Discover the power of human kindness for making life fantastic! As adults, the more relaxed and at home we are – with our kindness – the better our lives will be: having more friends, success and happiness.
Kindness Has Power
KINDNESS, CARING AND EMPATHY are behaviors for success in every walk of life.
While hate is easy, kindness builds nations, people and human relationships.
Kind people are taught to be kind, at some point and place in their lives. Yet, we can teach ourselves strong compassion every day we live.
Kind people choose to be kind, in a world that is often harsh and uncaring.
Choose to be kind and your life will come alive in WONDER, AWE AND HAPPINESS.
Physically Attractive
Psychologically and visually, there’s nothing more ATTRACTIVE than kindness.
As adults, the more relaxed and at home we are – with our kindness – the better our lives will be: having more friends, success and happiness.
When we see someone acting kind, our stress quickly drops.
When we’re kind to others, we empower the strongest bliss and happiness we can have.
Boost Your Kindness by Improving Empathy
Boost your kindness by improving your empathy.
Kindness is feeling, and empathy is the ability to identify and feel what others experience.
“Empathy is at the heart of what it means to be human. It’s a foundation for acting ethically, for good relationships of many kinds, for loving well, and for professional success. And it’s key to preventing bullying and many other forms of cruelty.”
(MAKE CARING COMMON Project, Harvard)
We have to experience and understand another person’s feelings to love and care for them.
The easiest way to experience and understand another’s feelings, is to respectfully ask how they feel. It’s that simple!
If we can’t feel or understand others, it’s hard to really feel and understand ourselves. Without empathy, we may feel estranged, isolated and not a part of the world. Yet, we can grow and develop our empathic skill.
As our empathy strengthens, our lives improve with kindness, love and belonging.
The Habit of Kindness
A habit is something we repeat. Learning to be kind requires work and lifelong kindness habits.
As we practice kindness, how to care and think about others, we gain strength in the goodness we have. We feel better deep inside.
Kindness habits build a wonderful life!
The same way children learn kindness is the way we adults can encourage our own goodwill and never lose it.
The following techniques can help everyone, both children and adults, strengthen their kindness ability.
Here are 5 steps to cultivate empathy suggested by Harvard’s “MAKING CARING COMMON Project.”
These suggestions are for helping children learn empathy and caring, however, adults can equally benefit by these steps for personal growth.
We recommend these 5 steps to adults as well as children.
1. Empathize with Others and Model Empathy
We learn empathy by watching others act with empathy.
Model empathy for yourself; model empathy to teach others goodwill.
2. Make Caring for Others a Priority
To have compassion and care from others, we have to make caring for others a priority, our top priority.
Remind yourself daily of the importance of empathy and caring.
Have a mantra as you go about your day, such as “I’m tolerant with love and care for the world.”
Everyone is challenged in their day, everyone. Have compassion for this human struggle.
Prepare yourself with love and tolerance.
3. Practice Empathy
To a degree, we are all born with the ability to be caring and kind; it’s natural. But we must practice this empathy to have it in helpful amounts.
When we stop practicing empathy and love, they can fade.
Practice empathy and compassion, deliberately, every day — many times a day.
4. Expand Your Circle of Concern
Understanding is love. There is no better experience than to be understood.
It is easiest to have empathy for family, friends and people similar to ourselves.
Pick someone different from you — try to imagine their situation, how they feel, fear and struggle in their lives.
What are the challenges that people, very different from you, face?
How does it feel to be this other person you are trying to understand?
5. Develop Self-control and Manage Feelings
Most of us naturally have empathy, but bad feelings can get in the way. If we’re angry, fearful, envious, etc. it’s difficult to care for others and feel good.
Check in with yourself throughout the day. How do you feel? Lonely, angry, tried?
As we identify difficult feelings and thoughts, we can manage and help them fade.
Awareness of tough feelings is the path to controlling these feelings and letting ourselves instead have love, compassion and understanding for others.
We will benefit the most by our own caring.
Our caring for others begins inside us, as caring for ourselves.
Our intent to be kind will first create kindness in our own brain and body.
The Gateway to Freedom!
If we’re not in love with this world, we can’t feel and utilize our soul; we’re shut away and diminished.
Empathy is the gateway to freedom and human richness. When we feel our bliss and eternal love, we experience this love in all that exists.
Empathy, and the love beneath it, give the gift of belonging and being part of life.
In the next week or two, we’ll get back to the “12 Steps to Immortality” where we’ll begin with Step Six.
Step 6: Were entirely ready to have a Greater Power remove our defects of character.
There’s a reflexive quality to life, our bodies and mind — where a request gets a response, where an action gets a reaction.
A “Greater Power” might well define how reality can work for us if we ask.
A simple request of ourselves — the world or Greater Reality — can have amazing results if we’ve prepared for the outcome of our asking.
Ask for what you want, but prepare for what you’ve asked for as well.
Arrange your circumstances and life to be able to recieve what you want and incorporate your request into your life.
Be ready.
In Step 6, we prepare and “get ready” for Step 7 where we ask our Greater Power to remove our “shortcomings,” the qualities and reactions we have that are holding us back from success, happiness and growth.
Stay tuned for Step Six and Seven of the 12 Steps to Immortality.
