I recently read an inspiring article about kindness written by Barbara A. Lewis. I highlighted three profound sentences that I want to share with you:
“A lack of kindness can begin with critical thoughts of others, and it can develop into a habit of finding fault. However, if we accept responsibility for our own reactive thinking, we can become more charitable. Rather than judging others, we grow in understanding, and kindness.”
I have been thinking about this concept since I read her article and how true her statement is. How many times have you had a strained relationship with someone that began with critical thoughts?
“Why doesn’t he _________?”
“Why does she always ____________?”
“He shouldn’t ______________.”
“She should have ____________.”
Our negativity and our unkind actions only grow from there. Since these critical thoughts are the root of our problem, what can we do to change this habit?
Someone once told me,
“We judge others by their perceived actions. We judge ourselves by our intentions.”
This is so true and so unfair! We have no idea what another person’s intentions are because we are not that person. When we let those critical thoughts based on perceived actions take root in our hearts, they continue to grow and develop into habits of fault-finding.
“So what can we do instead?”
We can be intentional with our thoughts. When a critical thought comes to our minds, we can give others the grace we hope they would give us. We can LET IT GO. Fortunately, we are not omniscient beings who hold the responsibility to judge everyone in every situation and decide who is right and who is wrong. Instead of focusing our energy on criticism and judging and fault-finding, we can use that energy to remind us that we never have the whole picture because we are limited by our own limitations and perspectives. Yes, you may feel your way of thinking is superior and absolute, but it is possible the other person feels the exact same way about his own way of thinking.
“But I’m just trying to help!”
Are you? Is this like how my son said he “accidentally” stepped on his brother? Sometimes we would do ourselves a lot of good if we stopped ourselves in the middle of a critical thought and asked,
“Why am I thinking about this?”
Since I recently read Ramona Quimby, Age 8 with my boys for their summer reading, this quote about Ramona from the end of the book comes to my mind:
“Deep down inside, she felt she herself was nice all the time, but sometimes on the outside her niceness sort of—well, curdled. Then people did not understand how nice she really was. Maybe other people curdled too.”
Just as Lewis states in her article, we will grow in understanding and kindness when we intentionally refrain from judging others or criticizing them. We may regret unkind words that come up from our hearts, through our mouth, and out into the air, but we will undoubtedly never regret kindnesses shown to others whether known or unknown. I think we can all benefit from being a bit kinder, don’t you?
