Kindness

You get more with honey than you do with vinegar.

What is kindness? Is it something that people use as a means of manipulation or persuasion, to control situations and other people? Is it passive or is it active? Are people who are kind viewed as weak and easy to fool? Is being kind allowing someone you love to continuingly make the same errors over and over again, or is it stepping in and providing some good old fashion tough love? Is being kind all the time a realistic way to live your life? Don’t we need challenges in order to develop our own humanity?

Sometimes you can kindly tell your friend, lover, or child what your needs and expectations are, or as an employer the direction you wish your company to go – and in a lot of situations that information is not always heard or understood or purposefully ignored until the jar of vinegar gets thrown on the matter. And, then no one feels good about anything.

Can the act of kindness, if not fully understood, manifest itself into out of control co-dependent behaviour, turning relationship after relationship experience after experience into extremely unhealthy situations until ten different events begin to look like one?

According to Wikipedia kindness is the act or the state of being kind and marked by charitable behaviour, marked by mild disposition, pleasantness, tenderness and concern for others. It is considered to be one of the seven virtues. Interestingly enough in a study of 37 cultures around the world, sixteen thousand subjects were asked about their most desired traits in a mate. For both sexes, the first preference was kindness (the second was intelligence). Buss, D. M. (2003). The evolution of desire: Strategies of human mating. New York: Basic Books.

The Catch: Is kindness is something that starts from within? Everyone knows that helping a person in need across the street is an act of kindness and yes, we all feel good when we do it. But how kind are we to ourselves? Do we even know how to do it? If we start being genuinely kind to ourselves, how will that change things not only from within but on the outside as well? Do we have the courage to be kind to ourselves? Isn’t that viewed as vanity?

If someone is verbally abusing you, stealing your money, cheating on you, betraying you, blaming you, stalking you, undermining your work, and being unsupportive of your dreams and goals we all can agreed these are acts of unkindness. Some of us will have empathy for these individuals and we will make it our mission to help the situation out. The reality is people and organizations can only be helped if the parties genuinely recognize there is a problem and are committed to change, new possibilities and experiences.

The Contemplation: Being kind to yourself is not just knowing your dreams it is the activities that you do every day that help bring those dreams to life no matter what. An easy example is if you make it your goal to drop 20 pounds in the next three month. Kindness to yourself is committing to eating smartly and exercising. Every activity you do to help you reach the weight loss goal of 20 pounds is an act of kindness to yourself. Some days will be better than others and if it is a bad day we just have to say that to ourselves and ask the question, “What did I learn?” So, tell me what if we shifted our percepetion of weight loss not as a fad diet, or I told you so program or a crazy exercise regime, but only as an act of self kindness - I wonder what would happen? I dunno but I am going to give it a try.

What are your thoughts, why not post a comment and let me know.