Quotes About Kindness

Talk to yourself like you talk to someone you love.

Stop Beating Yourself Up

The prerequisite for real empathy is compassion. We can only respond empathically if we are willing to be present to someone's pain.

In the past, jobs were about muscles, now they're about brains, but in the future they'll be about the heart. —MINOUCHE SHAFIK, director, London School of Economics

Cruelty is cheap, easy, and rampant. It's also chicken-shit.

One reason empathy and compassion are so powerful is the fact that they say to someone, "I can hear this. This is hard, but I can be in this space with you.

The clearer and more respected the boundaries, the higher the level of empathy and compassion for others. Fewer clear boundaries, less openness. It's hard to stay kind-hearted when you feel people are taking advantage of you or threatening you.

The heart of compassion is really acceptance. The better we are at accepting ourselves and others, the more compassionate we become.

As we think about shame and love, the most pressing question is this: Are we practicing love? Yes, most of us are really good at professing it--sometimes ten times a day. But are we walking the talk? Are we being our most vulnerable selves? Are we showing trust, kindness, affection, and respect to our partners? It's not the lack of professing that gets us in trouble in our relationships; it's the failing to practice love that leads to hurt.

Self-kindness is self-empathy.

Laura's courage is acknowledging hurt without running from it, and my courage is acknowledging hurt and not hurting back. We also agreed that cruelty is never brave

For most of us, being an "easy mark" has come to mean being a chump or a sucker or a pushover—shaming identities that are associated with weakness and a lack of street smarts. For the strangers who broke bread at my grandmother's house, the mark was a sign of courage and compassion.

Wouldn't it be better if we could be kinder, but firmer?

regardless of our intentions, we can't force people to make positive changes by putting them down, threatening them with rejection, humiliating them in front of others or belittling them.

I say "counterfeit" because when we see someone who we don't like, we disagree with, or is outside our group stumble, fall, or fail, it's tempting to celebrate that suffering together and to stir up collective emotion. That kind of bonding might feel good for a moment, but nothing that celebrates the humiliation or pain of another person builds lasting connection.

In our work, we find that what we regret most are our failures of courage, whether it's the courage to be kinder, to show up, to say how we feel, to set boundaries, to be good to ourselves, to say yes to something scary. Regret has taught me that living outside my values is not tenable for me.

Clear is kind. Unclear is unkind

We invite compassion onto our lives when we act compassionately toward ourselves and others, and we feel connected in our lives when we reach out and connect.

Self-Compassion A moment of self-compassion can change your entire day. A string of such moments can change the course of your life. — CHRISTOPHER K. GERMER

Courage has a ripple effect. Every time we choose courage, we make everyone around us a litter better and the world a little braver. And our world could stand to be a little kinder and braver.

others. Compassion becomes real when we recognize

A moment of self-compassion can change your entire day. A string of such moments can change the course of your life. — CHRISTOPHER K. GERMER3 Dr.

We're all just walking each other home." For

we need to disagree less, but we need to learn how to disagree better—without contempt or cruelty. It's