What Showing Kindness to Others Can Do for You

My premise is this: Imagine if you were kind to everyone you saw today or at least as kind as you can manage to be to as many people as possible, especially those who have been unkind.

What would happen? How would you benefit? Why should you do such a thing, especially if some of those people are being unkind to you? If you were kind or understanding to your grumpy spouse, your rebelling children, your irritating family member, your bitching boss, the obnoxious cashier, the frazzled, forgetful waitress: what would happen?

We often believe that being rude or unkind back to people who have been unkind to us is the way to go. We think that it’s that kind of response that will put them in their place. It will make them think twice the next time. We have to stand up for ourselves, we will have protected ourselves and, at least, we will have fought back. It’s not right to let people walk all over us. These are the thing we’ve been taught, this is what we believe.

This is surely true under certain circumstances but I’m going to suggest another method of doing things and show you how it could ultimately benefit you more than your present tried and true way of doing things. My personal experience has shown me that it works out in your favour if you don’t do it that way, if you don’t act in the customary, eye-for-an-eye, negative way we’ve been taught. My idea is that small acts of kindness make ripples and the ripples go out into the world and make it a better place and then, most importantly for each of us individually, they come back to you.

Take the scenario of the obnoxious cashier in the store: If she comes to work in a bad mood, yet everyone is kind to her, instead of being obnoxious back at her, if everyone she meets that day including her colleagues, supervisors and clients tries to see what they can do to make her job and her life easier when she gets to you, if you’ve had a bad day that day, then she will most likely be feeling so much better herself that she can maybe try to see how she can make your life easier – even if it’s only by giving you a compassionate, understanding smile.