Category Archives: Patience

Don’t Settle for Nice

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“Kindness begins with the understanding that we all struggle.” ~Charles Glassman

Dscn1300When I talk to groups about kindness, I am always asked if there is a difference between being kind and being nice. For some, the difference may be merely semantic, but I think there’s more to it. While the outward behavior may appear the same, if we dig down, we see that there are significant differences in attitude, intention, and even energy between nice and kind.

Nice is doing the polite thing, doing what’s expected of me. I can be nice without expending too much effort, without making a connection. I can even be nice and still merely tolerate someone with my teeth gritted in a false smile, while making judgments about them and inwardly seething with impatience.

Kindness asks more of me. It asks me to withhold judgment, to genuinely care about the other person and whether they’re getting what they need from our interaction. Kindness forges connections. It also makes me vulnerable, because I don’t know how my kind action will be received—it may be rejected or misunderstood. With kindness, I risk jumping into unknown waters; with niceness, I stay safely on shore. Continue reading →

The Universe Reveals Her Secrets….

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“Practice puts brains in your muscles.” (Sam Snead)

purple flowers 1 (2)Daily, I am inspired, entertained, and even challenged by the thoughtful posts of my fellow bloggers. Recently, the wonderful Jennifer Balink at Jenny’s Lark set me off on a journey of recollection and recognition. Her lovely post recounted an experience where, as a teenager, she witnessed a friend’s mother react with grace to a situation where most of us would have a meltdown. It took years for Jenny to realize what it is that gives someone the ability to instantly respond to a setback with poise and perspective.

It isn’t virtue, or superhuman patience, or even piety. It’s practice. Tedious, mundane, sometimes even annoying, practice. As lackluster as that word may be, I believe it’s one of a dozen or so secrets to living one’s best life.

Practice is one of the most undervalued traits or actions that we humans have at our disposal. Given a choice, we’d much prefer innate genius, instantaneous transformation, or magic to make us better at some pursuit—or simply to become better humans—when the answer is practice. Just keep doing it. Just keep showing up.

“Don’t you have something a bit more wondrous . . . something, I dunno, maybe kinda sexy? Like enchantment, or sleight-of-hand, or maybe something I could buy with cryptocurrency?” Continue reading →

Flawed or Flawesome?

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“We’re all just walking each other home.” (Ram Dass)

Some people are effortlessly kind. I’m not one of them. I’d like to be able to claim that after studying and writing about kindness for going on five years I am now a paragon of compassion, consideration, and benevolence. Eh, not so much. I still get cranky (though it’s no longer my default setting), I can still make judgments, and I still succumb to obliviousness. I’m remain fully and imperfectly human.

Those rare people for whom kindness comes naturally and instinctively probably don’t think about it a lot. Kindness, for them, is as water to a fish. For the rest of us, kindness ebbs and flow. There are times when it comes effortlessly, and times when mustering kindness is harder than summoning a genie. Instead—often to our own chagrin—we’re snarky, indifferent, oblivious, and worse.

If you’re like me, you can even feel it happening. Continue reading →

The Case for Patience … and Impatience

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“Patience is not simply the ability to wait – it’s how we behave while we’re waiting.” (Joyce Meyer)

Attribution: Donna CameronI’ve been thinking about patience a lot lately. Patience is not easy. The world seems to be getting ever more crowded and more of us are expecting instant satisfaction. Blame it on the internet, or the microwave, or our overscheduled lives, but we seem less and less inclined to pause and allow life to unfold at its own pace.

That’s not always bad.

In our day-to-day interactions, patience is a kindness skill sorely needed and one we can cultivate with practice. But, in another realm, a realm where a clock ticks steadily toward catastrophe, patience is a luxury we cannot afford. Here, we must put aside patience and take decisive action.

When Patience Is Not the Answer

As much as I have advocated for patience, I’ve come to see that there are times when it is not the kindest response. How long do we tolerate the behavior of corrupt politicians? How long do we permit cries of “Second Amendment” to muffle the loss of innocent lives or overshadow sanity and safety? How long do we allow climate change deniers a place at any table? Continue reading →