The One You Feed - Donna Cameron on Kindness

Episode Date: April 16, 2019

Donna Cameron has spent her career working with non-profit organizations and causes as an executive, consultant, a trainer and a volunteer. She’s the recipient of multiple awards an has published numerous articles. In 2011 she co-authored a book with Kristen Leathers called One Hill, Many Voices: Stories of Hope and Healing. In this interview, Donna and Eric discuss her book, A Year of Living Kindly: Choices That Will Change Your Life and the World Around You. You’ll hear insights into what it means, feels like and looks like to live kindly and your perspective on kindness will be broadened and enriched – possibly even changed – as a result. **Spiritual Habits Workshop – Enrollment ends 4/21/19! There’s still time to discover how spiritual habits connect you back to your deepest, truest self. Learn how to put personalized Spiritual Habits to work in your life in a special, one-time program with Eric and a small group of listeners. Click here for more information: thespiritualhabit.comNeed help with completing your goals in 2019? The One You Feed Transformation Program can help you accomplish your goals this year.But wait – there’s more! The episode is not quite over!! We continue the conversation and you can access this exclusive content right in your podcast player feed. Head over to our Patreon page and pledge to donate just $10 a month. It’s that simple and we’ll give you good stuff as a thank you!In This Interview, Donna Cameron and I Discuss…Her book, A Year of Living Kindly: Choices That Will Change Your Life and the World Around YouThat incivility is contagiousThat kindness is contagiousListening for the missed note instead of the musicPlaying “Gotcha” in the way you look at lifeThe negativity biasThe power of kindnessThe difference between nice and kindHer year of living kindly and blogging about itQuantifying the benefits of kindnessBeing indifferent and still being niceHow you can’t be indifferent and still be kindThat it takes courage to be kind, it doesn’t take courage to be niceExtending yourself beyond what is comfortableCaring, making an effort without worrying about getting anything in returnThe chasm between kindness and unkindnessNot being unkind doesn’t mean that you are being kindKeeping score and being kindThat when we say yes to one thing means we’re saying no to something elseThe health business of kindnessHow kindness alleviates social anxietyEmploying curiosity instead of judging people – “I wonder what’s going on in their lives?”Various kindness practicesPracticing a pauseAsking yourself “What is the kind response here?”Receiving graciously as an act of kindnessDonna Cameron Links:ayearoflivingkindly.comFacebookTwitterRobinhood is an investing app that allows you to buy and sell stocks, EFTs, Options, and Cryptos all commission free at any level. All it takes to do so is 4 taps in the app on your smartphone so it makes investing easy for beginners and experienced people alike. For The One You Feed listeners, you can get a free stock like Apple, Ford, or Sprint to help you build your portfolio by going to  youfeed.robinhood.comQuip has guiding features that are a built-in support system for better brushing and it’s an affordable $25 www.getquip.com/wolf get your first refill pack for freeThe Great Courses Plus offers thousands of courses in virtually any topic and you can listen on demand anywhere. Get a FREE trial and lock into their lowest price of $10 per month (50% off the regular price!) when you sign up for a 3-month plan thegreatcoursesplus.com/wolfIf you liked this episode, you might also enjoy these other episodes:Johann BerlinBarbara BonnerSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

There's been considerable research in recent years showing that unkindness and incivility are contagious. But at the same time, there's also been a lot of research showing that kindness… Welcome to The One You Feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like, garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think, ring true. And yet, for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self-pity, jealousy, or fear.

We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together, our mission on the Really Know Really podcast is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why the bathroom door doesn't go all the way to the floor, what's

in the museum of failure, and does your dog truly love you? We have the answer. Go to reallyknowreally.com and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. The Really Know Really podcast. Follow us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Donna Cameron, who has spent her career working with nonprofit organizations and causes as an executive, a consultant, a trainer, and a volunteer. She's the recipient of multiple writing awards. Donna has published numerous articles and in 2011 co-authored with Kristen Leathers, One Hill, Many Voices, Stories of Hope and Healing. In this interview, Donna and

Eric discuss her book, A Year of Living Kindly, Choices That Will Change Your Life and the World Around You. Hi Donna, welcome to the show. Hi Eric, thanks for inviting me. I'm delighted to be with you. Yeah, your book is called A Year of Living Kindly, Choices That Will Change Your Life and the World Around You. And we will get into that in just a moment, but we're going to start the way that we always do, and that's with a parable. There's a grandmother who's talking with her grandson, and she says, in life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness, bravery, and love. And the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandson stops and thinks about it for a second. He says, well, grandmother, which one wins?

And she says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do. I've always loved that parable, Eric, and I love that you asked this question. Two answers come to mind for me, one at sort of a macro level and one at a more micro level. The first one is that there's been considerable research in recent years showing that unkindness and incivility are contagious, literally contagious. They pass from one person to the next, just like a cold or the flu. If we experience unkindness, even if we only witness it and aren't directly involved, it causes us to behave more rudely in our next encounter. And I think that really explains a lot

of what we're seeing in society these days. Incivility has become epidemic because we're feeding it. But at the same time, there's also been a lot of research showing that kindness is equally contagious. So just like a virus, it infects people who come into contact with it. And the same as incivility, whether we extend the kindness, we receive it, or even just witness it, it's a catalyst for us to behave more kindly. So I think we have a choice in which wolf we feed in this arena. It's a choice in which epidemic we want to spread. And then on a more micro level, let me share this example from my career. I worked in the nonprofit world for more than 30 years, charitable and philanthropic nonprofits,

and also nonprofit trade and professional organizations. And with the latter, we sometimes worked with associations whose members' jobs were all about looking for mistakes, looking for errors, looking for abnormalities, jobs like building inspectors or radiologists or forensic accountants. So they spend their days looking for something to be wrong. And because they're good at their jobs, we're safer, we're in better condition. Buildings meet construction codes, tumorsumors are caught earlier. Financial irregularities are identified. So they do really important work. But the problem comes if some of these people can't turn off that fault-finding skill outside their job. They become people, and we all know

them, the people who you go to dinner with them and they point out the typo in the menu, or they criticize the way their kid mowed the lawn rather than appreciating the fact that their kid mowed the lawn. They point out every flaw they see, no matter how unimportant, because they just can't stop looking for errors. So they become people who are really good at seeing what's wrong, but they miss out on what's right. I call it playing gotcha with life or listening for the missed note rather than the music. I don't know if you know people like this, but they're exhausting to be around. And so with regard to them, I would say that in their jobs,

they're feeding the good wolf. But when they can't turn off that critical sensor, they start feeding the bad wolf. Right. And I would say that people in those careers may be more so that way, but a lot of us have an inclination towards that. I mean, there's a lot of writing about, you know, the negativity, the negativity bias being a hardwired sort of thing. And it's just something I think that I certainly have to watch for in my life to make sure I'm looking for what is right versus what is wrong. And it's just a matter of choosing what you choose to look for. Exactly. And it takes practice, too. Indeed, it does.

So, a year of living kindly. Talk to me about your year of living kindly. Tell me sort of what your idea was. Maybe talk a little bit about some of the things that you did during that year. Well, for years, actually decades, I've been really aware of the power of kindness. And I've been awed by people who are just genuinely kind. When we're around them, it just feels so wonderful. And I am a nice person. And I was certainly raised to be nice. That was my mother's mantra. But I was never told to be kind.

And I started to really notice that there's a difference between kind and nice. And I would set an intention to be kinder. And it would fall by the wayside when my business got really busy or stressful or just life got in the way. So in 2015, I decided to blog about kindness. And I called the blog A Year of Living Kindly, thinking I would just blog for a year about my own efforts to really live a kind life. Also, because I'm kind of nerdy, I wanted to do a lot of research into kindness. I was seeing that there's a lot of studies now quantifying the benefits of

kindness. And I wanted to explore and share those and just share what I was learning and observing about kindness. And for me, having a blog really was the solution. It held my feet to the fire. I had invited a few friends to follow the blog, so I know people were watching. And if I just let it fall by the wayside, that would be sort of a noticeable failure. So I blogged weekly about kindness, and I just learned so much. And it was always on my radar. So it was an amazing year for me in terms of experiencing kindness, getting better myself at extending kindness, and seeing how much kindness there really is around us that we sometimes either take for granted or more likely, we're oblivious to it. And then at the end of the year, the people who

follow my blog encouraged me to continue writing it and to turn it into a book. And I had seen really early on that committing to kindness wasn't something I was going to do for a year and then move on to learning salsa dancing or cooking Caribbean food or something. It really was something I wanted to commit to for as long as I'm on the planet. Can we dance and be kind? That's what I need to know. We can certainly do that, yes. Although I think a lot of people would say that my dancing is an unkindness to those around me. It's entirely possible that that case could be made.

So you said being nice isn't the same as being kind. And this is, for some reason, my mom's catchphrase the last few years. So tell me what the difference is, since we haven't had her on to tell us. Okay. I think nice doesn't ask a lot of us. We can tolerate someone and still be nice to them. We can be fairly indifferent and still be nice. We can be nice and not really make a connection with someone. But I don't think we can be kind and do any of

those things. Kind really asks us to connect with the person we're dealing with. It asks us to really be vulnerable because we're taking a risk if we extend a kindness. It might be rejected. We might do it clumsily. We might call unwanted attention to ourselves. It takes courage to be kind. I don't think it takes courage to be nice. I think that's very much true. And when I read that in the book, I certainly felt a recognition there. And I won't go on record with how kind or not kind I think I am. But nice is a big one. And one of the things you said that I thought really summed this up well, you said, extend yourself captures the essence of kindness. It also highlights the difference between niceness

and kindness. that idea of extending ourselves beyond maybe what is comfortable. Exactly, yes. There was a theologian here in Seattle, he was a columnist for the Seattle Times, a motivational speaker, just a wonderful, incredibly kind man. And he used to hand out little cards with the words, extend yourself on them. And I've carried one of his cards in my wallet for probably 30 years now. And Dale Turner is gone now. He was just a marvelous man. But I've tried to keep that tradition alive. And I now have little cards that say, extend yourself, that I give out whenever I have a chance to talk about

kindness. But I think really, it does summarize in two short words, what kindness is all about. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really No Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor. We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer.

We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you and the one bringing back the woolly mammoth. Plus, does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts? His stuntman reveals the answer. And you never know who's going to drop by. Mr. Bryan Cranston is with us today. How are you, too? Hello, my friend.

Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park. Wayne Knight, welcome to Really No Really, sir. Bless you all. Hello, Newman. And you never know when Howie Mandel might just stop by to talk about judging. Really? That's the opening? Really No Really. Oh, yeah, the opening? Really, no really. Yeah, really.

No really. Go to reallynoreally.com and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. It's called Really, No Really, and you can find it on the iHeartRadio app, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. You say being kind means caring.

It means making an effort. It means thinking about the impact i'm having in an interaction with someone and endeavoring to make it rich and meaningful giving them what they need at the exact moment without worrying about whether i get anything in return and that's a beautiful sentence and it's also a high bar. So talk to me about you in your year of living kindly and times that you come up short and how you work with that. Because it seems inevitable to me that in anything we endeavor, any sort of extending ourself, inevitably we come up short some of the time. Oh, absolutely. self, inevitably we come up short some of the time. Oh, absolutely. Unless someone is Mother Teresa or the Dalai Lama, we're never going to become perfect at kindness. It's really a path, not a destination. And I think for me personally, and it's going to be different for everyone,

but for me, some of the barriers to kindness that I really needed to overcome and sometimes didn't were obliviousness just not noticing that there's an opportunity in front of me to be kind or even not noticing that someone is extending me a kindness and I may not see it you know something as simple as holding a door for someone. And then I think also because I was raised by a mother who said, never call attention to yourself. Sometimes doing something kind where I know I'm going to call attention to myself, whether that's stepping in if someone's being bullied or going and helping someone who needs help immediately, there's still sometimes a hesitation there because I know I'm calling attention to myself. But again, it's one of

those things that gets easier with practice. If I were an inherently kind person, I wouldn't be doing this because kindness would just be such second nature to me. And I do know people like that. And I want to be one of them. You say that there's a chasm between kindness and unkindness. Talk to me about what that is. Well, I think it's indifference, really. It doesn't mean we're unkind, but that doesn't necessarily, not being unkind doesn't mean we're kind. So, someone who says, well, I didn't do anything bad, so that must make me a kind person. No, it doesn't. Kindness is more than not being unkind. And I think there's a lot of us who spend more of our time in that sort of indifferent stage. I don't know if you're old enough to remember back in the 60s

when Kitty Genovese was murdered in New York and all of these people listened to her screams, but nobody did anything about it. And that's an extreme example, but they weren't evil people, but they just didn't want to get involved. And kindness asks us to get involved. The chasm is jumping in, being willing to get involved, even if it's a bit of an inconvenience or even if it's a bit of a risk. And that is certainly one of the things that can get in the way of being kind, it being inconvenient. You list a bunch of other things that get in the

way of our kindness. I'll just read the list and then I'll let you pick one or two that you would like to talk about. So fear, laziness, impatience, indifference, inertia, obliviousness, shyness, and habit. So those are some of the things that you list that get in the way of kindness. Maybe you could just pick one or two of those and talk a little bit more about them. Well, I think fear is probably the biggest one because it comes in a lot of different flavors. It's the fear of being rejected, the fear of doing it wrong, the fear of unwanted attention. That's a hard one for us. Fear often paralyzes us. And I'm just trying to take my fear along with me and stick it in my pocket, acknowledge it, but move ahead anyway. Another one, and I'm not sure if you mentioned it,

is keeping score. And this one for me was a big aha. I started noticing how many times in our lives we keep score. It could be something as simple as with your spouse or your partner saying, I emptied the dishwasher last time, it's your turn to do that. Or we had them over for dinner last. It's their turn to have us. I won't call her till she calls me. All these silly things. I even encountered a woman who created this elaborate spreadsheet to track her Christmas cards. She tracked the people she sent cards to and their names and addresses, but whether she received a card from them and whether they signed it or included a personal note. And then at the end of the season, she would go through and delete anyone who didn't send her a card so that they wouldn't get one from her the next year. And I just thought that was such a strange thing to do to our friends to keep score that way. We never know, maybe somebody's having a year where they can't afford to buy Christmas

cards or they're dealing with illness and they just can't do it. But to scratch a friend off the list because they didn't send a card, that for me was just a real eye opener of what do we get from keeping score? I think we just get grudges and resentments. And if we can stop doing that, it frees up our mind to appreciate our friends and appreciate our lives more. If Christmas cards were a criteria for friendship, I would have exactly zero friends. I'm afraid I'm in the same camp. It's been a long time since I sent a card. Fortunately, I still have some friends who still send some to me.

Exactly. I'll have some friends who still send some to me. Exactly. But the point is a really important point, which is that to the extent that we are doing that keeping score, not only does it limit our ability to be kindness, it does limit our ability in a lot of cases to have good relationships because that's not the way things really work. You know, maybe ideally over a long period of time, there's some degree of mutuality in a relationship. I think for it to have close relationships with people, there is some of

that, but boy, it can be kind of out of whack at different times or, you know, one person's more there for the other than another time and vice versa. And I agree, keeping score is a surefire way to be unhappy. Totally, yes. I guess obliviousness is another big one. And I don't want to be one of those people who adds to the conversation about, oh, we spend too much time on our devices and our heads are always in our screens. But really, what are we missing

by choosing to be so connected? I see parents down at the park near our home, instead of enjoying their kids playing in the park, they're on their phones. I think we need to always remember that when we say yes to something, it often means we're saying no to something else. So I just encourage people to find a balance with their technology so that it doesn't keep them from noticing other things, noticing an opportunity to be kind or someone trying to extend a kindness to them. Yeah, I love that line that when we say yes to one thing, we're often saying no to another. That's a really useful sentence to keep in mind because it's totally true. And I have noticed often that I will do not necessarily unkindness,

but when I'm in the middle of doing something and somebody asks me something or does something, I often just sort of give a very, you know, brusque. Is that the right way for that? It's one of those I've read a thousand times. I don't know if I've heard it said, but I give that sort of reaction. And then often I stop and I pull myself kind of out of the immersion I'm in. And I go, Oh, hang on a second. That's not how I wanted to answer that. Or that's not the response I wanted to give. And that is a degree of obliviousness. I don't know. It's, it's just being involved in something else. But I do recognize that mechanism that when my attention is really focused in one place, if there are people around me, When my attention is really focused in one place, if there are people around me, they often then don't get the attention. Yeah, and it's a choice we make, and we can't always be paying attention to everything around us.

That just isn't realistic, but we also don't need to always be connected to our internet feeds or Twitter or whatever it is that's on our screen. Yep. Let that be a lesson to those of you. Don't interrupt me. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really No Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor. We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal?

The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you. And the one bringing back the woolly mammoth. Plus, does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts? His stuntman reveals the answer. And you never know who's going to drop by. Mr. Bryan Cranston is with us today.

How are you, too? Hello, my friend. Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park. Wayne Knight, welcome to Really, No Really, sir. Bless you all. Hello, Newman. And you never know when Howie Mandel might just stop by to talk about judging. Really? That's the opening?

Really, No Really. Yeah, really. No really. Go to reallynoreally.com. And register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason Bobblehead. It's called Really, No Really, and you can find it on the iHeartRadio app, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Let's talk about some of the science about the health benefits of kindness.

David Hamilton has done, you say, done considerable research, and he reports there are five beneficial side effects of kindness. Let's have a couple of them. Well, there are quite a few, yes. And Hamilton, he's a Scottish researcher and he's done quite a bit of this. And there's also been a lot of other research by other universities. But when we experience kindness, our body produces the hormone oxytocin, which has been shown to lower blood pressure and reduce inflammation. It fights heart disease and slows aging. Kindness has also been shown to reduce chronic pain and reduce depression. Another fascinating study that I found was that kindness

alleviates social anxiety. So people who are painfully or even debilitatingly shy, if they focus on kindness instead of their discomfort, it helps them to endure and even enjoy social situations. There's also evidence that kind people sleep better and that they live longer. So that's a lot of good health benefits. I think there are a lot of people who probably hear the word kindness and think, oh, well, that's sweet. It's fluffy. It sounds nice. Who's going to argue with kindness? But then they may not really realize that there's a lot of evidence to show that choosing kindness changes our lives in so many ways. And I think if enough of us do it, it's going to change the world.

Definitely has lots of benefits that I've experienced in my own life. And I think that social anxiety is really, I've experienced that myself know, I used to have to go to these networking events for work. And I never liked them. Not liking them is a mild way of putting it in a lot of cases. Oh, I'm with you. and lonesome and morose as I did. And I just went to that person and would just kind of talk to them and find out what they were about and just kind of ask them questions and maybe try and include them if I knew another person. I found that as soon as I started doing that, the whole situation changed for me in a way that made it a lot easier for me to be there. Yes. And you also made it a lot easier for them. That's a great kindness. You say that when I am unkind, it is probably more in thought than in deed.

I exercise unkind thoughts more often than unkind actions. That's me talking about me. Yes. You know, I'm outwardly, I don't do unkind things, I don't think. But I still occasionally make judgments. I will say I'm a whole lot better than I was because I'm more aware and I don't want to make judgments. But if I see someone in the grocery store who's totally oblivious and blocking the aisles or doing something, I might make a judgment. I try not to do that now. And I have skills and strategies for avoiding that. But we often say, oh, I'm a kind person because I don't ever do anything unkind. But if you're thinking unkind thoughts, you still have a ways to go.

Yeah, you say that for me, unkind thoughts seem to creep in when I am in the most ordinary of circumstances, surrounded by others who, like me, are just trying to get in, get out, and get on to the next thing. And boy, that is where mine come from, too, mostly. Whether that be, like you said, somebody blocking me in a grocery aisle or somebody who just seems kind of oblivious that there's anybody else around them. a grocery aisle or somebody who just seems kind of oblivious that there's anybody else around them. At the checkout line, driving the car, all those are places for me that the judgments rush in very quickly. And I really have to sort of work to slow myself down a little bit and kind of try and dislodge this idea in my mind that the entire world should move at my pace or my schedule, or is there, the entire world is basically there just to get out of my way. I think that's so true. As I've been talking about kindness in recent months, I just can't

count how many people have come up to me and said, I think I'm a fairly kind person, except when I'm behind the wheel of my car, and then all kindness flies out the window. And then others have said, the place that really gets to them is airports or travel. So I think just congestion and crowds, it's sort of a natural way for us to pull our shell up and just want to resist. And sometimes thinking in advance about how you want to behave in those situations is all it takes to help us get past that initial response of making a judgment or ignoring people. If we think in advance, well, I'm going into a situation where there are often irritants, how can I avoid acting on them? And one of the great ones is to employ

curiosity, to instead of judging people, think about, I wonder what's happening in that person's life. Are they going through some sort of a stress that's making them be oblivious to the people around them? And one of the things I've noticed is that it's just impossible to be unkind and curious at the same time. That's an interesting observation. I have found that with many other things in curiosity, that curiosity is a great way to stop judgment. And you're saying that judgment is a form of unkindness. It's interesting, there's a chicken and egg here a little bit, right?

Which is, I certainly notice for me that when I am in a good mood or a better mood or in a good space. Like it's so much easier for me just to be kind. It is just easier for me to let the people on the road do their thing. I'm kind of relaxed. And yet also kind of like you're saying, sometimes then the effort of, of stopping and, and really making the effort to be kind can sort of change the mood also.

So I think this goes both ways. I think you're right. And I think we attract what we look for. So, you know, going back to the wolf parable, if we're looking for kindness and expecting kindness, that's more likely what we're going to find. And if we're expecting a situation to have some sort of offense or challenge to us, then that's what we'll pick up on. Exactly. So in the book, you have lots of practices for living kindly.

And I was wondering, as we come nearing our end of time, if you could share maybe two, three, four practices that you found to be really helpful for you as ways to be kind. I think that, you know, I know for me that doing something kind is on my, I have sort of a master list of like an a la carte list of things that I do that I know are good for me. And it's, there's a lot of things on the list and I obviously don't do all of them every day, but kindness is one of them. But often it's helpful to have some concrete practice like, oh, okay, I want to do something kind. What are some practices that you use? Well, one of them is very simple, and that's learning to pause. I think that's probably the most powerful kindness practice there is. We tend to sort of have knee-jerk reactions to other people.

And if someone says something to us that's offensive, we snap back in the same tone. And if we just learn to pause, it changes everything. Most of us have mothers who at one time or another said, before you respond in anger, count to 10. And that was really good advice. So in that pause, we can think about who we want to be. We can think about what else might be going on that made that situation seem offensive. We can think about what we want to get out of this interaction and how we can

manifest that. One of the things that I try to ask myself going into a situation, especially something that's new or I haven't experienced before, is what is the kind response here? And just having kindness in my radar helps me choose wisely. Another kindness practice that most of us really need to practice is receiving graciously. Some of us are really, really good givers, but we don't receive kindness real well. Especially here, we're all raised to be independent and go by our own bootstraps and things like that. And so we don't ask for help when we need it. And we often say no if someone offers us help and we really

could use it. So learning to receive graciously, whether it's a gift or a seat on the bus or a compliment, we need to sort of change our look on that and look at it as if we receive graciously, we're giving a gift to the giver. We're helping them feel good about having given something. Yeah, that's one of those things that my wise girlfriend reminds me of, or doesn't necessarily remind me of, but talks about from time to time how important that is. And your earlier idea about the pause is, it's back to that basic Viktor Frankl idea of that, you know, there's a space between stimulus and response. And in that space is where all of our human powers of choice come.

And the pause, the intentional pause, is just a way to create a little bit more space there. Exactly. I think the pause gives us the gift of grace. That's a beautiful sentence. Well, you and I are going to continue this conversation in the post-show conversation, and I'm going to ask you to tell me a Stephen Covey story that you tell in the book that's one of my favorite stories of all time also. So you and I will do that in the post-show conversation.

Listeners, you can get access to that in the post-show conversation. Listeners, you can get access to that by becoming a supporter of the show at oneufeed.net slash support. But Donna, thank you so much for taking the time to come on. Thanks for sharing your book and your kindness with the world. Thank you, Eric. It was my pleasure and I so appreciate your inviting me. Yes, my pleasure also. Take care. Bye. Bye-bye. If what you just heard was helpful to you, please consider making a donation to the One You Feed podcast.

Head over to oneyoufeed.net slash support. The One You Feed podcast would like to sincerely thank our sponsors for supporting the show. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together, our mission on the Really Know Really podcast is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why the bathroom door doesn't go all the way

to the floor, what's in the museum of failure, and does your dog truly love you? We have the answer. Go to reallynoreally.com and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. The Really No Really podcast. Follow us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you

get your podcasts.