Kindness Communication

I find it hard to feel offended by other people, because I so rarely empower their opinions to have an impact on my self-esteem, and because I shift quickly to thinking about the context behind their opinion. I’m more interested in understanding the pain and ignorance that led them to the point of having the negative belief in the first place. These negative beliefs create opportunities for compassion and kind action, which become a much more constructive response to the situation than feeling and expressing offense.

This shift does not preclude impassioned response. It simply creates a better foundation for making choices about how and whether to respond. It’s possible for us to train ourselves to note mindfully that our sense of self-worth has been threatened without letting that threat set the tone for forward dialogue. From there, we can decide where to act along the spectrum from walking away, with empathy, to intervening, with hope.

The more we do this, the better our instincts about what works will become, and the more quickly we’ll be able to carry out this shift in ourselves. As it becomes instinctive, we find that offense is no longer even the starting point. Our response begins at empathy. From there, our chances to be heard and to heal the negative beliefs will bloom.

Here’s a moving and direct example of a kind business focusing on kind results that inspire kind responses from customers, from my friends at Story2. Kindness is not merely an abstract, feel-good force in business. It creates positive impacts on customers’ lives, which feed into the financial and emotional bottom line of the businesses that focus on it.

Story2 teaches prospective college students to tell a story, connect with readers’ emotions and experience, and inspire lasting impressions. They work with students to apply these skills in the college admissions process. They have worked with over 15,000 students to help them get in and get money at selective colleges. Its innovative approach to storytelling and community goes well beyond the college admissions process, and anyone can access the community to hear and tell stories of their own.

I can’t think of a better example of a kind mission than one that helps young people pursue and realize their dreams and future opportunities. How many of these story tellers will go on in life to use their skills to communicate and connect in the interest of a better, kinder world?

I’ve also known Story2 CEO and Founder Carol Barash for years. I’ve seen few people in my business life who are more committed to creative positive impacts and running businesses that deliver both kindness and growth. You can find out more about Carol by following her on Twitter at @CarolBarash.

Praise for the benefits of gratitude has become ubiquitous in the worlds of positive psychology and new-age spirituality. Time and again, writers encourage us to make gratitude lists or keep gratitude journals on a regular, even daily basis. While it sounds ungrateful to buck against gratitude, I still find myself pausing over the implications, and wondering how we can do better and be kinder than mere gratitude.

At the root of the issue, gratitude troubles me, because when we are grateful, we think of ourselves as the recipient of some goodness that comes to us either from the amorphous forces of “the Universe” or from the direct agency of specific people in our lives. Gratitude practices, by definition, leave us thinking in self-centered ways. They put us at risk of becoming “gratitude narcissists” if we don’t at the same time couple them with kindness practices.

So, rather than just taking inventory of what we are grateful for, let’s also take inventory of what we have done to improve other lives and the world around us. On the model of gratitude journals, let’s take on a daily practice of listing three things we did each day to make the world a better place. We can start a kindness journal to take stock of our daily gestures of empathy and compassion, small-scale and large-scale. We can list the kind things we do, and the kind impacts we intended with those actions.

Just as gratitude practices can make us more mindful of good things that come from the world, kindness practices can make us more accountable for the good things we can do in the world. They help us gently shift our mindset from being the center of a universe to being an agent of kindness who participates in that universe with deliberate responsibility to other beings. And by linking our actions to their outcomes, these practices also make us more effective as agents of kind outcomes.

If you’re willing to exercise your own kindness practice with mindful intent, too, feel free to download this Kindness Communication journal template, or create your own.