Do You Create Or Destroy Kindness?

This is Day 20 of a 31 day series on Biblical kindness. You can find the rest of the posts here!

Have you ever had really exciting, wonderful news that you couldn’t wait to tell someone?

Chances are you called a friend, parent, sibling, or someone else you love because they would share in your excitement and joy.

But what would happen if when you told them your great news, they didn’t share in your joy.  In fact, by the time you hung up the phone you felt absolutely terrible.  Chances are you wouldn’t be so willing to share your happiness the next time.

How we react to others can show our true colors.  We can be creators of kindness or a wrecker of kindness.  The way respond you respond is up to you.

I’m sure you can think of at least one kindness creator.  You know how I’m talking about!

Kindness creators are our personal cheerleaders and encouragers!  They compliment others regularly, they build up others and are respectful.  Kindness creators create a positive environment.  Some of my personal favorite “kindness creators” have been my biggest supporters throughout my life. Unfortunately I think we all know a few kindness wreckers.  Kindness wreckers make you feel like you’re not good enough.  Wreckers are negative, using your weaknesses against you to make themselves feel better or superior.  Kindness wreckers use mean words and make you feel judged. At some point in our lives, you and I have both been creators of kindness and a kindness wrecker. It’s all in our attitudes.

Each and every day we have the opportunity to be a creator of kindness whether it’s to our family, friends, coworkers or strangers. We never know what someone else has going on in their lives.  What we can do is to always offer kindness.

Need a few ideas on how to do this?  Here are 5!

1. Smile.  It’s free, easy to do, and is the universal symbol of kindness.
2. Go with the golden rule of doing unto others as you’d like done to you.  Once again, it’s free and easy to do!
3. Offer compliments.  There’s always something to compliment someone on…free and easy to do!
4. Be a good listener.  We live in a society of bad listening.  Whether the person receiving the information is checking Facebook on his phone, texting another person or just isn’t listening…it’s rude!  One of the best ways to be a creator of kindness is to care what is going on with the other person and you will be able to care when you listen to them! (Free and easy to do!)
5. Finally, if you feel like you’re ready to spew out wrecking language (especially at children) tell them that you need a time out and you will talk about it in 10 minutes.  I’m like a volcano when I get mad, I can spew out a whole lot of ugliness in a really short amount of time.  By giving myself a time out to cool off, I am much better mother, wife, or friend.  If you have that problem too, I highly suggest giving it a try!

The world needs many more creators of kindness than wreckers.  What do you do to create kindness?

To see the other posts in this series click here.

Have you enjoyed what you read here today? Do you have friends or other women you know that could benefit from this resource? If so, please do me a favor! I have included the links below to share with other intentional women! They’ll be glad you did!