Kindness: Day 1

This one is kind of timely. As a manager, I have to do staff reviews this week. I'm not really worried about it; the one staff I had that wasn't going to be fun to talk with has left for school early. But it'll just be the perfect situation for me to ease into thinking about Kindness.

But I was also thinking about how Kindness relates to Patience. I was wondering if I would have had more success with Patience if I had started with Kindness. I figured that my problem with Patience was that, after losing it, I wasn't Kind. But, after more thought, I think this may be a better order; I've already found myself determining when I lose my patience, now I just need to add kindness to those situations.

As for my sub-points, they may take even more thought. Being Friendly isn't too bad, living in the land of Minnesota Nice. Even when MN Nice is bull, people still say "Hi" on the street (it happened to me tonight). I'm not one to go out of my way to be Friendly, so I guess that may be where I'm headed on that point.

The topic of Accepting may be more difficult. I'm not entirely sure what that means. Is it about Diversity? Is it about Judgment? Is it about Open-mindedness? Questions to ponder over the next month.

And finally, Approachable. This one's kind of hard because it's almost more about other people. How will I know if I'm approachable unless people approach me? And what if they just don't have a reason to?


One more point before I begin this month: I have recently come to the discovery that I am kind of a People Pleaser. I don't know if that's surprising or a no-brainer to those of you who know me; it kind of surprised me. The biggest reason I'd never thought of myself this way is that I'm not the person who "can't say 'No'." But then, I've never had a crowd of people asking for my help. I rarely have anyone asking for my help. So, how can you be a People Pleaser if you have to people to please? And yet, according to one author who has a list of seven things a People Pleaser does or thinks, I fit three of them. I don't know if that's enough to really make me an official People Pleaser, but it's enough for me to bring it up here. My point is that I don't want a month of concentrating on Kindness to solidify my place as a People Pleaser. This is, after all, an exercise of self-improvement. And it would be sad if a self-awareness project sent me into therapy (funny how the years of therapy I did have didn't bring this out...).