Tag Archives: trust

Kind is the new beautiful

It is time for a renaissance of kindness. Imagine our world changed overnight and kind is the new beautiful. Imagine that being friendly, generous, and considerate is valued above and beyond just looks or even how much money you have. Give kindness a like, and subscribe.

Kind is the new beautiful

As fast as the consumerist and corporatist worlds think up gimmicks to sell us stuff we don’t need we’re burning-out and turning off from that white noise. You feel it too, don’t you, the barrage of the advertising and info-mercials, it is so untrustworthy. Increasingly we wonder if the news we’re getting today will be uncovered as a scandal or fraud tomorrow. We can’t help but wonder who funded a scientific study or who selected the people on a ‘think tank’ that’s making policy so we slowly wind ourselves in. We bring our attention and trust a little closer, we’re a little slower to give them, a little more discerning in where we let our attention linger. The shallowness of that aspect of the world can leave us jaded, or feeling betrayed or bitter but there’s a powerful antidote.

Kindness is both an antidote and a revolution

Powerful and transformative, kindness is vastly underestimated by people who haven’t tried it.  A cornerstone of kindness is the capacity to be considerate of others. That requires you to understand that other people’s experiences are different to your own. That’s a simple statement, isn’t it, other people’s experiences are different to your own and yet we see in our society that hurt and hardship come from ignoring that, from demeaning otherness or judging it negatively, or creating environments in which it is impossible for people to participate and be valued if they don’t have the right experiences (rather than, say, skills or capacities). This may have happened to you. 
When you nurture your own capacity for consideration, you begin to break that cycle. When you are generous or friendly to another, you are affirming a type of humanity and community which values people above business. When you can be considerate of others you begin to see how you might be considerate towards yourself too – a taboo in so many parts of the first world. Not indulgent, considerate. There’s a difference between buying new shoes you don’t really need and going to bed at a regular, reasonable time so that you get the sleep that you need. Self-sabotage is all too common and being considerate to oneself is a powerful antidote. 
These are just some basics on kindness. Think about the ripple effect of applying kindness to the Earth that sustains us. Think about the revolutionary power of being kind to strangers at the level of communities, states, countries. 

A kindness starter kit

  • Smile first
  • Slow down and listen
  • Let your curiosity unfurl and wander
  • Be generous of whatever you have in plenty
  • Be grateful for who you love, what you have, what you know, and smile from there
  • Take your time and practice, you probably have other habits that are stronger
  • Imagine that you’re a best friend (to the stranger or yourself) and that you love that person as a friend, from there, what might you say or do differently?
Have fun, and remember, you’re better than beautiful, you’re kind.

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Trust in the process

Learning something just doesn’t work unless there’s a moment of surrender and I make or let myself say “I don’t know”. When I was a child I didn’t have this challenge. I expected that I didn’t know lots of things but as an adult, I am attached to the idea that I already know things, that I’m already good at some things.

Learning just feels like a lot of failures and plenty of frustrations and errors. That doesn’t feel great. “I don’t know” is a vulnerable place to be in our world of specialists and competition. I can see the value in it too. It is my ego that stops me from admitting I don’t know. My ego holds me back from the chance of learning!

When I reach the surrender of “I don’t know” then I know I am actually ready to learn. From that point, I am truly starting fresh. Then I just have to trust in the process and let the ‘failures’ and frustrations show me the way from there.

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