Up to now you may have the impression that the Toler household was idyllic, but let me assure you we were a normal family; we had our problems just like everyone else. Mark, Terry, and I were mischievous from time to time and had to be nudged back in line. More often than not, those times of discipline came after church. It seems the Toler brothers were notorious for being a bit rambunctious during the service, which Dad rightly thought was disrespectful. When we were younger, he wasn’t afraid to show his displeasure through a couple of firm swats on our backside. We certainly deserved it. As my brother Mark says, “Most of our discipline moments were related to talking too much in church. We thought, ‘Since we like to talk in church so much, why not get paid for it?’” That probably explains why all three of us became pastors.
My father had a strong sense of right and wrong, but that never clouded his view of what’s truly most important in life—relationships with others. When he disciplined me or my brothers, he did so gently. He understood what it was like to be a kid, and he wanted to build us up, not tear us down. Relationships always came first with him.
Dad was that way with everybody, including coworkers, store clerks, or complete strangers. He had a sense that everybody you meet is dealing with something difficult and could use a little kindness. He had a strong personality, but he was one of the gentlest people I’ve ever known.
Every Monday as I get ready to leave the house, I put on Dad’s watch and wind it. And every Monday I’m reminded that no matter how busy Dad was or how stressful life had become in that moment, he took the time to speak with each of us boys, give us a kiss on the forehead, and say, “I love you.” Believe me, some mornings we didn’t exactly merit a pat on the head; getting three boys up and ready for school wasn’t always easy for my mom. But even when he’d spoken stern words at the breakfast table, Dad showed his love and care for us before leaving the house.
As a boy, I took my father’s love and care for granted. I thought everybody was good-natured, kindhearted, and sympathetic toward others. As I grew into adulthood I realized that gentleness is in short supply in this world, and that people are often unkind and even cruel sometimes for the most trivial reasons. I’m grateful that my father modeled for me one of the basic fruits of a positive attitude: compassion for others. He chose to treat others not as they deserved to be treated, but with the love and respect they needed. By doing so, he gave me the gift of compassion.
Compassion Results from a Positive Attitude
Compassion means treating others with gentleness and respect even when they don’t deserve it. It’s the practice of being patient, tolerant, and helpful to others, especially those in need. The opposite is reprisal, exacting a price for every interaction, counting the cost, and making sure others give you as much or more than they receive from you. Compassion is the natural byproduct of a positive attitude. It’s a choice we make based on our view of the world.
Here are a few of the positive assumptions that underlie the choice to be kind to others.
Everyone Carries a Hidden Need
The quotation “Be kind; everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle” is variously attributed to Plato, Philo of Alexandria, and the Scottish minister John Watson. Regardless of its origin, the quote rings true. Each day we encounter dozens of people, sometimes hundreds, and each of them carries a hidden pain. One person may suffer from an unseen illness. Another may be on the brink of divorce. Someone else may be facing financial difficulties or legal problems or tensions at work. People who have a good outlook on life realize the struggles others face and are willing to give them the benefit of the doubt.
A positive thinker will surmise that an irritable colleague or irate driver is dealing with some other pain that drives their behavior. That makes it so much easier to respond with kindness rather than annoyance or anger.
I’m No Better than Anyone Else
People who choose kindness have an accurate opinion of themselves. They realize that everyone has problems, and anyone could find himself or herself in need. Therefore, they reason, a person who makes a mistake or behaves badly or needs assistance isn’t that much different from themselves.
Negative thinkers, those with a mindset of entitlement or reprisal, believe that all people should get exactly what they deserve at all times. They overlook the fact that nobody’s perfect; everybody makes mistakes—including them! Of course we want to live in a just world where no one gets away with wrongdoing. But a healthy self-concept allows room for tolerance, grace, and second chances.
Positive-thinking people are willing to be kind to others because they have an accurate view of the world—and themselves.
The Scales Always Balance Eventually
People with a positive attitude also believe that the scales always balance eventually. The world is round, and what goes around comes around. They’re not worried about people getting what they deserve, because they believe justice is woven into the fabric of the universe.
Negative thinkers are always afraid they’ll come out on the short end of the stick. They have to ensure that nobody gets away with anything, that every wrong is corrected, and that people only get exactly what they’ve earned. They don’t have room for generosity, kindness, or making exceptions to the rule, because they’re afraid others will somehow take advantage of the system.
Positive thinkers believe there’s a power at work in the world far greater than themselves. My faith tells me that “the system” is run by God, who’ll eventually ensure that those who deserve judgment will get it.
Positive thinkers are willing to give people the benefit of the doubt because they know the scales will be balanced someday, somehow.
You Get What You Give
As we’ve already seen with the practice of generosity, you get what you give in life. People who are judgmental, vengeful, and arrogant will likely receive that same treatment themselves, while those who are compassionate and kind can expect to receive that grace in return. As the wisest teacher of all time put it, “Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.”1
We should all be careful about wishing that everybody will get exactly what they deserve in life, because that means we will too! I don’t know about you, but I’d rather receive grace and kindness than an exact accounting of every word I’ve ever spoken or every deed I’ve ever done. I believe in grace because I know I need it.
It’s Nicer to Be Nice
A positive attitude leads us to create the kind of world we’d like to live in. Positive thinkers believe we would all be better off if more people treated others with simple kindness and dignity, even if they haven’t earned that treatment.
That’s the viewpoint of Re’na Garcia, a wife and mother who loves to perform random acts of kindness. She believes that doing something nice for others without expecting anything in return is simply the best way to live. She and her husband, Aaron, practice random acts of kindness, including leaving a huge tip at a restaurant, paying for someone else’s gas at a convenience store, leaving a roll of quarters at a self-service laundry, or mowing a neighbor’s lawn. She says part of the fun is not sticking around for a thank you.
Often, when she pulls up to a drive-thru window, she pays the bill for the car behind her in addition to her own. She then asks the clerk to pass along a business card that explains her motivation. There are no strings attached.
“If someone is having a day in which his life is hanging in the balance,” she reasons, “this could be his opportunity to realize what he’s been missing. You never know how it might change a life if you buy someone dinner and they don’t know who did it.”2
Being kind to others is a choice we make to produce the better world that we’d all like to see. It’s a way of putting our positive attitude into action, benefitting others as well as ourselves.
Negative thinkers give everyone exactly what they deserve because they believe in the concept of fairness. Positive thinkers treat people better than they deserve for the same reason.
Kindness Is Good for You
Showing courtesy, gentleness, and respect to others benefits them in obvious ways. Those who’ve made mistakes can get a second chance, people who are lonely receive a personal touch, and those in need get a helping hand. Kindness is a stepping-stone others can use to improve their lives.
And kindness benefits the giver too. Just as generosity has positive effects on your body and spirit, so does kindness. Though it may seem surprising, being kind to others is actually good for you.
Kindness Wins Friends
Zig Ziglar, the great positive thinker and motivational speaker, said, “If you go looking for a friend, you’re going to find they’re very scarce. If you go out to be a friend, you’ll find them everywhere.”3 That’s a simple way of saying that other people will likely respond to you in the same way you respond to them. If you treat others with kindness and respect, they’ll do the same for you.
That was the experience of a woman we know only as Sara, a Jewish wife and mother living in Germany in the late 1930s. Realizing that the situation was becoming dangerous for Jewish people under the Nazi regime, Sara determined to leave the country with her family. She’d heard that a few visas would be available at an office in Berlin the next day. While her husband went to work and friends watched her two small children, Sara traveled to the city by train, an hour-long ride, in hopes of obtaining visas for her family to exit the country.
From the station in Berlin, she traveled to the office by cab only to find dozens of others already filling a small, stifling room—all hoping for the same thing. A lone German bureaucrat sat behind a desk, seeming to ignore those waiting in quiet desperation. Hours passed. Suddenly the clerk said in a loud voice, “No visas today. Come back tomorrow!”
For Sara this meant the challenge and expense of finding a place to stay for the night, but there seemed no choice. She found a room and returned to the same stuffy office the next day. Again, people waited in silence as the dour government employee went about his work, seeming to ignore them. Late that afternoon, he repeated his announcement from the previous day: “There are no visas. Everyone must go home.” By now the applicants had lost patience, and many began to vent their frustration with angry complaints.
Sara, however, responded differently. While others filed out of the office, she made her way to the front. She leaned over and spoke quietly to the man behind the desk: “I want to thank you for all your time. Have a good day.” With that, she turned to leave the office, not knowing what the future would hold for her family.
Before Sara reached the stairway, she heard the sound of someone coming quickly down the hallway behind her. She turned to see the bureaucrat, holding several pieces of paper in his hand. “I have these visas I can give you,” he said. Unbeknown to Sara or any of the other applicants, this poor government clerk had so few visas available for so many applicants that he decided the fairest thing was to give none to anyone. Yet Sara’s act of gentleness broke through his detachment and touched his heart. Her kindness moved him to reciprocate. As a result, she and her family escaped the Holocaust.4
Your kindness will improve your situation as well as that of others. By being kind, respectful, helpful, and caring, you’ll win friends, gain influence, and perhaps be rewarded with kindness in return. Positive thinkers don’t do a favor in order to get one back, yet they realize that no good deed goes unnoticed and, ultimately, unrewarded. Being kind to others makes everyone’s life better, including your own.
Kindness Is Good for Your Health
We have an intuitive sense that those who practice kindness toward others are happier and healthier than those with a negative attitude or who are callous and closed toward others. Now there’s scientific research to back that up. According to Dr. Stephen G. Post, a professor at Stony Brook University and director of the Center for Medical Humanities, Compassionate Care, and Bioethics, numerous studies point to the health benefits of doing good for others. For one thing, a variety of studies, including a widely cited work by psychologist Frank Riessman, identify the benefits of the helper principle, which holds that helping others is essential to helping oneself. By this reasoning, when you give assistance to others, you aid yourself along on the same journey. We see this commonly practiced in 12-step programs today. By helping others on the road to wholeness, alcoholics, addicts, smokers, dieters, and many others also improve their own lives.5
Yet this isn’t just self-help. People who give assistance to others are also healthier and live longer. Dr. Case cites another study in which 27,000 adults were questioned about job satisfaction and general happiness. People whose work involved helping or serving others were more satisfied with their work and expressed a greater sense of overall happiness than others did. Professions listed among the most gratifying were pastoral ministry, physical therapy, and special education.
Other research shows that people who volunteer to help others are happier and in better health. In a study that began in 1956, 427 wives and mothers who lived in upstate New York were studied for 30 years by researchers at Cornell University. The researchers concluded that regardless of number of children, marital status, occupation, education, or social class, the women who engaged in volunteer work to help others at least once a week lived longer and had better physical health than those who did not. Another study found that older people who volunteered 100 hours or more in a single year were 30 percent less likely to experience limitations in physical function compared to others. In a third study, researchers who analyzed data from 1500 adults found that people who served as volunteers would have less functional disability three to five years later.6
Being kind to others wins friends, influences people, helps you on the road to recovery, and positively impacts your health. I can’t think of any better reasons to choose kindness.
But if you need one, there is one more.
Unkindness Harms You More than Others
Undoubtedly, some people are difficult to show kindness to. Some people are ornery, hard to get along with, spiteful, or even hostile. It can be especially challenging to show kindness to others when they’ve been less than gracious with you. Our natural temptation is to get even, take revenge, or try to get one over on the people who’ve wounded us. There’s a good reason to resist that temptation and to show kindness even when it’s most challenging to do so: Being unkind to your enemies harms you more than them.
For example, when someone does you wrong, you may be tempted to hold a grudge. You bear ill feelings toward the person and perhaps look for ways to get even. All that emotional energy certainly takes its toll, but not on the object of your anger. The harm all comes to you.
Think about it. When you hold a grudge, who feels angry? Certainly not the other person. It’s likely that whoever you hold a grudge against either doesn’t know or care about your spiteful feelings. It’s you who carries the stress of that negative emotion. Who loses sleep? Who lives with unresolved tension? Who carries a knot in the pit of the stomach? It’s you who suffers from this burden.
Holding a grudge has been described as drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die. That isn’t far from the truth.
Unkindness damages your reputation, your relationships, and even your well-being. Choose kindness—it’s the safest thing you can do.
Pay It Forward
The staff at a Starbucks coffee shop in Newington, Connecticut, could tell you about the power of showing kindness to others. Over a three-day period around Christmas 2013, they witnessed more than 1000 drive-through customers cheerfully agreeing to pay for the coffee of the person behind them in line. This broke the store’s previous record of 783 people choosing to pass along the act of kindness.
The chain reaction began about eight a.m. on Christmas Eve. Some customers who drove through expected to pay just a couple of dollars for their own coffee, but on learning that the person ahead of them had already paid for it, they happily paid up to $15 more for the person behind them. On Christmas Day, the store opened a gift card for moments when there was no one in line behind a paying customer, and someone contributed $100 to it. Joshua, the store manager said, “We hope that it will continue on; even if it doesn’t continue on here, we just hope that it will inspire people to do greater things and inspire people to do more for their communities.”7
That’s the power of an act of kindness. It prompts others to repeat it. On and on the chain goes, making the world a slightly better place with each unbroken link. When you choose to be tolerant, forgiving, generous, or thoughtful, you release the power of goodness into the world. It ripples from one person to another, and you may never see the ultimate outcome. Choose kindness. Make the decision to treat others with gentleness and respect—even, and especially, when they don’t deserve it.