Kindness Supports Resilience

Respect, compassion, and love for others and community is just important at work as it is in your personal life. Build resilience of your community, your “tribe,” by fostering an atmosphere of positivity and support.

Immense stress and an anxiety is spreading over every aspect of our lives in this incredibly difficult time, and pandemic, social strife, and external pressures magnify our daily personal struggles. It is hard to fight the momentum of all these burdens, pulling us down to negativity and toxic behaviors towards others. However, we must.

A few interactions lately have revealed to me how stressed and anxious we all are and how our words can tip someone over the edge, or how someone else’s behaviors can poison our days. There is no easy solution, but we can take responsibility for our own attitudes and behaviors to promote positivity, kindness, and love.

I learned today, that sometimes, the teachable moment, is not the only thing that needs to be a part of an important conversation. Sometimes as a coach, mentor, or parent, we find important opportunities to teach someone something, but sometimes, that lesson needs to come with more love and compassion than usual, because the student, child, or athlete is struggling under the burden of so much that we don’t know about. Building someone up as you teach them, and empowering him or her as you help hone his/her abilities is the way to support a resilient person and so importantly, a resilient relationship.

I also learned today, that sometimes, others are not thinking about this. Sometimes someone is emotionally not mature, does not know how to handle situations, and/or is overwhelmed and beyond their capabilities, and this can lead to the toxic communications, passive aggressiveness, ghosting, or other types of behaviors that can hurt a conversation, a person’s day, or long-term, a relationship. There a few instances in which I have accepted that I cannot be liked by all, please everyone, and am going to be the subject of someone’s blame and resentment. I cannot change things I have done in the past, and I learned today, that I need to just remain kind, compassionate, and supportive to those individuals. That’s all I can do to keep my conscience clear, and stop a cycle of toxicity. I have accepted that for some people, I am their punching bag and nothing I do or say can change that. I can limit my interactions and that’s what I can do in my control. So… doing the right thing like this is [expletive] hard. Really hard. I struggle with it, but it builds my emotional resilience, supports my long-term health and physical resilience, and hopefully, again, supports someone outside of me, my community around me.

Let’s all be compassionate, kind, and supportive. I promise, you will feel stronger, and your community around you will feel stronger as your relationships also become stronger and more resilient.