Kindness is in low supply and high demand.
As an avid reader of a double-digit number of books on kindness, a Kindness Attendant in "The Kindness Community" (an online worldwide group), and someone who wrote a book titled Reversing the Slobification of America, I look for ways to share kindness and kind actions as well as encourage others to do similar things.
A couple of weeks ago, the 14-week Florida State University Jim Moran Institute for Entrepreneurship graduated a cohort. That was the first-ever group who got to experience the class. Since Shane Smith, Ph.D. took a chance by allowing me to do what became known as the "Kick-off to Kindness" as the start of each Tuesday's experience.
Here are a few lessons learned from the fortuitous opportunity to share facts, acts, and the impact of kindness personally and professionally:
Kindness has four formats: toward self, toward others, toward the community, and toward the world
Most people are the least kind to themselves
Encouraging people to be kind to themselves is a form of permission
A kind act done for recognition is SPORTSMANSHIP, a kind act done for getting someone to collaborate or sign a contract is BUSINESS, and a kind act done for another person to feel good and/or have an opportunity, whether that person knows you did it or not, is true KINDNESS
Kindness makes some people uncomfortable and they are not wrong, rather have likely not been exposed to kindness which creates the discomfort
Kindness can be learned
Kindness begets kindness
Kindness is super
Kindness is powerful
(It follows that) Kindness is a superpower, and it is a superpower each and every one of us can use for good
Whether you get to facilitate a course on kindness is not the point of this "lessons learned" segment, rather the overall awareness of how a kind word, kind act, and a kind heart are available to us all, and all of us, whether we know it or not, can use (and use the impact of) a lot more kindness in our lives!
