Kindness: A Foundation of Happiness

In this podcast we explore the importance of kindness for the well-being of ourselves and others. This is a track that offers insights as to the internal processes that make random acts of kindness feel good to the people providing them.

Transcript

Welcome to the Happiness Podcast. I'm Dr. Robert Puff. Over the past 30 years, The one thing I've deeply learned is that if we want to be happy, If we want to find peace in our lives, We have to be kind towards ourselves and others. It's as if kindness is the foundation on which happiness arises. But the other thing that I've learned in life is that it's quite hard for people to be kind, Kind towards themselves or others. And this starts at a young age. We don't we all know children, Perhaps even remembering our own past, Where someone hurts them and what do they want to do? They're going to hurt them back. We see this in so many places in our world, But I think the place we can see it most often is when we're driving. I live in Southern California, And we have a lot of cars here. And just the other day, I was driving to work, And one car had accidentally pulled out in front of another car, And that car had to slow down. Well, He was so mad that he got in front of the other car, And I swear he's trying to get that person to crash or do something really dangerous to themselves because he was so angry at her for pulling out in front of him. So in today's episode, We're going to work on ways that we can learn to be kind towards others and ourselves. I deeply believe that when we develop kindness towards ourselves and others, We will begin to find more peace in our hearts and happiness. So let's start with the first question I'm sure all of us may have. Why should we allow or let someone who's hurt us not be punished? Why don't we give them back? Why aren't we meaning back to them? And this circles back to really the core of unkindness. Where does unkindness come from? It comes from our conditioning. We're conditioned to behave in a certain way. And if we've had tragedy or events happen in our lives, One conditioned response we may develop is we're going to give people back when they hurt us. This past week, I've been babysitting a dog for a friend of mine who's on vacation. Well, This dog was abused when it was younger, And now it's about two years old. And it is a very sweet dog, But it's skittish, It's shy, It's cautious. It pulls away from things that are scary. And I have never even seen it bark. It's more than conditioned to do the flight instead of the fight response. And yet we all know other dogs that have had abusive backgrounds, And now they're conditioned to fight and attack when someone or something threatens them. And most of us would realize that it's just the conditioning that each of this dog has. It's been conditioned to respond from one flight response to the other, A fight response. And that's all it is, Behavior, Conditioning. And we're like that. Why people out there fight so much, Like that guy we talked about earlier in the car, Is because I'm sure he's been conditioned to fight. When people mess with him, He's going to mess with them back tenfold. But here's where we get caught and get caught up in that cycle of fight or flight. We put labels on things and say it isn't a conditioned response, It's who they are. That's a mean dog. That's a skittish dog. That's a mean person. That's a kind person. That's actually not true. What is happening is conditioned responses. And those conditioned responses are based upon past behavior. It isn't that the person is bad, They've just developed bad, Angry behavior. Because once we've lived long enough, Or we study people's behavior, We'll see that people change. The person that we knew growing up that was a mean, Nasty person is now a gentle soul. And the reverse is true. The person may have been a gentle soul, And because of life events, Now they've become a bitter, Angry person. I remember when I was a kid, I used to visit my cousin who lived up in Minnesota. And his next door neighbor was a girl. She was maybe a year or two older than I was. And I had such a big crush on her. She was sweet, She was kind, And she was pretty. And I had a big crush on her. Well, I hadn't seen her for years. And when my cousin got married, She had come to his wedding. And I had been told by people that she had changed. And sure enough, When she got there, I got to talk to her and spend some time with her. And clearly life had been quite hard on her. And she had lost her gentleness, Her kindness. I could still see that young girl inside of her. And after talking to her for a little while, I could even see it come out a little bit. But mostly she had been conditioned to have walls up very thick all around her. And she had changed. But she, As a person, Was still that person. What had changed was her behavior. So I know some of you are just going to disagree with what I'm saying right now. No, Dr. Puff, There are just bad people in the world. Maybe I'm wrong. But one of the benefits of going down the path that I'm describing is two things. One, When we see other people behaving in ways that we don't like, We will look at the behavior instead of the person. We may set up boundaries. We may even talk about the behavior. But we won't attack the person anymore. And the greater thing is that the same thing will happen to us. When we look at our behavior, Instead of saying, I'm this or I'm that, We'll say, I'm conditioned to be that. I'm conditioned to be this. And so if we want to change it, We just have to change the conditioning. And we've known people that have done this. They've worked on themselves. And they've changed. They're very different people. Sometimes for the worse, Sometimes for the better. But things can change people. They do. They change us regularly. So if it is beginning to make sense that we can focus far more on the behavior, The conditioned behavior, Than label people, What's the benefit of that? Why not still say, Well, Dr. Puff, The behavior is still bad. Why can't I just attack the behavior? Well, I tend to be a very pragmatic person. And I like to go with what works. And again, If you've interacted with people long enough, You probably can remember that when you get on the attack mode, Rarely do you get positive change from that. What you get is defensiveness. However, When you get on the kindness mode, You have a far more likelihood that the behavior will change. It may not. But at the very least, You now haven't contributed to the pain in the world, The conditioned pain that people experience. It's stopping with you. We so often just don't know people's whole stories. And most people really feel they're doing the best that they can. And we may look at them and judge them. But it might be better to say, Huh, I wonder if I had the same experiences they had, If I'd be doing it differently, Or I can see it differently because of the experiences I had. And because of that, I'm going to be kind towards them. It doesn't mean, Of course, That we have to put up with people being unkind towards us. There's lots of things we can do. I call them boundaries. We can walk away. We can just gently point out to them that, Oh, That's kind of hurting my feelings. I don't know if that's your intent. But that's what it's doing. There's many things we can do to talk to people kindly about what they're doing that is causing us some suffering. But the other thing is, It works. If you get in someone's face when they're in your face, It's probably not going to go well. If you attack someone who's attacking you, I doubt you're going to get a positive response. You may get what you want. You may bully them into giving in. But now you've really hurt them, And you've left a lot of emotional scars, Including on yourself. So we can choose the path of, Yes, I'm going to fight with people when they fight with me. But we're listening to this podcast to be happy. And I can guarantee you that is not the path of happiness. But what is the path of happiness is kindness. When we are being attacked or whatever is happening with another person, We have a far, Far more likelihood of creating some type of change when we respond to them with kindness. I mean, Almost anyone when they're attacked puts up their guard. They're not going to be very receptive. However, If the other person kindly talks about how what they're doing may be done differently, Then they're far more receptive to that. And that's quiet. I know it's hard to do, Particularly when people aren't being kind towards us. But being kind back with perhaps giving them options for other choices or just empathizing with them saying, Wow, We can feel their pain. So we soften ourselves, And we don't attack them. And there are just so many benefits to this. Imagine, For example, You have a teenager, And they're supposed to be home at, Say, 10 o'clock, And now it's 1230, And they walk in the door. And of course, You wait it up till they get home. Now you could, Of course, Attack them, Yell at them, Scream at them, Be very unkind. Or you could hug them and say, I'm so glad you're safe. Let's talk about this in the morning, Which you think will create a better response in the short term and long term. We all know what the answer is, Of course. So when we start treating people with kindness, We have a lot more likelihood of getting a better response back from them, No matter what they've done. It doesn't guarantee that they're going to always be kind, Even when we're being kind to them. But the odds of not pushing when they push us dramatically increase that that battle will end once we stop it. But here's another really great kindness benefit. We all know people that are in relationships and their partner is abusive. Or we may be in one of those relationships right now. Well, First and foremost, The person that is being abusive is wrong. That behavior is inappropriate. However, In many situations, The other person does engage with that person who's being unkind. They're being unkind back. I mean, Often not to the extent that the other person is being unkind, Of course. But they're still doing things that pushes the other person's buttons. And so the dance continues. And the dance is, I push you a little bit, You push me a whole lot. I push you a little bit, You push me a whole lot. Well, Let's say that person stops pushing a little bit and is starting to be kind. I mean, The kindness may be as simple as leaving. But what will happen is, Because they're not participating in that kind of dance of meanness back and forth anymore, It's so much easier for them than to leave and not be in that situation again. Because what typically happens is after the dance of anger or abuse occurs, They just think about what they did wrong and realize, Well, If I hadn't done that, They wouldn't have responded back in the way they did. So in many ways, That is true. But also what will happen is if you don't do your part, You may not stay. You may say, You know, This just isn't working for me. So I'm going to leave this relationship. And that's what happens. People that are in abusive relationships are often able to leave when they are able to not respond back and like kind. I know it's far less than the person that's being abusive. I get that. But learning to be kind is the path towards ending abusive relationships. It's not that you put up with it. Of course, You can call the police. You can get them arrested. You can leave them. But you're going to find that it's far easier for people to leave, To set up boundaries, When they aren't participating in the dance. And it even may help the other person when they can just look at their own behavior and say, Wow, I wasn't very kind. Then they can start changing it, Perhaps. They may not, But they might. But the great thing is when we are kind, We can say, Well, I'm not sure if this behavior is working for me today. So I'm going to hang out with people that are kind towards me and put up boundaries with people that aren't. And that's the next benefit slash consequence of working towards being kind. When we make this commitment towards kindness, What's going to happen is we're also going to want to be around kind people. So kind people do tend to hang out with kind people. It's kind of how it works. So if you want to be with someone that's kind, You best learn how to be kind and the vice versa. If you want to be around people that are kind, You have to be that kind person. It is important. It's just how we work. We just tend to hang out with people of like mind, Like behavior, Like consequences. So if we want to be happy, If we want to find peace, We have to be kind. If we want to be with people that are happy and peaceful, We need to be kind. Kindness is truly the foundation of happiness and peace. When we lash out at people because we say they are that way, Instead of saying their behavior is that way, We will go down the path of suffering. When we say, I'm not going to lash out at this person because I really understand that their behavior is this way because of their conditioning, Then what we can do is say, Okay, I can set up boundaries. I can talk with them about it. I may even leave. But what I'm not going to do is let my conditioning go down the path of striking back, Of hurting back. I want to be happy and I'm going to be a lot happier when I'm kind. And at the deepest core, What happens is when we're kind towards others and we understand that it's their behavior, Not the essence of who they are, That is misbehaving, Then guess what? When we misbehave and we do something unkind, We will see it the same way. We won't say I'm a horrible, Terrible person. We'll say, That wasn't good behavior. How do I recondition myself to do this differently? Because I want to be kind. It's all about conditioning. Listening to this podcast today is going to recondition us. We're going to have far more of a tendency now to think about lashing out because now we see all the benefits of being kind. And that, If we work at it and keep listening to these podcasts and keep working at it, Guess what? That will become the new habit. So kindness, It is truly one of the foundations of happiness. If we want to have peace and happiness in our lives, We have to develop a kindness, Not just in our actions, But in our thoughts. And what will happen is, As this kindness grows in our hearts because of the conditioning that we're doing, We will find that when our hearts are still, We will find peace and happiness there. Because it's always been there. It just got clouded by unkindness. But when kindness becomes our conditioned response, Then we will see at our core there is peace. Thank you for joining me on the Happiness Podcast. Besides creating this podcast, There are a variety of other things that I do. If you'd like to keep abreast of these activities, And perhaps someday we may be able to meet in person, Just go to www. Happinesspodcast. Org. You can subscribe to my newsletter, And if you do, You'll be emailed a free PDF copy of my meditation book called Reflections on Meditation. And until next time, Accept what is, Love what is.