Description

What happens when you publicly commit to one year of kindness?  In this episode, we’ll be chatting with Donna Cameron who did just this. She’ll share her findings and how we can practically implement kindness into our world today.

Donna Cameron spent her career working with nonprofit organizations and causes—as an executive, consultant, trainer, and volunteer. It was there that she saw kindness in action and was awed by its power to transform. While she considered herself a reasonably nice person (with occasional lapses into bitchiness), she knew that true kindness was a step above. When she committed to a year of living kindly, she learned that it takes practice, patience, and understanding . . . and a sense of humor helps, too.

Her experience is captured in her book, A Year of Living Kindly.  It is now in its 7th printing and available as an audiobook. There are several foreign language editions forthcoming, and the book has been recognized with more than a dozen literary awards.

The Takeaways:

• Kindness is contagious.  If we experience it, even if we only witness somebody being kind to somebody else, we're more inclined to be kind in our next encounters.
• There’s a distinction between being nice and being kind. Nice is safe and it's doing the expected or polite thing. You can be nice to someone and still make judgments about them. Being kind is the intention to suspend judgment of others, to do more than tolerate, and to accept them as they are.
• Being kind requires intention. It's going a little bit beyond to help another person,  encourage them or make them feel better. A lot of it is perception.
• Extending and receiving kindness is a connector and requires courage.
• Kindness requires active participation from both the giver and receiver.

Learn more about Donna Cameron at https://ayearoflivingkindly.com/

Twitter: @DonnaJCameron, https://twitter.com/DonnaJCameron

Facebook Author Page: https://www.facebook.com/DonnaCameron.author/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/donna-cameron-177b145/