation in the post show conversation, and I'm going
Speaker 1: to ask you to tell me, uh Stephen Covey story
Speaker 1: that you tell in the book. That's one of my
Speaker 1: favorite stories of all time. Also, so you and I
Speaker 1: will do that in the post show conversation. Listeners, you
Speaker 1: can get access to that by becoming a supporter of
Speaker 1: the show at one you feed dot net slash support.
Speaker 1: But Donna, thank you so much for taking the time
Speaker 1: to come on. Thanks for sharing your book and your
Speaker 1: kindness with the world. Thank you, Eric. It was my
Speaker 1: pleasure and I so appreciate your inviting me. Yes, my pleasure. Also,
Speaker 1: take care, bye bye bye. If what you just heard
Speaker 1: was helpful to you please consider making a donation to
Speaker 1: The One You Feed podcast. Head over to one you
Speaker 1: Feed dot net slash support. The One You Feed podcast
Speaker 1: would like to sincerely thank our sponsors for supporting the show.