Tag Archives: kindness

3 Personal Characteristics to Work On This Spring

Every day life, , , , ,

*This post may contain affiliate links.

If you’re the kind of person who is always seeking ways to improve your self, you are not alone. Self-improvement is a huge industry. As long as you approach it in the right way, it is a wonderful reminder to check your approach to life and make adjustments where necessary.

In this post, we are going to identify three personal characteristics to work on in the upcoming season. How can we audit our approach to these qualities in our own lives to identify ways we’re doing well and places we can approve? What strategies can help us develop these qualities in stronger ways?

Let’s take a look…

Resilience

Our first characteristic is resilience. So, why would you want to develop this particular quality? Well, for one thing, resilience and success go hand in hand. The more you are able to keep on going, even when things get difficult, the more likely it is that you will end up achieving your goals, whatever they might be. Fate may knock you around a little, but having the ability to carry on will help you in many ways.

Resilience is a quality which you can develop in yourself, no matter how lacking you might feel you are at present. If you want to develop resilience in yourself, the practice is in the name. Keep on trying. The very process of continuing to put forth effort is exercising your resilience. The more you do so, the better off you will be.

Action Item — 

What are 3 projects, goals, or hobbies you’ve let fall by the wayside because success seemed too difficult to achieve? 

Break them down in to bite-sized steps and get them on your calendar. 

Kindness

Self-improvement is all about focusing on those qualities which improve oneself, right? But what about the ones that also help others? If you are seeking to be a fully-rounded individual, you will want to put at least as much effort into those qualities that help others as the other kind. That is of course where kindness comes in. The more you can develop a sense of genuine kindness, the better off the people around you will be.

This will improve your quality of life in a few ways–you’ll feel good about your actions and you will be carrying out The Golden Rule. As you treat others the way you want to be treated, you will find the kindness comes back towards you twofold. Develop kindness, and you will never look back.

Action Item —

Think about ways you can help others. Is there a particular cause you’d like to invest more time in or a random act of kindness you’ve always been to shy to carry out?

Schedule time for kindness each week. 

Confidence

Finally, the big C: the one that everyone wants more of. It’s hardly surprising that people should want to be more confident. After all, confidence is something which can help to improve every aspect of your life. Once you feel you have plenty of it you will find that everything starts going to plan much more often.

You can develop confidence by stepping out of your comfort zone every now and then, and it will be one of the best things you ever did for yourself.

Action Item —

What is something that scares you? Public speaking, a blind date, the bold hair cut you’ve always wanted? 

Reflect on what it would look like for you to be more confident in each realm of your life: business, relationships, and personal. Then, choose a way to step outside your comfort zone this season in all of them.

What personal characteristics are you working to develop in your own life? Could you benefit from working on the three listed above? xoxo

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mid-week round-up

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bougainvillea

What are you up to this week, folks? The weather has cooled in Miami a bit (the locals call Fall/Winter “The Winds” because it’s basically the same as the rest of the year just a bit breezier, lol.). On Saturday, in true Autumnal spirit, we saw a creepy movie at the theater and then hit up Bath and Body Works for a candle haul. I’m obsessed with their Fall scents. (Leaves is my favorite.) Hope you’re making time for your favorite Fall-tivities, too! Now, here are a few links I’ve gathered and would love to share…

“Black Jeopardy” is SNL’s best political sketch this year.

10 horror movies for your Halloween viewing pleasure.

How women created book clubs.

They took in one refugee family. But families don’t have borders.

19 tiny things you can do to make the world a (slightly) better place.

There is no such thing as “free” vaccines.

The afterlife of a ballerina.

No, Donald Trump, abortions do not happen at 9 months pregnant.

This book looks wacky and laugh-out-loud fun.

Why the art of speaking should be taught alongside math and literacy.

Secret guaranteed eight-dollar flight upgrade trick.

Two Poems

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poems-on-a-road-trip

These two poems by Naomi Shihab Nye rank high on my list of favorite poems. They are both so simple and strikingly beautiful. I always like to read poems out loud (something about actually hearing the rhythms and the rhymes make them all the more powerful, don’t you think?). I can’t make it through either of these without reaching a line that makes my voice catch. I thought I’d share them with you in case you’d like to read them today. Perhaps you’ll find some inspiration or power within their lines.

The Traveling Onion

“It is believed that the onion originally came from India. In Egypt it was an object of worship —why I haven’t been able to find out. From Egypt the onion entered Greece and on to Italy, thence into all of Europe.” — Better Living Cookbook

When I think how far the onion has traveled

just to enter my stew today, I could kneel and praise

all small forgotten miracles,

crackly paper peeling on the drainboard,

pearly layers in smooth agreement,

the way the knife enters onion

and onion falls apart on the chopping block,

a history revealed.

And I would never scold the onion

for causing tears.

It is right that tears fall

for something small and forgotten.

How at meal, we sit to eat,

commenting on texture of meat or herbal aroma

but never on the translucence of onion,

now limp, now divided,

or its traditionally honorable career:

For the sake of others,

disappear.

***

Kindness

Before you know what kindness really is

you must lose things,

feel the future dissolve in a moment

like salt in a weakened broth.

What you held in your hand,

what you counted and carefully saved,

all this must go so you know

how desolate the landscape can be

between the regions of kindness.

How you ride and ride

thinking the bus will never stop,

the passengers eating maize and chicken

will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,

you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho

lies dead by the side of the road.

You must see how this could be you,

how he too was someone

who journeyed through the night with plans

and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,

you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.

You must wake up with sorrow.

You must speak to it till your voice

catches the thread of all sorrows

and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,

only kindness that ties your shoes

and sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread,

only kindness that raises its head

from the crowd of the world to say

It is I you have been looking for,

and then goes with you everywhere

like a shadow or a friend.

(Top image by Matthew Tammaro via here.)