Kind to Me
Mr. Rogers is one of my heroes. He believed that love and kindness are inherently healthful, and that people who express them regularly really do lead healthier lives. For three decades, Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood held messages for children (and adults) that flowed from the conviction that people who are kind to themselves, and generous in volunteering their time for the benefit of others, are happier than those who don’t. Happy people tend to have fewer health complaints and live longer than those who are unhappy. Mr. Rogers said, “There are three ways to ultimate success:
The first way is to be kind.
The second way is to be kind.
The third way is to be kind.”
Kindness goes far beyond being nice. We can be nice without sincerity or authenticity. But, being kind requires intentional, voluntary words, and actions. Learning to be kind takes practice and thoughtful attentiveness. Kindness is an emergent property – it rises up out of us, is given, becomes something different, something more, something greater than the effort or intention we put into the original gift of kindness.
The beautiful thing about kindness is that we never know what a single act of kindness might become. We might put a single, tiny drop of kindness into our world, but we won’t ever be able to measure what the outcome of that single act produces. For kindness to emerge out of us, we need to have kindness resident inside us. That means I need to practice being kind to me – letting my own drops of kindness to myself become an emergent property inside of me first. The ways I am kind to me rise up out of themselves – always changing, always growing, always moving, always becoming something greater than the tiny seeds of kindness I first put into myself. Quiet acts of kindness that we give ourselves produce kinder people. “Imagine,” Mr. Rogers said, “what our real neighborhoods would be like if each of us offered, as a matter of course, just one kind word to another person.” Imagine also, if as a matter of course, each of us offered one kind word to ourselves each hour throughout the day today.
It is easy to be unkind to ourselves without even realizing what we are doing. I was stopped short by the words Annie Lennox sang as I cleaned yesterday. “Why do you hurt yourself? You do it very well. You do it so politely - That you couldn’t even tell.” Allowing our minds to say things to us silently that we would never say to someone else… allowing our minds to wander darkly through spiraling thoughts of grim future possibilities… allowing the negative words others have spoken to dictate our perspective of ourselves. The “do no harm” motto needs to apply to the way we treat ourselves as well as the way we treat others.
In very practical ways, how are we kind to ourselves? I asked people who visited our clinic last week to finish the sentence, “Kind to me means…” These tender thoughts offer a few suggestions that might open your mind to new ways of being kind to yourself.
Kind to me would be:
Loving ALL of me and making space for ALL of me
Leaning into beauty, joy, peace, making time to eat good food
& listen to good musicNoticing what I need and compassionately giving it to myself
Going easy on myself when I have tried hard and failed at something
Meditating and taking time for laughter each day
Following through with the things I want to do for myself
Trying not to be upset with others because I am the one who suffers when I am angry
Shining my own countenance on myself
Not judging myself
Using kind words when I talk to or about myself
Noticing what state my nervous system is in and being compassionate about that state even if it isn’t where I’d want to be
A few days ago, I saw a little girl sitting on a rock at the beach caressing a small doll’s face. I heard her saying, “There, there, little one. You’ll be ok now.” I smiled as I watched her… and then read the words on her sweatshirt: “Be strong. Be smart. Be brave. But most of all be kind.” I wonder, if during this busy time of year while it is dark and cold, we might be strong and brave, but most of all may we be kind… to ourselves and to others.
Ruth Droullard is a Neurofeedback Practitioner at Northwest Life Medicine Clinic (and, one of the most genuinely kind people we know).