Queen Elizabeth II shared her understanding of how small acts of kindness make a huge difference in her Christmas address of 2016.
Choosing Kindness
I received a nice note the other day from someone who had been touched by a story I shared in a Resilience Circle. The note was short and probably took them no more than 5 minutes to write. And yet it meant so much to me. I had been having a difficult day and was feeling pretty discouraged. This person spent a few minutes Choosing Kindness, an actthat then lifted me up and put my day on a different trajectory.
Too often, kindness is disparaged as “not enough”–not efficient enough or smart enough or tough enough. Yet the kindness can unleash so much more that scorn or irony or even brilliance. Kindness opens up our capacity for creativity and connection.
Queen Elizabeth II, who died yesterday, understood that the Connecting Skill of Choosing Kindness is one of the most powerful decisions we can make. When we lift each other up, we give a little boost toward helping each other be the best we can be. And if we are all living and working at our best level, then we can collaboratively create the solutions we need. Kindness may not solve all the world’s problems, but it is an important fuel toward doing so.
Where today can you try Choosing Kindness?
With Resilience,
Mer