Being Exceptional for Kindness Sake
In half the time it takes to watch a rerun of Downton Abbey, we can show daily the people in our lives we care about them by dedicating a minute here for more listening and a minute there for writing a more thoughtful email. I’m convinced that when it comes to kindness, the small things make up the big things.
I hope that I am generally a decent and kind person for the most part. I really try to be at least. I set specific goals to listen more intently and to take time for people, and I try my best to remember birthdays and significant events in people’s lives. But I came to the stark realization this week that a lot of the time, I’m not very intentional in the way I interact with people. When I send an email, I try to convey the information and sure, I’ll throw in some cordial statements like “hope you had a nice weekend” and all of that or when I’m on a conference call I might throw a supportive statement about the thought of a coworker. But does that actually constitute real appreciation or kindness towards the people in my life? Maybe not, but what gives me some hope is the fact that a little bit of additional kindness is all it takes to be exceptional and that sometimes with thoughtful actions and words, it’s the small things that become big things. Let me try to explain.
It's a curious thing: if one dropped marbles into a matrix of pegs with collecting stations spread out evenly along the floor, they always start to approach a normal or “bell” curve. Normal not in our “normal” use of the word, but normal meaning that the distribution is spread in such a way that 68% of whatever is being measured will be found within one standard deviation—plus or minus—of the center point. A standard deviation is just one chunk of the whole line curve.
The term "normal" has developed quite a negative connotation. I mean, would anybody go to see a film with a hero termed normal? Perhaps since I studied psychology in college, normal means something quite different to me. Normal is what is expected. If one stumbled on an island of sociopaths where every citizen was a serial killer, not killing people would be abnormal. Normal is just what defines what is abnormal. Rather than putting us in neat social boxes in any negative sort of way, the normal curve has always struck me as being quite hopeful actually.
The normal curve is generally shown with quite the slope on either end. That precipitous drop on either side of the average point tells me that if I do almost anything extra, I can be above average. I decide I want to read more, so I read one extra book in a year. In a world where most people don't finish many books after high school, that's a quick way to be above average. If I serve on a city committee when most people don't and next to nobody my age, hey! another shortcut to that above average territory. And if I'm a little bit kinder, a little bit more interested in others, a bit more curious about others’ lives, a bit more empathetic, if I take an extra 30 seconds to ensure my email is warm or if I take the time to express my thanks to someone who helped me, regardless of whether they are getting paid to do so, I'll be joining that magical realm beyond the 68% percentile range.
Being reminded of just how easy it is to be exceptionally kinder today, I took the time it took in writing really thoughtful responses to coworkers. I decided to pay just a bit more attention so I could clarify points that I had a sense the groups of colleagues on conference call might need. I took the extra 1-2 minutes it takes to really ask how people’s days and weeks were going. And I took an extra minute—seriously just one minute, I checked—to thank the people who come by my place once a month to do some deep cleaner for how they always seem to go over and beyond what is expected or required.
That extra attention might have added up to 15 or so extra minutes over the course of my working day. That’s it. I don’t like to point to the suggestion that we all just need to watch less TV and then we’d all be millionaires and world famous authors and have cures to cancer. Sometimes after a long day, there is something incredibly satisfying and enjoyable in catching a couple of episodes of a favorite show. But looking back on the day, did I gain more than half an episode’s worth of enjoyment out of seeing the smiles and beaming faces I experienced after taking an extra minute or two to really be present and caring to the people I interacted with today? Heck yeah!
I was so pleasantly surprised at how little more effort it took that I actually started to make it sort of into a game where I tried to think of a way of surprising the people I sent emails to or chatted with on web calls or ran into on the street during a walk with a bit of tailored extra kindness. If you’re interested in giving it a try, be warned: it’s completely addictive. I’m absolutely hooked.
And then there’s the multiplier effect that makes me even more committed to staying on this track of being above average with kindness. Because when we show a little extra kindness to others, they in turn are more likely to be a bit kinder to the people around them, and through their kindness, many others feel just a little bit more encouraged to be kind around them. And the wave continues on. So out of a few extra minutes out of our day—the time it takes to watch a couple of TikTok or YouTube videos—we can send out ripples of kindness far and wide.