Kindness Comes from Hearing Each Other At the end of the day, you need someone who listens to you with no judgement. Payal Rohatgi I have read a lot about the importance of storytelling lately – the power it has to open doors for understanding between people whose life paths have been different. I see great value in learning about someone else’s story as a powerful way […]
Videos to Inspire Creative Acts of Kindness Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can. Arthur Ashe ` I appreciate this quote from Arthur Ashe. Living with kindness does not require us to complicate our lives, but invites us to be creative and find simple ways to express our appreciation of […]
Kindness is a Path, Not an Event Nothing can make our life, or the lives of other people, more beautiful than perpetual kindness … Leo Tolstoy Every morning, as Larry and I enjoy our coffee and tea, we talk about whatever is on our minds and hearts – a dream from the night before, something we read […]
The Power of Small Acts of Kindness Not all of us can do great things, but we can do small things with great love. … Mother Teresa Kindness is the way we spread love in the world. It feels good – in the giving and receiving. The more we experience kindness, the more we connect with others and reinforce the awareness of our kinship. That is […]
When Does Kindness Require Us to Act? The opposite for courage is not cowardice, it is conformity. Even a dead fish can go with the flow. Jim Hightower Living with kindness is a way of being in the world that is rewarding and uplifts our spirits. As we offer a smile and kind words, others respond favorably. When we reach out to help someone in need, everyone involved […]
How Love and Healing Arose from the Tragedy of Sandy Hook Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all. – Aristotle On December 14, 2012, 20-year-old Adam Lanza entered Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut […]
Joy and Delight in an Uncertain World Joy is what happens to us when we allow ourselves to recognize how good things really are.” Marianne Williamson Several writings about joy and delight came to me in the past few days. Each offered a different perspective on the unlimited opportunities for joy all around us wherever we are. It became clear […]
What Does Kindness Have to Do with Activism? So that lesson from the river was that when we operate from a deep love, then we’re unstoppable. Mark Dubois We believe that kindness is love with its work boots on. It means taking our love out into the world and […]
Kindness as the Heart of a Local Economy “The measure of your life will not be in what you accumulate, but what you give away.” ~ Dr. Wayne Dyer In my last post, I shared the story of our friend, Bill, whose recent life experience exemplifies the gift economy, which is a very healthy sub-set of our financial economy. The currency of the gifting economy is not […]
Kindness as Currency in the Gifting Economy For it is in giving that we receive. ~ Saint Francis of Assisi This week, I want to take you down a more personal path, to show you the power of kindness in an individual life. What we give in this world does return to us in a way that meets our needs at the perfect time. This story also […]
A Time to Remember Our Kinship We are here to awaken from our illusion of separateness. … Thick Nhat Han As I write this, Christians world-wide are celebrating Easter, and Jews are celebration Passover – holy days, a time of love and celebration and connection within our spiritual communities. Religious ceremonies have been used for millennia to bring people together, to create a sense of community, of […]
Living with Awe and Wonder Wisdom begins in wonder ~ Socrates What do awe and wonder have to do with kindness? All my life, I have treasured memories of a few, dramatic moments when I felt awe and wonder, but I never connected those experiences to my interactions with other people. Recently, I read an article by Dacher Keltner that broadened […]
Gratitude is the Wellspring of Kindness The Root of joy is gratefulness. It is not joy that makes us grateful. it is gratitude that makes us joyful. Brother David Steindl-Rast What do we do when we hear about everything that is going wrong in the world? It is so easy to let our minds carry us […]
Always Stay Humble and Kind “Humility is not thinking less of yourself, it is thinking of yourself less.” C. S. Lewis Staying humble and kind seems like a prerequisite for being in service to others. This means that our journey on our kindness path is directed by our heart […]
Tapping into the Power of Your Heart “It is the heart always that sees, before the head can see.” … Thomas Carlyle The heart is the seat of our power. It holds wisdom that the head cannot reach. It’s in our hearts where we remember that we are connected and that we belong to each other. Everything starts here. What we hold in our hearts shows up […]
Carry On A hero is an ordinary individual who finds the strength to persevere and endure in spite of overwhelming obstacles. Christopher Reeve In considering the factors that support us on our kindness journey, I realized that friends play a key role. When we have someone we can talk to about anything – knowing they […]
We Choose Love Love or fear – What do you choose? … Shawn Gallaway At this time, when there is so much hate and fear in the world around us, we all have a choice to make. We like this song, because it says so clearly what our choice is – Love or fear. We met Shawn Gallaway over 20 years ago, right after he […]
A Grateful Day Gratitude begins in our hearts, then dovetails into behavior. It almost always makes you want to be of service, which is where the joy resides. Anne Lamott How often do you stop to think about all that you feel grateful for? It’s easy to get so caught up in what is happening in the world around us that we allow […]
The Healing Power of Love There is a light in this world, a healing spirit more powerful than any darkness we may encounter. Mother Teresa Our country is hurting. We’ve come through a challenge to the very survival of our government, and we are more divided as a people than we have been in many decades. At this time, it […]
Finding Your Power in a Time of Chaos The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new. … Socrates As we approach the transfer of political power in the United States, most of us are still trying to make sense of the outpouring of hatred and violence that is threatening a […]
The Power of a Name Names are the sweetest and most important sound in any language. Dale Carnegie I Have a Name My name is my claim to a place in this world. My name is sacred. It carries my identity and my heritage. My name declares my presence as a worthy member of the human family. It speaks of the unique gifts that I brought […]
Let 2020 Vision Help You See 2021 Clearly Vision isn’t about whether you can see in the light, but how you navigate through the dark. … Orly Wahba 2020 was a pivotal year for most of us, and certainly for the planet. Times […]
A Powerful Vision for the New Year “In compassion and grace, be like the sun.” … Rumi How Do We See One Another? The way we view each other lays the foundation on which everything else is built When we make a decision to live our lives with kindness, we are choosing to be a powerful force for good in the world. The foundation that […]
The Power of Gratitude in Challenging Times Gratefulness is the key to joy Brother David Steindl-Rast Holidays are times of celebration and gathering with family and friends. At this time in our world, when social distancing is recommended, we need to find ways to celebrate while keeping ourselves and our loved ones safe. For many of us, this means giving up the comfort and joy of […]
Be Kind to Yourself “Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes, including you.” … Anne Lamot With everything going on in the world right now, it is so easy to feel overwhelmed. When we find ourselves feeling scattered, going […]
The Power of Your Thoughts and Words “What we speak becomes the house we live in.” … Hafiz The thoughts we think and the words we say – to ourselves and to others – affect our feelings about the people who show up in our lives. How do we let go […]
Putting Judgment on Hold “It’s not things that upset us, it’s our judgment about things.” … Epictetus The key is to find ways to see people and accept them as they are. Sometimes daily interactions can be annoying – a rude comment can trigger a negative feeling. It’s easy to take offense. How do we get past our judgment and respond with kindness? It’s […]
Let’s Allow a Powerful Vision to Guide Us “Create a vision for the life you really want and then work relentlessly towards making it a Reality” ― Roy T. Bennett Do you have a vision of a better world than the one you […]
