Keep Kind Intentions

"Kindness in words creates confidence. Kindness in thinking creates profoundness. Kindness in giving creates love." – Lao Tzu

Kindness may seem like a soft skill that no one has time for, especially if you are an ambitious hustle bro trying to get to your first $million, $billion or $trillion. We are here today to challenge this misperception. You may have heard that “a little kindness goes a long way”, but what exactly does that mean?

1). Kindness Accelerates Progress
Kindness is not only a rewarding and creative activity in its own right, but it also acts as a time accelerator, unlocking events and progress that flow outside of our normal perception of linear time. Kindness does not operate in a strictly cause and effect fashion like classical physics, but instead is more akin to quantum entanglement at a distance, where one act of kindness can have immediate effects in some other seemingly unrelated part of your world.

2). Kindness Generates Exponential Energy
Think of kindness like a reliable and inexhaustible form of power that radiates outwards as you use it. Rather than “taking time” or being a “hassle”, kindness is a renewable resource that actually increases as you put it to work. When set into action, kindness brings refreshment to both the receiver and the giver.

3). Kindness Solves Problems
At a very practical and granular level, kindness can help unlock negotiations, smooth over disagreements, and even take collaborative creative processes to the next level. As you are kind to others and kind to new ideas and kind to yourself, problems will immediately feel less daunting and exhausting.

4). Kindness Reframes
We’ve written elsewhere about wearing “kind colored glasses”. Seen through the eyes of kindness, many frustrating people and situations are rendered in a less stressful and more constructive light. This kindness reframing opens up new possibilities that are hidden in the day-to-day hustle and bustle. In this sense, kindness is a kind of x-ray vision that allows us to effortlessly bring value to those around us because we can see and intuit what they truly value.

5). Kindness Pays Legitimate Dividends
The world values things that are scarce, and unfortunately, kindness is very rare these days. That’s why it is such an easy investment to make. Yes, it may take some time and maybe even some money to show kindness, but frankly the bar is set so low, that your small acts of kindness will stand out to an exceptional degree. A small gift, a simple card, a kind word - these small gestures cost little but in almost every case leave a lasting impact. Even if your kindness “falls on deaf ears”, don’t get tired or discouraged. As mentioned earlier, kindness runs as more of a quantum force, rather than on a strictly Newtonian cause and effect engine. If you don’t see immediate dividends, trust that there will be unseen results around the corner.

How to Activate Kindness
So - hopefully kindness now seems a bit more appealing, but how to best activate kindness in your life? Stephen Covey wrote about a powerful way to organize your priorities - namely, if you think of your life as a jar - there are only so many stones of focus that you can fill it with. The important strategy is to pick the big important stones and make sure that they go into the jar first. This might be a health goal, your key money goals, relationships etc. Put those major priorities “into the jar” each day. Then all the myriad of other activities and goals will take their rightful place alongside the bigger goals.

As you consider the “big rocks” in your life, be sure to put kindness into your jar ASAP!