Practicing Kindness

Happy September; today I'm excited because I'm back home after an incredible week-long Character Strong tour up in the Pacific Northwest.

The glorious sunsets up there . . .

will take your breath away.

And the people? Inspiringly passionate . . .

and oh, so generously thoughtful.

What decadence it was to stay at the different Bed and Breakfasts.

I carved out time to visit a school in Spokane that reached out to help us recover from Hurricane Harvey last year. I dropped off a copy of The Kindness Quotient by Rhonda Sciortino, to thank them for being kindness advocates.

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It's a quick read, to help us connect with kindness,

everywhere we go, with every interaction,

not only with those people with whom that's pretty easy,

but especially with those who challenge us,

who aren't as easy to like,

who might not even be kind to us.

Who wouldn't love a world with more kindness, generosity and caring?

Check out this book to assess how you're already doing

and which areas you might be able to improve

as you build your kindness quotient (KQ) strength.

My take-away from the book? It's all about practicing.

When I taught Spanish, I always told my students

we had to use those words 21 times to commit them to memory.

Basically, we needed to practice.

Initially to learn the language, and then to keep it.

Every day.

With intention.

One of the most recent examples I've seen of the notion that things worth doing take practice came my way in WA when I got to sit in on a back-to-school breakfast. Last year, as part of his challenge to his staff to learn something new, this bold leader decided to learn to play the piano. He documented his practice with short film clips at milestones: One hour, ten hours, fifty hours, one hundred hours. Two hundred hours. Three hundred and eight two hours. He played the video so his staff could see his progression from a three-note song to Chopin.

Here's the part that brought me to tears;

when the video finished, he lifted the screen to unveil a piano.

He was about to play his first concert.

In front of the people he leads.

To show them the magic that results when we practice.

It was beautifully vulnerable and raw.

Transformational even.

And his example set up our Character Strong training perfectly.

A strong culture and a caring climate don't happen by accident.

Not at school. And not at home.

They are a result of small, intentional acts of kindness every day.

With every move we make.