Being kind when people are mean can be challenging, but it's a powerful way to break the cycle of negativity and can even lead to personal growth. Here are some steps to help you practice kindness in the face of unkind behavior:
1. Practice empathy: Try to understand the person's perspective and recognize that they might be going through a tough time, which might be causing them to act mean. This understanding can help you to respond with compassion rather than reacting negatively.
2. Stay calm: Do not let the person's behavior provoke you. Breathe deeply and maintain your composure to avoid escalating the situation.
3. Separate the person from their actions: Just as in the case of Gandhi, we can oppose the negative action or behavior, but we should remember that the person is greater than their actions, and try to focus on their positive potential.
4. Be a role model: Demonstrate kindness and respect in your own behavior. Treat the person with politeness, even if they are mean to you. This can sometimes help the other person to rethink their behavior and become more kind themselves.
5. Practice small acts of forgiveness: As mentioned in the [Relevant Text], extending care and compassion when someone harms you can help build the "forgiveness muscle." This can lead to increased understanding and kindness towards others.
6. Set boundaries: While practicing kindness, it's important to remember that you should also protect yourself and maintain healthy boundaries. Sometimes, it may be necessary to distance yourself from the person or situation if their behavior continues to be harmful or toxic.
7. Reflect on your own feelings and reactions: Acknowledge any emotions that arise in response to the person's behavior, and try to understand what might be triggering them. This self-awareness can help you maintain a compassionate perspective.
8. Engage in acts of kindness for others: Connecting with people who appreciate your kind gestures and receiving their positive reactions can inspire you to continue practicing kindness, even when faced with unkindness from others. Remember that kindness is contagious, and our actions can influence those around us.
The sources below helped generate your response ...
- You don’t have to say good things; but, if you refrain from talking negatively, it will feed the more forgiving side of your mind and heart.
You can also make a practice of recognizing that every person is unique, special, and irreplaceable. You may come to this through religious beliefs or a humanist philosophy or even through your belief in evolution. It’s important to cultivate this mindset of valuing our common humanity, so that it becomes harder to discount someone who has harmed you as unworthy.
You can show love in small ways in everyday encounters—like smiling at a harried grocery cashier or taking time to listen to a child. Giving love when it’s unnecessary helps to build the love muscle, making it easier to show compassion toward everyone. If you practice small acts of forgiveness and mercy—extending care when someone harms you—in everyday life, this too will help. Perhaps you can refrain from honking when someone cuts you off in traffic, or hold your tongue when your spouse snaps at you and extend a hug instead.
Sometimes pride and power can weaken your efforts to forgive by making you feel entitled and inflated, so that you hang onto your resentment as a noble cause. Try to catch yourself when you are acting from that place, and choose forgiveness or mercy, instead. If you need inspiration, it can help to seek out stories of mercy in the world by going to the International Forgiveness Institute website: www.internationalforgiveness.com.
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Source: eight_steps_towards_forgiveness.txt... - If your friends are kind and generous, you’re more likely to be kind and generous. Yeah, it’s contagious.
NC: Actually our previous issue of Dumbo Feather was all about courage. So when you were talking then I was thinking, Oh maybe it takes courage to be kind. Because he’s talking about all of these inner resistances that he’s going through that’s prevented him from doing the kind act.
NM: Oh big time. I think the most courageous thing we can do is to love. In any situation. This is precisely what the great legends of social change like Gandhi did. He said, “No matter what you do, no matter how many guns you bring, no matter how you intimidate me, I am going to make a commitment to respond to your actions with love. I may oppose the action but I’m going to love you because you are greater than this particular action.” And that’s at that meta level, but even at a micro level I remember a story of this woman who wrote to us on our Smile Cards portal, kindspring.org. She shared this incredible story of how her son was out hiking with his college friends and he slipped and fell and he passed away.
NC: Oh s***.
NM: And when he passed away, they gave his possessions to his mum. And what she found inside his wallet was a Smile Card.
Source: paying_it_forward_an_interview_with_nipun_mehta.tx... - If we can be kind even to the people outside our immediate
circle... A big challenge for me is to be kind to people who rub me
the wrong way, or who have hurt me. If we can forgive and be kind and
focus on what we can do instead of what we can't, I think there's more
hope. Keep loving each other. Keep being kind and forgive each other
and our mistakes or weaknesses.
KOZO: I've seen in the care of elderly, an odd thing that happens.
Often when an elder suffers Alzheimer's or dementia, close family
members almost get upset with the person who is suffering, because
they're no longer the person they used to be. Especially with
something like dementia, and thinking of your grandmother --- I would
imagine you have to forgive every time that your grandmother says
"This is my niece," or "This is my sister," and she forgets who you
are. There has to be this constant forgiveness when she forgets
something you might have told her the day before. I'm wondering how
you develop that patience and forgiveness, and constantly forgive in
those situations.
MIA: First, I don't think of it as forgiving. That's just my
grandmother. But I did have to get to a point where I realized that
--- when I would get impatient with her at the beginning.
Source: awakin_call_with_mia_tagano.txt...