Category Archives: Practice

Withholding Judgment Puts Us on the Path to Kindness

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“We do not actually know other people; we only know our judgments.” ~Bryant McGill

pink lupine 2 5-23Last time, in our review of kindness essentials, we talked about one of the most important kindness skills: learning to pause before reacting or responding. Today, let’s explore a couple of complementary skills, things we can do (or not do) in that all-important pause.

When was the last time you made a judgment about somebody? For me, it was about an hour ago, at the supermarket. I try not to, but sometimes, when somebody appears to be entirely clueless, unaware that they’re sharing crowded spaces with other people, I find myself making assumptions about them. I’m getting better, but I still do it occasionally.

I don’t know if it’s natural instinct or habit, but we humans are quick to judge. Social scientists say that we make judgments about people within about five seconds of encountering them. That means we’re not basing our judgments on a lot of evidence. We often judge people for the way they look, or talk, or dress. When someone changes lanes in front of us without signaling, we decide they’re a careless driver, and a jerk. When someone blocks our way in the dill pickle aisle at Kroger’s and then glares at us when we try to pass, we label them inconsiderate and selfish. When someone makes an ill-chosen comment, we decide that they’re ignorant, bigoted, and surely the enemy. Continue reading →

A Pause Gives Us the Gift of Grace

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“Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” ~Victor Frankl

DSCN3073In recent weeks, we’ve reviewed the many benefits of kindness: health, relationships, life satisfaction, professional and business success, to name just a few. And we’ve talked about factors that can get in the way of our best kind intentions, including fear, time, apathy, obliviousness, and keeping score.

Let’s revisit the good stuff now, the skills of kindness—practices we can add to our daily lives to expand the kindness around us. Most of the skills to extending kindness and countering unkindness are pretty simple . . . but that doesn’t mean they’re always easy. They take practice. Kindness can’t be turned on and off like a faucet. It’s something we develop with practice—just as we improve in playing tennis or the saxophone.

A great way to think about the skills we’ll be exploring over the coming weeks is to see them as tools in our toolbox, or—using a more high-tech analogy—as apps we can download and call upon when needed.

For today, let’s look at a skill that sounds simple, but is tough in practice: learning to pause.

When we’re insulted or disrespected, we often respond in a knee-jerk fashion. We sling an insult right back, or we say something that we hope will put the offender in their place. It’s an automatic reaction, and it takes some effort not to succumb to it. But there are a few excellent reasons not to: Continue reading →

What’s In It for Me?

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“When you carry out acts of kindness you get a wonderful feeling inside. It is as though something inside your body responds and says, yes, this is how I ought to feel.” ~Harold Kushner

DSCN3278It’s not crass to ask about the personal benefits of being kind. Neither is it selfish. It’s both healthy and human to think about how our behaviors might reward or punish us, and most of us naturally gravitate toward the actions and attitudes that reward us in some way. Kindness is just such a benefactor. Let’s look at all the good reasons to step up our kindness and also try to expand it in the world around us:

On the health front: when we experience kindness—whether directly or even just witnessing it—our body produces the hormones serotonin and oxytocin, which lower our blood pressure, reduce inflammation, fight heart disease, and slow aging.

The endorphins kindness produces in us have been shown to reduce chronic pain, increase happiness, boost the body’s immune system, decrease depression, and offer us an overall feeling of well-being. In the last month, a new study was released showing that kindness is as effective or more effective than drugs or therapy in relieving serious anxiety or depression.

If kindness were a prescription medication or vitamin, we’d call it a miracle drug.

The business case for kindness: There’s abundant evidence that businesses with kind cultures are more successful. They consistently have: 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 →