Use Your Kind Voice When You Need One

Are you at the point where all you see around you is thanklessness, faultfinding, and anger? A lot of us are. Perhaps it’s time to take a deep breath and check in on ourselves. So many stressors in the world, in the news, in our daily lives, many of us have forgotten to be compassionate to ourselves. Do you use your kind voice when you need one?

Image of a stylized brown tree with curly branches. On each branch is a fruit labeled joy, generosity, patience, love, gentleness, kindness, self-control, faithfulness, peace. Across the base of the tree is the phrase This fruit is always in season. Do you use your kind voice when you need one?

Stop Black & White Thinking

Many of us look at our day, our less-than-perfect accomplishments, our didn’t get it done list, and our emotions in black and white terms. We pronounce ourselves and our accomplishments as good or bad, positive or negative, and as a success or a failure. If we experience sadness, disappointment, or other so-called negative emotions, we berate ourselves for not being more positive. Or worse, for being a bad person. We judge ourselves and find ourselves imperfect.

Don’t judge, get curious. Don’t ignore or deny your feelings. Look at the moment, at what those uncomfortable emotions you’re experiencing. Realize they are normal. Consider what those emotions are trying to tell you.

Only dead people never get stressed, never get broken hearts, never experience the disappointment that comes with failure.

Susan David

Ms David says when you stop judging yourself and your emotions, you’re fifty percent of the way to being self-compassionate. Watch this Ted Talk by psychologist Susan David.

Be Kind to Yourself

To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you into something else is the greatest accomplishment.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

When you look at your flaws, find gratitude for what you do have rather than what you don’t like. Don’t think—ugh, I am tone deaf. Be grateful that you can hear the music. When you think, I am so stupid—be grateful you’re able to see, grateful that you can learn to do better.

Stop doing harmful things because that’s a way to be kind to yourself. If you over indulged, don’t judge yourself. Be clear that it wasn’t helpful or kind and you’d like to be kinder to yourself in the future.

Take care of yourself as an act of kindness.

Buy yourself flowers. Take yourself out on a date.

Indulge in a bubble bath or an hour of reading. Color in a coloring book.

Forgive yourself over and over and over. You are imperfect. You will mess up again and again. Pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and remind yourself that messing up is part of the human condition. Apologize to others if needed, but apologize to yourself. Forgive yourself for not being perfect. A kinder you will try again until you succeed.

LifeHack recommends that you create a brag bucket. Drop a note into the bucket each time you are kind to yourself. Add a note when you accomplish something. LifeHack also says to look at your notes at the end of the year. Yes, that would be wonderful. But look at your notes at the end of the week. See how much better you feel when you focus on using your kind voice. 

Try a Little Kindness

Loving yourself is healing the world!

Jaymie Gerard

If you need more help with finding your kind voice, try using some of the same steps discussed in 5 Steps to Your More Joyful Life. With all the stress and problems in the world and daily life, you deserve a little kindness.

Try a Little Kindness” is an older song by Glen Campbell. It’s about being kind to others. Be sure to listen for how being kind to others can also be ways to be kind to yourself.

You’re doing the best you can. If you didn’t accomplish as much as you wanted, if you weren’t as kind as you wished you’d been, you will do better from now on. You will do better when you use your kind voice when you need one.

Random Acts of Love May Save Your Country

Photo of a pair of hands whose curled fingers meet and thumbs touch below to create a heart shaped space in the middle through which we see a shining sun.

In the United States of America, the news (print and electronic) says our country is in trouble. We’ve become so terribly, angrily divided by politics. Memes and click-bait stories scream inflammatory headlines. The computer and mobile phone cushion us from consequences. We say things out of anger and frustration or fear without thinking about the legacy those words leave behind. Random acts of love may be our only hope.

Those inflammatory headlines and the anger, frustration, and fear I’ve witnessed in the past few years inspired me to make this month’s theme Random Acts of Love. Read the first post, Random Acts of Love and then the second one, Inspirational Random Acts of Love.

I don’t know what your political persuasion is. And frankly, I don’t care. I care about you and about this country as both exist outside of politics. So when I read Dr. Karlyn Borysenko’s post on Medium, After Attending a Trump Rally, I Realized Democrats Aren’t Ready for 2020 , I knew I had to include it today. The lesson she learned is one I’ve been trying to practice and promote. Most people are good-hearted folk. They might disagree about politics or gender or religion but disagreeing with your position on those topics does not make them evil. Read the following selection of random acts and tell me what political beliefs these people have. Tell me what genders they support or what religion they follow.

So Simple A Child Can Do It

image of a row of shopping carts symbolic of the random act of love by this child

I was at Aldi (a supermarket in river head) and to get a shopping cart you have to put a quarter to reliece the cart. so when we were done shopping we loded the car and my dad told me to go put the cart back. and there was an old lady wit a cane going shopping. She needed a cart. so as she was about to put the quarter in I said ”here take my cart.” I gave it to her and she gave me a warm hug. I sprinted back to the car and buckeld up. —Kindness Stories.  

He Needed the Exercise

Leaving a store, I returned to my car only to find that I’d locked my keys and cell phone inside. A teenager riding his bike saw me kick a tire and say a few choice words.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

I explained my situation. “But even if I could call my wife,” I said, “she can’t bring me her car key, since this is our only car.”

He handed me his cell phone. “Call your wife and tell her I’m coming to get her key.”

“That’s seven miles round trip.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

An hour later, he returned with the key. I offered him some money, but he refused.

“Let’s just say I needed the exercise,” he said.

Then, like a cowboy in the movies, he rode off into the sunset.—Clarence W. Stephens, Nicholasville, Kentucky

Remembered with a Rose

a rose being handed to someone is another random act of love and kindness in this story

Seth Stewart of Spokane, Washington has spent the last eight years remembering the local widows, single women, and military spouses on Valentine’s Day. He and his brothers deliver a single rose to every one of those spouses on Valentine’s Day. He keeps a record of all the people’s names he has delivered roses to and each year asks his community on Facebook to help him identify additional people who need a remembrance on the holiday.

Hope, Love, and Kindness

From the child who gave his grocery cart away, to the barbers who give homeless men haircuts, to a dry cleaners offering to clean the clothes of any unemployed person going to a job interview, to women crocheting plastic bags into sleeping mats for the homeless, good-hearted people fill every corner of the world. They do random acts of kindness without regard to political, racial, or religious leanings. These random acts of love give one hope for our country and the world.

I hope my posts about random acts of love have inspired you. We express kindness and love for one another in the words we choose, the interactions we have, and the actions we take. It’s only through kindness and love for another that we can bridge generational gaps, gender gaps, and even political gaps. What random act of love and kindness touched your life?