How kind is your business?

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In a world dominated with ‘where is the money it that?’ mentality, it is sometimes seen as weak, or even difficult to even contemplate, considering the notion of kindness in business.

We confuse kindness with doing something for free in order to manipulate others to reciprocate. Many people think it is clever to leverage the basic human instinct to return a favour. I can hear the guru’s saying ‘give and then take’.

I can hear the words of the much lauded Gary Vee ringing in my head ‘give, give, give and the take em for all they’ve got’ or something like that, maybe it’s ‘Jab, Jab, Right Hook’.

Kindness is doing something for others for no gain, other than the chemical release in our own bodies that makes us feel good, makes us happy. This is not a selfish act in a malicious way, it is a way of making us happy, after all happiness is a choice.

So choose acts of random kindness in your business and make yourself happy and spread that happiness to your customers and potential customers, spread to all the humans that interact with.

Simply because you can and simply because creating happiness in your life and that of the others you connect with is a pleasure not to be missed.

After all what is life about, if it isn’t for enjoying the journey.

Being brave enough to change

Change is a painful thing for most of us and certainly by time you reach 48 like me, as in really ancient, it can be more painful to do. Especially, as the habit you are trying to change may well have been with you for 48 years.

However, I have learnt over the last 3-4 years that any change is possible, it is a matter of having the ‘why’ power to make it happen. I have changed a great deal in my life over the last 3-4 years and none of which beforehand I would have thought possible.

Almost all that we do on a daily basis is habitual, so most things we say, do, feel, think are formed out of habit. Yet we are born with not a single habit.

That is the good news, that apart from a very few seriously engrained habits from before we were 7 years old, all the habits can be changed. I’m not going to get into the neurological part of it, as you probably will have guessed, I am not remotely qualified to comment.

The only prohibitive thing is not the physical, it is our own mental mindset to this. You need to have a reason to change, you need to be inspired to change and once you have that inspiration, then change is just a matter of discipline and time.

However, without inspiration, then no amount of willpower will make it happen, as willpower is short-lived motivation. Inspiration gives you a ‘why’ power which is long lasting and many times more powerful.

However, there is one final piece of the jigsaw…..bravery, without that you will find it hard. This is simply because making big changes means being prepared to be vulnerable. To take off the vulnerability shields takes a great deal of bravery.

The results though far outweigh the initial leap into the unknown.