Latest / QUESTION EVERYTHING / PRETTY KIND: How to Practice Deep Kindness with Houston Kraft

Transcript

PRETTY KIND: How to Practice Deep Kindness with Houston Kraft · QUESTION EVERYTHING

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: The following podcast is a Dear media production.
• 0:06
  Speaker 2: Big Things Happen when you're pretty, pretty bold, pretty clever,
• 0:10
  Speaker 2: pretty strong.
• 0:12
  Speaker 3: I'm Danielle Robe and each.
• 0:13
  Speaker 2: Week my guests and I have conversations that put a
• 0:16
  Speaker 2: new spin on pretty. This is pretty smart. The topic
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: of kindness dates back to the beginning of time. It's
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: in the Bible, Koran and Torah. Today, kindness is a
• 0:31
  Speaker 2: word we throw around like confetti, be kind to others,
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: spread kindness, random acts of kindness. But when we strip
• 0:39
  Speaker 2: the cliches away, is kind of simply the act of
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: being nice to someone? Or is there more to it?
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: What does it mean to be deeply actively kind?
• 0:49
  Speaker 3: Here's what I know.
• 0:50
  Speaker 2: When we're kind or even witness and active kindness, our
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: bodies release oxytocin. Oxytocin is sometimes referred to as the
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: love hormone. It's responsible for all of the warm and
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: fuzzy feelings. It's what goes through a woman's body during birth.
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: It binds human beings. There's something to this, but I
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: have so many questions. What does it take to be
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: a kind person? Can kindness be learned or practiced? How
• 1:15
  Speaker 2: about kindness and leadership? Does it pay to be kind
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: or is there any truth to that phrase? Nice guys, finish?
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: Last?
• 1:22
  Speaker 2: Is kindness ever weakness? How does kindness impact our health
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: and overall well being? Houston Craft spent his career studying kindness,
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: and now he's written a book on it and is
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: ready to share all of the answers.
• 1:35
  Speaker 3: I'm so happy to have you here.
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: I just did a deep dive into your book, and
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: the topic of kindness is it should be simple, right.
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: Kindness seems simple, and yet it's oversimplified.
• 1:48
  Speaker 3: It actually is really confusing.
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: So the first thing I want to get into is
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: what is beneath kindness?
• 1:55
  Speaker 3: Is what is kindness?
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: It is the challenge I think of the world itself.
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: I think we from the time we were really little,
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: we were told that kindness is worthwhile. I think it's
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: actually one of the things that we inherently know that
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: we're wired for connection.
• 2:10
  Speaker 4: That were wired to desire, belonging and acceptance, which I
• 2:16
  Speaker 4: think like kindness is the bridge, you know, like, if
• 2:18
  Speaker 4: I want to experience connection or belonging or depth in
• 2:21
  Speaker 4: my life, kindness is one vehicle that allows me to
• 2:25
  Speaker 4: experience that.
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: And so from the time we're little, we both get
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: taught it and I think we know it, and I
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: think there's actually a gap between those two, right, the
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: things that we like know to be true and the
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: things that we get told I think are actually confusing.
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: My career for many years was working in schools as
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: a motivational speaker. I spoke to six hundred middle schools
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: and high schools all over the world, and so I
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: spent a lot of time in like cafeterias and gymnasiums
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: and cafeinic gymnatoriums. I've been in all kinds of schools,
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: and I would say that most schools have kindness as
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: a part of their model or their mission statement. Most organizations,
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: I think have to some degree part of their ethos
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: is like service or kindness. But having worked in schools,
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: I would tell you that I saw the poster just
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: be kind or throw kindness around like confetti in probably
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: like ninety percent of the schools that I worked in,
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: And I think it's one of those really interesting things
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: we do as a culture where we try to over
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: promote something in a way that oversimplifies it, and as
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: a result, I think we actually do more harm than good.
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: The ethos, like the idea behind a poster that's like
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: throw kindness around like confetti. Is we should be more generous,
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: like we should give kindness more frequently. The danger is
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: that we associate kindness with something that's simple or easier free,
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: And I think we accidentally have created a narrative in
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: our culture that kindness is free, and I think that's
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: actually incredibly damaging because when we think of things as free,
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: we don't assign value to them.
• 3:51
  Speaker 4: In our own lives. Wow.
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: I think we have a really frustrating gap in our
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: culture between skills and values. Skills would be like whoa
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: to get a doctorate or to become a professional athlete,
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: or to acquire the skill requires discipline, practice and training
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: over time. But with values, we're like, I believe in
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: kindness and we think that just like believing in a
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: thing makes us good at a thing. And I would
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: argue it requires the same amount of discipline and practice
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: and humility over time to.
• 4:18
  Speaker 4: Achieve that thing.
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: So that would be like the first clarification things necessary
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: is the gap between what we believe in and the
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: gap between what we do is big because of how
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: we talk about it and how we teach it.
• 4:31
  Speaker 2: That was very illuminating. Why do you think some people
• 4:34
  Speaker 2: are kinder than others.
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: One of my favorite quotes comes from doctor Ross Green
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: talk about it in the book. He's a child psychologist,
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: and he would say that kids do well when they can.
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: I really love the power and the simplicity of that
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: statement because the implication there, the motivation behind even saying it,
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: is I think a lot of adults in kids' lives
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: don't always assume best intent, consciously or unconsciously. We sometimes
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: assume when someone hurts us, particularly a kid, it's because
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: they want to get back at us, or they have
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: ulterior motives, or that they're doing they want to do
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: their own thing, when in reality, a lot of the
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: psychology would tell us that young people, our orientation is
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: actually to feel safe and protected by adults in our life.
• 5:14
  Speaker 4: We don't want to misbehave quote unquote. He would argue that.
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: The only reason why someone doesn't do the best they
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: can is for one of two big categorical reasons.
• 5:24
  Speaker 4: Number one, lagging skills. Number two unsolved problems. Lagging skills
• 5:30
  Speaker 4: meaning I don't have.
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: All the tools in my toolbox to behave in the
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: way that you're asking me to behave Right now, I'm
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: not well enough equipped to show up into this scenario
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: with all the right tools to actually engage in whatever
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: that is kindness. As an example, Number two unsolved problems
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: would be that we have things going on in the
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: background that affect the foreground. Whether that is individual trauma,
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: whether that's intergenerational trauma, whether that is community trauma, whether
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: that's stemic oppression, whatever. Those other things happening in our life,
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: whether they are bigger than us or whether they're internal
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: to our own lived experience, those background things, we know
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: they affect the foreground all the time. My offer in
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: response to your question is to change doctor ross Green's
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: quote from kids do well when they can do people
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: will do well when they can My argument with that, like,
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: the only reason why we wouldn't offer each other kindness
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: is I don't know how, or I have other things
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: happening in my life that make it really hard for
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: me to show up in kindness.
• 6:27
  Speaker 4: In this moment.
• 6:28
  Speaker 2: Wow, So do you think you can become more practiced
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: at kindness?
• 6:33
  Speaker 3: Then? Is it something you can learn?
• 6:36
  Speaker 4: Yeah?
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: I Actually my philosophy would be that kindness is an outcome.
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: It's an output and determined by a whole lot of inputs.
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: The kindness is a behavioral action that we take in
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: the world that is informed by a lot of social
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: and emotional skills that are operating the background. Right, my
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: emotional intelligence is going to inform my behavioral action or
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: what I would call like my character, the way that
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: I show up in the world for myself and other
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: people around me, And so to get better at something
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: like kindness the output, I think it's really important to
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: think about the inputs, what's happening in the background that
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: shapes my behaviors in the foreground. For example, have I
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: been trained or taught or practiced emotional regulation? As an example,
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: do I know, like when I'm feeling big feelings, which
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: a lot of things in the world can create big
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: feelings in my life, do I know how to apply
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: them in kindness in the world.
• 7:30
  Speaker 4: Anger is a great example.
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: There's a lot of adults in this world who are
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: really good at math or science or English or history,
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: but like don't know how to regulate their emotions when
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: they're experiencing anger, they don't show up in kindness. I
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: would also offer that anger can actually have huge implications
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: to kindness. Anger is a motivating emotion, and if I
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: know how to regulate it correctly. It can make me
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: really a passionate advocate in kindness for others, But that's
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: a skill. Emotional regulation is something that the science would
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: tell us we can teach. One vehicle to that, for example,
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: is emotional awareness. Do I know how to name my
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: feelings when I'm feeling them. Another vehicle for that, or
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: potentially related to that, is mindfulness, right taking time to
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: slow down my mind enough to understand what I'm feeling
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: in any given moment, as opposed to making myself busy
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: being busy all the time. Talk about a whole other
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: category like Another input to kindness would be empathy. Do
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: I understand what people need around me from their perspective
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: and not just my own. If I'm not able to
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: effectively understand or unpack people's needs, I would argue that
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: kindness gets really hard because I can practice kindness to
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: you in a way that I think you need it,
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: but that doesn't guarantee that I'm actually helping you along
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: the way.
• 8:40
  Speaker 2: Right as I was looking this up, some of the
• 8:43
  Speaker 2: things that fell under emotional social learning were empathy, as
• 8:47
  Speaker 2: you mentioned, good listening skills, generosity, helpful, curious, caring, nurturing,
• 8:54
  Speaker 2: engage in perspective taking, which I don't know what that means,
• 8:57
  Speaker 2: but it was interesting to kind of unpack what would
• 9:01
  Speaker 2: fall under, like how do we get to kindness? Because
• 9:05
  Speaker 2: it for me this was like a label that felt
• 9:07
  Speaker 2: up to So thank you for clearing that up a
• 9:09
  Speaker 2: little bit.
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the words you offered are I would say, categorically
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: representative of empathy. And my friend Barbara says, empathy gives kindness.
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: It's why I think empathy is actually like probably the
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: most important ingredient that lives behind the scenes when it
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: comes to practicing kindness. And empathy is another one of
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: those words that gets thrown around a lot but is misunderstood,
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: partially because it actually involves a lot of different components.
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: A guy named doctor jimil Zaki out of Stanford. He
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: wrote a book called The War for Kindness. He says
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: empathy is an umbrella term that captures three big skills
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: in our.
• 9:44
  Speaker 4: Life, sharing, thinking, and caring. Sharing.
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: We could think of as like the emotional side of empathy.
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: Do I understand what you're feeling? Do I feel what
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: you feel? Can I feel alongside you? And it's actually
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: the most like naturally inborn thing that we have. We
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: laugh at babies. Babies tend to smile and laugh back
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: at us. We're always looking to repeat or experience other
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: people's emotions, and particularly people who would be impaths are
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: like really sensitive to that to be kind of exhausting
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: sometimes to constantly tap into that. The second one would
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: be thinking. It's like the cognitive side of empathy. Perspective taking,
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: as you offered organizationally in my company called character Strong,
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: we actually reframed perspective taking. We call it perspective getting
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: because taking implies I get just just to stand where
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: I'm at and like take from things around me. Getting
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: implies work, which is what I think perspective getting actually is.
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: It's like going out and listening. Really understanding a different
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: perspective than your own. Requires me to be vulnerable, requires
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: me to be humbled, requires me to engage with people
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: who are different than me. It requires me to not
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: always to want to be right all the time, which
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: is something really hard to deprogram in our society. So
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: there's sharing, the emotional side, thinking, the cognitive side, and
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: the caring, which is the kindness side. It's how we
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: operationalize sharing and thinking into action. It's saying, Okay, now
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: that I have a sense of how you're feeling, and
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: now that i'm like trying to see the world through
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: your eyes to recognize that your needs might be different
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: than mine, I'm going to do something to alleviate your suffering.
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: It's how empathy translates into compassion. It's how we suffer
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: alongside people and then use whatever resources we can to
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: alleviate pain, because it is entirely possible, as I think
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: probably every person on this planets it experience at one
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: point in another to hurt, for someone to feel bad,
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: for someone to even understand why they're hurting.
• 11:37
  Speaker 4: And still do nothing to help.
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: That's where compassion or empathy turns into kindness, and I
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: think that's a big deal.
• 11:43
  Speaker 2: So I love your book so much, and I read
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: a lot of books, and I always think if if
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: I'm not hooked in the first three pages, it's hard
• 11:53
  Speaker 2: for me to get into it. The beginning story in
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: your book is so good, and it's an offshoot of
• 11:59
  Speaker 2: what you just said. I was hoping you could share
• 12:01
  Speaker 2: it with us.
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we learned best through stories. Yeah, that's why I
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: love being a theater major. I was never very a
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: very good actor, But I believe deeply in sharing stories
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: on any sort of platform in a way that invited
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: other people in to recognize how whatever this story is
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: intersects with yours. Maybe you're like me and you've been
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: on an airplane before in the middle seat. It's my
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: least favorite seat on any public transportation. I'm claustrophobic, called
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: the hot dog seat because people's buns are on the
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: other side of me. And I remember this particular day,
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: it's now a decade ago in my life, where this
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: woman shows up and has a seat next to me.
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: And maybe you've been in the situation where someone wants
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: to talk to you and you are not in the
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: mood to talk. That's what this woman did this day.
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: She tapped me on the shoulder, took out a headphone,
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: which was intentionally in to prevent this exact scenario. I
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: was like, can I help you. She's like, my name
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: is Helga. I was like, this is not how I
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: was intending to help you.
• 12:57
  Speaker 4: It's just by engaging in small talk.
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: I believe in kindness, so I was like trying to
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: show up in that moment, and she starts asking me
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: all kinds of questions. At some point she asked me
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: what I did for work, and I explained that I
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: worked in schools. Talking about kindness, she got very serious
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: and told me the story of how the last time
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: she was on an airplane before her and I ever met,
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: was three years prior, when she'd woken up in the
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: morning and gotten a phone call from her dad that
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: her dad was headed. Her dad's doctor explaining that her
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: dad was headed to the hospital. They didn't live in
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: the same state, which meant that Helga. Helga had to
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: get on a plane to fly from Washington to Arizona,
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: and when she sits down on the plane to take
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: off to see her dad, she gets the phone call
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: that he's passed away. I'll never forget Helga telling me
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: this story and explaining to me that she was on
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: her way to go and see him, when then she
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: learned that she lost him, And then she was surrounded
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: by strangers on a plane for three hours. It's a
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: lonely flight. She lands in the airport, she walks to
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: the nearest wall. She falls down. She said, have you
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: ever gotten new so bad? Your body stops working right.
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: She put her head her hands and she wept, and
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: she explains that for two hours. She sat there crying.
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: I'll let you know, Helga has a good sense of humor.
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: She goes, Houston. I should be clear, I'm not a
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: pretty crier. I'm not a quiet crier. She goes, it's
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: loud and it's aggressive. People noticed. She goes Houston.
• 14:16
  Speaker 4: Two hours.
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: If I had to guess, there's probably three thousand people
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: in the airport around me going to their planes or
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: getting off their planes. Used in two hours, three thousand people,
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: not one, not a single person stopped.
• 14:26
  Speaker 4: And she looks at me.
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: She goes, you have no idea how much I could
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: use in act to kindness that day. The thing she
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: said next is really shaped, honestly, a lot of my
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: career and a big part of the reason I wrote
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: the book. She said, you know what I realized that day,
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: and the airport is three thousand people walked by. It
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: occurred to me that kindness isn't normal. It's not normal
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: in our world to be kind. And I remember, and honestly,
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: I sit with that question just about every day in
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: my work, because I am fascinated in why why is
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: it that if you were to ask any of the
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: three thousand people in the airport that day. Do you
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: believe in kindness? My guess is all three one thousand
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: of them would tell you yes. Why is it then
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: that all three thousand of them walked by an opportunity
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: for it? Why is it when I ask myself the
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: question would I stop?
• 15:09
  Speaker 4: Which I do?
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: Anytime I tell the story, it forces me to ask
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: that question, what I stop today? And today my honest
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: answer is probably know. And I feel like I have
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: all kinds of quote unquote ballid excuses. Tired is the
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: end of a long day. I have places to go,
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: I have people to see. What if she doesn't want
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: my help? But if I don't have anything that offered her,
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: I got no energy in my tank, like there's any
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: reason that I could offer to say no? But I
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: think the story is important because it offers me a
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: space to force myself into that self confrontation.
• 15:34
  Speaker 4: Where's the gap? The gap between what I say I.
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: Believe in and what I actually do, how I actually
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: show up in the world. Because it's entirely possible to
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: believe in a thing and not live into it. We
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: do it all the time. The Greeks have a word
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: for it. It's a crazia. Crazy translates to our weakness
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: of will are knowing that something is important or right,
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: and our decision not to do it anyways, And I
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: feel frustrated that kindness is one of those things. And
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: so my goal, my aim, and my work in the
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: book and the work that I do in education, is
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: to figure out how do we close that gap.
• 16:08
  Speaker 2: I got really emotional when you told that story, and
• 16:11
  Speaker 2: I got emotional when I read it. I'm still not
• 16:13
  Speaker 2: sure why. I was trying to think about why.
• 16:17
  Speaker 3: I think it's.
• 16:18
  Speaker 2: Because I feel as if I am I'm only where
• 16:22
  Speaker 2: I am in my personal life or my professional life
• 16:26
  Speaker 2: because people showed me kindness. It's why the title of
• 16:28
  Speaker 2: your book stuck out to me so much. It's such
• 16:31
  Speaker 2: it's a value I hold. I think everybody has different
• 16:35
  Speaker 2: values that they hold in a different order in their
• 16:37
  Speaker 2: life based on their upbringing and what's important, and kindness
• 16:40
  Speaker 2: is a value I hold really high up there. So
• 16:43
  Speaker 2: I think that your movement of kindness should be up
• 16:47
  Speaker 2: there with Brene Brown's movement of vulnerability. It is, it
• 16:52
  Speaker 2: is the underpinning of so much. What do we do
• 16:56
  Speaker 2: when we don't know how to be kind? When we
• 16:59
  Speaker 2: don't know how to do the kind thing.
• 17:02
  Speaker 4: A few reflections.
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: One is I appreciate your invitation to explore why that
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: that is an emotional story, not only for yourself but
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: for other people. I think it's it's easy to walk
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: past that as a simple like parable, as like why
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: kindness is important, But I would offer that I think
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: for a lot of people, we've all been some version
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: of Helga. If you haven't been yet, I think we
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: all will be, or we've been on the far side
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: of that. We've been in an incredibly low or lonely
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: moment and someone has offered us something in that moment
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: that has made all the difference, has transformed or shifted
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: your trajectory in some small way that over time was
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: actually a really big way. What do we do when
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: we don't know how to practice kindness in a moment,
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: If that's where we're starting from, If that's like our
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: first question, the invitation is to get curious, is to
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: ask a lot of questions. A story that I think
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: about often as it relates to empathy is the story
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: of the Sandy Hook shooting. There's this moment of collective
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: trauma in our country where literally we have children being
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: shot at a school and in moments of trauma or tragedy,
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: as we've seen now since George Floyd or what happened
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: in Atlanta, when we see moments of hate lived out
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: in really profound ways, we have a collective visceral response.
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: Now there's a whole layer there to talk about, which
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: is why we wait for trauma to happen until we
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: come around it with kindness or generosity. But nonetheless, I
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: think a lot of people do respond. People will have
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: a genuine desire to help in moments of profound hurt.
• 18:40
  Speaker 4: So many.
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: In fact, when Sandy Hook happened shortly afterwards, people from
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: all over the world wanted to offer kindness, so people
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: sent stuffed animals teddy bears globally from all over the
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: world because it was young people who'd lost their life,
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: and it was so many teddy bears that the town
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: of Newtown, Connecticut had to rent a twenty thousand square
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: foot warehouse just to house all the inbound gifts. One
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: of the people that helped run the candlelit vigil said
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: that there were more stuffed animals present than there were people.
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: And here's the quote that got me. He said, you know,
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: a teddy bear is great, but a teddy bear doesn't
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: pay for counseling, and a teddy bear doesn't pay for
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: a funeral.
• 19:13
  Speaker 4: I remember reading that and thinking.
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: To myself, how many times in my life if I
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: wanted to give kindness but I never bothered to ask?
• 19:19
  Speaker 4: What was the need?
• 19:20
  Speaker 3: That's so important?
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: It's huge and I think we've all lived it to
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: some capacity. Right My mom stage four colon cancer a
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: few years ago. She's currently cancer free, which is one
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: of the best gifts of my life. But I remember
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: watching people in her life want to help and not
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: know what to do, and there were different versions of
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: things that were more or less helpful. I guess some
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: people would resonate with this, like when you're going through
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: a really hard time, some people ask the question how
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: can I help? And that actually puts the burden on
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: the person who's actively hurting. Other people in my mom's
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: life said, you know what, I'm making extra LASAGNI tonight.
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: Is it okay if I bring some buy You know what,
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: I hire this cleaner for four hours. I only need
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: them for two. Can they come clean part of your house?
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: And people who knew what my mom was navigating, who
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: asked questions with curiosity and didn't put the burden of
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: help on to my mom. We're so much more helpful now.
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: Am I making a character judgment on the people that
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: didn't have the right question? No, I'm offering it as
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: an example of ways that we can all collectively close
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: that gap, which is to get curious and say, is
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: what I'm offering meeting a need?
• 20:28
  Speaker 2: I like framing it that way because this, to me,
• 20:32
  Speaker 2: at first, it felt.
• 20:32
  Speaker 3: Like get specific. That specificity is.
• 20:35
  Speaker 2: Helpful, but it's really more so about meeting the actual need.
• 20:39
  Speaker 2: So how do we get there? It's three questions that's
• 20:43
  Speaker 2: really beautiful.
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: Thank you, Yeah, questions and reflection. Right if we asked
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: the question before we've done the reflection. I think we
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: have to hold in balance when we're putting more more
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: responsibility on the person who's hurting than ourselves. First, So
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: can I explore do you know we can talk about
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: the whole conversation on social and racial justice happening in
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: our country in the world right now, So people will
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: go to a person of color and ask them to
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: solve the problem for me, and that is not the
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: way to be helpful, even though it's an earnest attempt
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: to be helpful.
• 21:18
  Speaker 4: The reality is I have.
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: To first explore and unpack my own biases, my own
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: role before I go and say, hey, how can I help?
• 21:26
  Speaker 4: How can I help?
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: And I think that like holding the balance of curiosity
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: and self reflection is the first, like the highest level
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: step is like that awareness that leads to curiosity, which leads.
• 21:38
  Speaker 2: To action, the balance of curiosity and self reflection. That's
• 21:42
  Speaker 2: important because I was also thinking about looking kind versus
• 21:47
  Speaker 2: being kind, you know, like just to say how can
• 21:50
  Speaker 2: I help, or like just to show up, so to speak,
• 21:54
  Speaker 2: without truly understanding what somebody needs. Is more of a
• 21:58
  Speaker 2: look versus a a verb of doing and being.
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I like, I mean doing and being is a
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: big A big one for me is like what do
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: we how do we embody the thing versus just act
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: the part. And it's always that interesting relationship between the
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: two because, as Will Durant says, we are what we
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: repeatedly do. Excellencin is not an act but a habit. Yeah,
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: I always cross that out. I like to edit quotes,
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: I apologize, But like kindness is not an act but
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: a habit, which is to say, Okay, if I do
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: this thing today, it might be you know, that high
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: level action that is that is maybe not intended for show,
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: but show nonetheless if I don't follow it up and
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: do something again the next day, my friend Dexter Davis says,
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: we're not human beings, we're human becomings.
• 22:46
  Speaker 3: Yeah, we're becoming that like paradigm.
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: Shift in my head of like, to become kind requires
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: me to repeatedly do kind things, and so giving myself
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: a framework, system, a discipline, a practice to engage in
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: that consistently is going to be a pathway that allows
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: me to hold those things more imbalanced.
• 23:03
  Speaker 2: What is one thing someone can do to be more practiced?
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: I love solution oriented, Like what's what if we don't know?
• 23:14
  Speaker 2: Because I feel like it's still a little up too.
• 23:16
  Speaker 2: So where do we start?
• 23:17
  Speaker 4: Yeah, this is my jam, let's let's talk about it.
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: Oh, good practical practical inspiration right, Like you're like with
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: a bunch of motivation, but no application is just like
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: good feelings and good ideas. I really think the first
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: thing is to think about how we think about kindness. Right,
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: So first, like determining in my brain, like why I
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: care about this thing, why I believe in this thing,
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: is always going to be like the motivating through line,
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: and then it's to say, well, what does it look
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: like to behave in kindness in the world. The metaphor
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: I use in the book, it's a dumb one, but
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: it sticks with me. It's like when you go to
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: the cheesecake factory. The menu is so big that it's overwhelming.
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: Too many choices, right, the paradoxic choice. Too many choices
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: is like no choice at all. I remember wanting to
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: the cheesecake factory.
• 23:58
  Speaker 4: When I was little. I got the Chipotle chicken pasta.
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: It was delicious, and so when I go back, I
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: don't order it every time, but more often than not,
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: I default to the choice that I made early on,
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: because our brains crave routine. I think the same thing
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: becomes true about kindness slowly over time, in large part
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: because of all the cultural inputs that tell us what
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: kindness is. I think we see that kindness is paying
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: for the person's coffee in line behind you. I don't
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: want to dismiss that as not kindness, because it happened
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: to me the other day and it was a real daymaker.
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: But I think that to say that that is the
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: only version of kindness, or to get into the pattern
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: of like that is like a Chipotle chicken pasta.
• 24:39
  Speaker 4: I've ordered it one.
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: So like, that's the thing I know is the hard
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: part about making kindness a daily practice. What does it
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: actually look like to integrate it into your life in
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: a way that's non superficial or not culturally pop culturally provided.
• 24:53
  Speaker 2: So in your book you call this confetti kindness versus
• 24:56
  Speaker 2: deep kindness.
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah, confetti kindness, which would be like that, like throw
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: it around like confetti, a random act of kindness, which
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: I don't mean to be dismissed above. I just don't
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: think it's the type of kindness that moves the cultural
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: needle forward. Right, those random smiles that pay it forward,
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: coffee line, like helping the person across the street. Those
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: things are are lovely, but they don't change broken systems.
• 25:18
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: They don't heal trauma, they don't navigate complicated questions about justice,
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: and they certainly don't heal like our most broken interpersonal relationships.
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: So what does that look like to operationalize that in
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: our lives? Well, I use it a strategy in my brain.
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: I call it intersectional thinking, which is really just like
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: thinking about a ven diagram that allows me to take
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: a really big idea like kindness and make it specific. Right,
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: give myself permission to constrain a huge abstract idea and
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: put it through a really really small filter, Because that
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: way I'm going to better meet needs. Like you said,
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: I'm going to be able to get specific with it.
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: So just to walk through this sexoncides really quickly, let
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: me offer you a change of this question. What's one
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: way I could practice kindness in my life today? Really big,
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: a little overwhelming.
• 26:07
  Speaker 4: I'll probably order the Chipotle chicken pasta.
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: The different question is, Danielle, who do you think is
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: someone in your life that you who comes to mind
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: right away when I say someone you admire?
• 26:17
  Speaker 3: Two people?
• 26:18
  Speaker 2: One is a man named Steve at NBC and Sally
• 26:24
  Speaker 2: Lou loveman in Chicago.
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: Out of the two, is there someone that you feel
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: I could use encouragement right.
• 26:30
  Speaker 4: Now more than the other?
• 26:32
  Speaker 3: Sally Lou Cool?
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: Here'd be a question, what's the most meaningful thing you
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: could do? What's an act of kindness you could do
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: for Sally Lou that you could do in three minutes
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: or less?
• 26:43
  Speaker 3: Ooh, three minutes or less.
• 26:45
  Speaker 2: I could send her an encouraging note and telling her
• 26:48
  Speaker 2: how much she means to me and how much I
• 26:50
  Speaker 2: admire her.
• 26:52
  Speaker 4: You want to do it right now?
• 26:56
  Speaker 2: No, but I think that would be probably like the
• 26:58
  Speaker 2: only thing I could do minutes beside send a singing
• 27:02
  Speaker 2: telegram or something.
• 27:04
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: I would offer that one of the narratives we have
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: to break out of in our culture is that time
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: equals impact. That so much of our life gets rocked
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: up into the narrative that productivity is impact, and that
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: productivity requires time and tasks, stay in and day out.
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: And I would offer that the three minute message you
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: might send as Sally Lou might have more impact than
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: the fifty emails that I have to get through after
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: this call, right, And that I think we have to
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: deprogram ourselves from the narrative that everything on my to
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: do list has equal value in terms of how I
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: want to show up in the world. So the way
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: that I practice that in my life is every day Organizationally,
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: even on our team, everyone writes out their workles. We
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: all have our to do list, but at the top
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: of our to do list, all of us write out
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: a one item to B list.
• 27:52
  Speaker 4: So who do I want to be today? Well, maybe it's.
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: Healthy, maybe it's balanced. Maybe it's present, maybe it's grateful,
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: maybe it's kind. But then the task is what does
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: that look like today in however much time you have
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: give yourself that constraint ten minutes are less, fifteen minutes
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: or less, thirty minutes or less.
• 28:07
  Speaker 3: Oh, I love that exercise.
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: And so we actually have to articulate that for ourselves
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: and for our team. The way that we have disciplined
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: ourselves to get better at that is every quarter we
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: choose a word, so that every day, over the course
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: of a quarter, we are articulating, Okay today, to be present,
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: that means blink today.
• 28:25
  Speaker 4: To be encouraging, that means blank.
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: And so systems over goals, Yeah, Like, the more we
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: can create systems allow for specificity to become the thing,
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: the more likely that we actually live into the things
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: we say we believe.
• 28:38
  Speaker 2: That's incredibly important because every year, I think when people
• 28:41
  Speaker 2: make New Year's resolutions or goals, the ideas are so wonderful,
• 28:45
  Speaker 2: and it's how do you actually do that in practice?
• 28:49
  Speaker 3: So systems over goals, that's wonderful. Thank you.
• 28:52
  Speaker 4: Yeah, to be systems. It's a good, healthy challenge.
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: And I think we all love to do lists because
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: they're concrete, and we've been programmed in our culture to
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: like we want things that are checkoffable, and so we
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: know how to like get to inbox zero, we know
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: how to finish this project proposal, we know how to
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: put together these slides. But when we say, like what's
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: on new to B list, kind that's it's not as
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: checkoffable unless we give ourselves constrained thinking and say, well,
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: what does it look like to do something today that
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: lives into that and maybe it's with the same person
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: for three months, And that's okay as long as we
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: create small steps that drive us towards the becoming of
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: the things that we say we value.
• 29:32
  Speaker 2: You know, I always I recognize that the people that
• 29:35
  Speaker 2: I admire most live their values when it's inconvenient to them,
• 29:40
  Speaker 2: when they don't have time. They are still kind, like,
• 29:43
  Speaker 2: you know, like when it because it's it's a lot
• 29:45
  Speaker 2: easier to be nice and to be kind when you
• 29:48
  Speaker 2: have time, right, So to do it repeat, they must
• 29:52
  Speaker 2: be practiced.
• 29:53
  Speaker 3: They are. They do it time and time again.
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: So well said one of my favorite articles from the
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: Wall Street Journal is are you as busy as you think?
• 30:01
  Speaker 4: Yeah?
• 30:02
  Speaker 3: None of us are. T LDR we're not.
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so what if you were never again allowed to
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: say I don't have time, but if you had.
• 30:10
  Speaker 4: To say this is not my priority.
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: So if I were to ever to say I don't
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: have time for this person in my life or for
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: kindness in my life, the argument would be just to
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: change that, change the way you speak about it, to say, well,
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: you know, my mom's not my priority today, or this
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: my partner's not my priority today, or the practice of
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: kindness is not my priority today. And sometimes that can
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: be true. I'm not saying that that's never true, but
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: to speak it like that consistently indicates to us that
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: maybe we have a gap between what we say is
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: important and what we actually do for ourselves in the world.
• 30:47
  Speaker 3: Now I see why you are a motivational speaker.
• 30:50
  Speaker 2: Wow, you're right, closing gaps for gaps and taking names.
• 30:55
  Speaker 2: All right, Okay, so you said that deep kindness requires curage.
• 31:01
  Speaker 3: What do you mean by that?
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: I think that doctor Brene Brown, one of my heroes.
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: You already dropped the name the revolution towards vulnerability, which
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: I think vulnerability is the background to the foreground of courage, right,
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: Courageous actions require vulnerability. Having worked with a lot of
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: high school students I know that, like many of them,
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: are on the cusp of cynicism. And I think cynicism
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: happens when we feel overwhelmed by either too much to
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: care about and so we don't know what to care about,
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: or we've tried to care about stuff and felt like
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: we weren't making a difference, and then it becomes easier
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: to live into the narrative that it's just cool not
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: to care, and so we allow ourselves to get busy
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: when it's cool not to care, we allow ourselves to
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: get complacent, or in the face of overwhelm or fear,
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: probably the worst of all us, we allow ourselves to
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: get apathetic. And I would suggest that the reason for
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: a lot of that is because the more we care
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: about something, the more we risk hurt on the far
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: side of it. So when I care about giving something
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: someone they need and I fail them in it, that hurts.
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: When I care deeply about what's going on in our
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: country right now, around what is happening to the Asian
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: community in the United States, and I feel helpless, or
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: I feel like I failed someone, or I feel like
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: I don't know how to show up like the more
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: I care, the more I risk feeling failure or hurt
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: or rejection or embarrassment along the way. The more I
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: use my voice to speak up about something that maybe's
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: not popular.
• 32:32
  Speaker 4: The more that people are going to criticize me and
• 32:34
  Speaker 4: hurt me.
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: And so most of us we've had moments of courage
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: along the way, and we faced criticism, pain, shame, rejection, failure,
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: and our brain is programmed to reduce pain in our life.
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: And so every time that happens, every time we make
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: a courageous choice and it hurts, if we're not really
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: intentional about it, if we're not really clear about why
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: we're doing the thing, then we're going to allow our
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: behaviors to be dictated by the pain as a close
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: to the purpose of the thing in the first place.
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: And so kindness requires courage because most of the time
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: acts of kindness are vulnerable.
• 33:07
  Speaker 4: They are an action of caring.
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: The more that I care, the more that it's going
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: to hurt, and the more that it hurts, the more
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: choosing it is the courageous thing to do.
• 33:17
  Speaker 2: In your book, you have an entire chapter on forgiveness
• 33:20
  Speaker 2: to me that requires courage. That's what I linked to it.
• 33:25
  Speaker 2: Why did you include the idea of forgiveness in a
• 33:28
  Speaker 2: book about kindness?
• 33:30
  Speaker 4: It is the most understated partner in kindness.
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah, because it has implications for both the receiver and
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: the giver when it comes to kindness. I think that
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: the action of as I would articulate it in the book,
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: separating the person from the behavior, is an action of kindness.
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: We can do bad things and not be bad people,
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: and oftentimes a lot of those choices are dictated again
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: by lack of tools in our toolbox or things that
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: are happening in our life, many of those things potentially
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: out side of our control. To be clear, that does
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: not excuse the behavior. It just doesn't make the person
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: on the far side of it unlovable. And forgiveness is
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: the kind action to choose to see someone as lovable
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: in spite of their painful behaviors. To clarify it ahead
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: of time, because it's a pre correction I need. It
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: does not mean what the thing they did was right.
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: It doesn't mean they're allowed to do it again. And
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: forgiving a person does not give them permission to cross
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: whatever boundary you're setting in that moment. It's just telling
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: the person that I love you in spite of the pain.
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: I love you in spite of the hurt. In fact,
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: I can love you from afar. We can never talk again,
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: because that's a boundary I need in my life to
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: keep myself safe, to keep myself mentally well or healthy.
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: But I am releasing you from the narrative that you
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: are bad. I'm releasing myself from the narrative that.
• 34:51
  Speaker 4: I deserved it.
• 34:53
  Speaker 3: That's big.
• 34:54
  Speaker 4: Yes, I can say it real simply. It's not easy.
• 34:57
  Speaker 2: In practice, it's not, but it's a you broke it
• 35:01
  Speaker 2: down in a way that felt very digestible, so at
• 35:03
  Speaker 2: least we can know it and think about it next
• 35:07
  Speaker 2: time we feel like we need to give forgiveness or
• 35:10
  Speaker 2: practice forgiveness.
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: Right. Forgiveness is freedom right because it frees me from
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: making the narrative personal all the time.
• 35:18
  Speaker 3: M hmm.
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: I think the things that have hurt us the most
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: we take deeply personally, when in reality it was a
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: behavior that hurt us and not necessarily the person behind it.
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: It's really hard to separate those two. But I think
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: at some point along the way, we have all done
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: hurtful things. It does not make us a hurting person. Now,
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: I do want to qualify that statement with, like, there
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: are things that people have done in people's lives that
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: that exercise is not nearly as simple for or sometimes
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: in some situations like not even acceptable for right. And
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: I don't want to make the blanket statement that all
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: people are easily forgivable or should be forgiven, particularly right away,
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: or that like there isn't more bigger healing that needs
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: to happen in order for us to enter into that space.
• 36:03
  Speaker 4: But nonetheless, I would suggest that all people.
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: On this planet, to some degree worthy of love, deserving
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: of forgiveness, even if it means that they should never
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: have that behavior again, even if they have ramifications right
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: necessary consequences to those behaviors. I think that forgiveness is
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: still one of the most kind things we can do
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: for others in ourselves.
• 36:24
  Speaker 2: So in prepping for this interview, I read an article.
• 36:27
  Speaker 2: It was a twenty eighteen article title does it Pay
• 36:30
  Speaker 2: to Be Kind?
• 36:32
  Speaker 3: And I loved this idea.
• 36:33
  Speaker 2: I want to talk it through with you because there's
• 36:35
  Speaker 2: a term that or like a quote people say that
• 36:38
  Speaker 2: nice guys finish last. It's always been one of my
• 36:41
  Speaker 2: least favorite terms. I don't agree with it. I don't
• 36:44
  Speaker 2: like when people say it. I don't even know where
• 36:46
  Speaker 2: it came from. I think it's nonsense, and most research
• 36:49
  Speaker 2: that I've read, actually all research that I've personally read,
• 36:53
  Speaker 2: supports that kindness actually does pay, not just financially but
• 36:58
  Speaker 2: also financially. It's said pro social behaviors increase happiness and
• 37:02
  Speaker 2: self esteem, kindness leads to reductions and risks for disease.
• 37:08
  Speaker 3: It even said that.
• 37:09
  Speaker 2: When a doctor is kind to a patient, colds are
• 37:13
  Speaker 2: shortened by a day. Like it has real impact. And
• 37:17
  Speaker 2: I was wondering if you had any information to support
• 37:21
  Speaker 2: that vices because I don't want to go against it.
• 37:24
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I want to offer two things.
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: The first one is I am a big word person,
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: and so I actually think that nice guys finished last
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: might be a truism because I think there's a really
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: strong difference between being nice and being kind. The difference
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: in my mind, it was articulated to me by a
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: high school student after I spoke at a school in
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: Texas and he came down to talk to me and
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: he said, you know, while you were talking, I realized
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: I'm a really nice person.
• 37:49
  Speaker 4: I was like, cool man.
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: Kind of the point, you guys, no I realize I'm nice,
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: but I don't think i'm kind.
• 37:55
  Speaker 4: I was like, you got to unpack that for me.
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: What do you mean, he goes. I think that nice
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: is reactive. I think if it's a it's a if.
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: If someone's nice to me, I might be nice back
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: to them. If I like you, I'll be nice to you,
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: he goes. But kindness, the way you talked about it today,
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: to me, it sounds proactive, like I have to make
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: a choice and I have to stick to it. I
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: have to stand up for what I care about, even
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: if it's uncomfortable or inconvenient, that I have to practice
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: it in spite of what I'm feeling in a given moment,
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: that even if I don't like you, I'm still going
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: to show up and behave in a way towards you
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: that is generous or compassionate or respectful. And this senior
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: boy at high school in Texas, he starts to cry,
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: is like this moment of like unexpected vulnerability. He goes,
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: I realize that kindness requires work, and I think I
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: have a lot of work to do. And I was like,
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: me too, man, And these are the moments that I
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: love about my job. When you get those insights that
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: are so clarifying. Words matter. I think nice guys sometimes
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: do finish last because they're wishy washy, because it's reactive,
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: because it's unclear what they care about until it's convenient
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: to them or until they benefit from it. I think
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: kind guys finish first. Kind people have really strong boundaries.
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: Kind people have very clear convictions and very clear purpose.
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: They make decisions based on something that has been clarified
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: for them or they've chosen to go through that process,
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: and so I think people are drawn towards people who
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: have clarity whatever that thing is. But kindness tends to
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: be one that's generous. It's rooted in empathy, it's rooted
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: in understanding, it's asking questions. But when it comes time
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: to make a decision, whether it's inconvenient or not, they're
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: going to go forward with that thing with purpose and conviction.
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: And I think people are drawn to that. So I
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: think nice guys I don't know if they should finish last.
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: I think they do naturally because people want people who
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: are clear.
• 39:41
  Speaker 3: That's such a good distinction.
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, nice versus kind is such a big When I
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: speak at schools, I can speak for an hour and
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: I'll tell stories and I like, work really hard on
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: this whole thing, and I'll weave that in and it's
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: like a two minute part of my talk. I will
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: ask kids afterwards, like, what do you remember though, like
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: nice versus kind? Nice versus kind? Like anything else from
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: that hour? Like and not really nice versus kind? So
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: that one sticks. That one's like an important I think
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: we crave distinctions, right because words.
• 40:09
  Speaker 4: Words play such a big deal in our in our mind.
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: We like we don't always realize it because we take
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: them for granted, but they shape the way we experience emotions,
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: the way we process color and sound, the way we
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: make decisions, the way we do mental.
• 40:21
  Speaker 4: Math, the way we read.
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: Like, words play a huge role in our life, and
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: so the way we think about a word, it's going
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: to have a huge role in how we act with
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: it in the world. So knowing the difference between nice
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: and kind allows me to more clearly say, am I
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: being a kind person today in my life?
• 40:36
  Speaker 4: In this relationship? What does that actually look like?
• 40:39
  Speaker 3: Well?
• 40:40
  Speaker 2: I think on the flip side, we also think, well,
• 40:43
  Speaker 2: maybe I shouldn't do that because it's not nice, And
• 40:46
  Speaker 2: there's a huge distinction, And so knowing that also allows
• 40:50
  Speaker 2: you to move forward and be kind because kind people
• 40:52
  Speaker 2: have boundaries.
• 40:54
  Speaker 4: Yeah, Brene Brown was a bringer back.
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: She says, the most compassionate people in our research are
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: the most boundary, meaning that they are very clear on
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: what they say yes and no to, which means when
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: they do things that are kind, it is rich with
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: true generosity instead of obligation. Yeah, it's a big difference
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: between the two of those. And if we can get
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: clear on what is okay and what's not okay, that
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: shows up in the things that we say say yes
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: and no to. That shows up in the way we
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: draw boundaries. That shows up in how clearly we articulate
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: our needs or deliver on other peoples, and doing things
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: from a generous disposition instead of a state of obligation.
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: We've all felt that, we have felt when people are
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: doing something just because they have to, versus someone who
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: truly wants to serve or love or give to you
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: in that moment, Fully, I deviated from the original question
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: does it pay to be kind? I accidentally spoken Alaska
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: a few years ago, and it was hilarious because it
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: was a safety conference. Because I worked in schools, I
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: thought it was a school safety conference. I learned the
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: night before that it was a like Alaska's state safety,
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: which is like, it's all the people who are in
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: charge of making people don't get injured or die on
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: the job, and Alaska is like the most dangerous state
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: in the country to work. And I was like, I
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: have to rewrite a lot of my talk, and so
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: I did. The night before I remember listening to a
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: podcast called Invisibilia, great NPR podcast.
• 42:16
  Speaker 4: It talks about the invisible things that control our.
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: Lives, and one of them was a story about Exxon
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: building the largest, like by a scale of four x
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: oil rig and it was called URSA, and they brought
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: in a consultant because oil rigs and that line of
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: work is one of the most dangerous occupations in the world.
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: And one of the reasons it's dangerous is because the
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: culture internal to that company, to that job for so
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: long is that we don't ask for help. That the
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: masculinity and the lens at which they view that work
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: is we don't ask for help because it's weak, because
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: it's soft, because I should know what to do. All
• 42:54
  Speaker 1: those narratives, and the consequence by the way of not
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: asking for help in some of those situations for some
• 42:59
  Speaker 1: people is actually dying. So I thought about that example,
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: and they brought in this leadership coach. It's eccentric frenchwoman
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: I believe, who did vulnerability and empathy coaching with all
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: of the managers across this rig to the point.
• 43:12
  Speaker 4: Where grown men.
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: I remember this part really clearly, was they were being
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: asked to wash their other counterparts like other men in
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: the organization, other managers their feet, and one gentleman like
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: forgot who he was because this behavior was so far
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: outside of the context that he'd grown up in. So
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: I'm really like profound and like over multiple months like
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: talking and unpacking empathy and the stats on the far
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: side of all of this, like empathy coaching, this kindness coaching,
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: this vulnerability coaching, was that injuries dropped eighty six percent
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: and productivity doubled. I like to say that kindness is
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: one of the most It's not just like a nice
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: to have, it's a necessity. I think it's one of
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: the It is the through line that is perhaps the
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: most important foundational thing we can do organizationally to create
• 43:59
  Speaker 1: a space where people feel safe asking for help. Greate
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: a space where people offer and enjoy and find, you know,
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: find that joy.
• 44:06
  Speaker 4: In serving others to offer that help.
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: And what happens when we create a culture where that's
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: real is people feel okay asking those questions, People feel
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: okay to show up and give help to others.
• 44:16
  Speaker 4: And in this line of work, it costs people literal lives.
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: But in other lines of work, you know, it has
• 44:21
  Speaker 1: all kinds of implications, whether it's from productivity to burn
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: out to motivation and all the things in between. It
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: absolutely pays to be kind.
• 44:32
  Speaker 3: Oh, I love that. I love that you agree with
• 44:35
  Speaker 3: the article.
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: I would not disagree with that research. That's good research
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: in my world.
• 44:42
  Speaker 2: The other there, I'm not a social scientist, but I'm
• 44:44
  Speaker 2: going to agree with that. Okay, So we do a
• 44:48
  Speaker 2: little rapid fire at the close of every interview. What
• 44:51
  Speaker 2: is one book that changed your life that you think
• 44:53
  Speaker 2: everybody should read?
• 44:54
  Speaker 4: On being Nice by the School.
• 44:57
  Speaker 3: Of Life Wonderful.
• 44:59
  Speaker 2: I do a pretty smart question, so I pick one
• 45:01
  Speaker 2: of fifty two cards at random. You got what is
• 45:04
  Speaker 2: your favorite smell?
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: M When I walk into the kitchen when I'm visiting
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: my mom in Maine, and I know that for a
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: few hours beforehand, she started making my favorite meal, which
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: is shrimp pasta. Started early in the morning and it'll
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: simmer all day. And the anticipation of that meal at night.
• 45:25
  Speaker 2: That sound you're making me hungry.
• 45:28
  Speaker 4: I'm wungry myself. Now.
• 45:30
  Speaker 3: What is the smartest decision you've ever made?
• 45:33
  Speaker 4: Deciding not to do this work alone?
• 45:35
  Speaker 3: H that's nice.
• 45:38
  Speaker 2: I have to tell you, Houston, I threw a lot
• 45:39
  Speaker 2: at you. I didn't give you an outline. You didn't
• 45:41
  Speaker 2: know what I was going to ask you. You really
• 45:45
  Speaker 2: had a lot of information to share. I'm so grateful
• 45:49
  Speaker 2: that you shared it with me and for your time.
• 46:09
  Speaker 3: All Right, today is a good day. To have a
• 46:11
  Speaker 3: good day.
• 46:12
  Speaker 2: I'll see you next week.
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah,