Hi y'all. These exercises are from Andy Smallman of Kind Living. I received this in my email and thought I would pass it along. And if I get the other reflections I will post it here too...just in case you want to do these exercise. For the year. Alternatively, if you don't want to keep checking my blog, you can go to http://kindliving.net and sign up for yourself. Have fun. Be kind.
As we get started this week, the focus is simply to get you thinking about the difference between being courteous and being kind. For the sake of simplicity, I'm suggesting that being courteous is a social custom we're taught. It comes with an expectation of being treated with courtesy. Same with using good manners and doing what is expected of us.
For our purposes here, kindness is something else.
Kindness is a self-contained act in which the action or thought involved brings its own reward. There is no expectation for reciprocity; in fact, sometimes we worry that receiving something in response to a kind act diminishes our kindness. For this reason, many of us prefer to complete our kind acts anonymously.
Take some time this week to think about what I've written above. Get a nice journal or notebook to reflect on your thoughts. Write about a time when you behaved with courtesy and another time when you behaved with kindness.
What was the same? What was different? How did you feel in both cases?
No comments:
Post a Comment