Kindness in Relationships

Maintaining healthy, loving relationships can be one of the biggest challenges we face.

By relationships I mean not only close personal relationships such as spouses and other family members, but all relationships, and that includes your relationship with yourself.

We are all looking for the ideal relationships, the ones that encourage emotional, intellectual and spiritual growth for both parties.  Most of our relationships are muddled combinations of good qualities and bad qualities.  Examine your relationships objectively and ask yourself what you can do to improve and nourish them.  What can you do to nourish a relationship?

First determine the level of these key elements in your relationships (this will vary from relationship to relationship):  respect, kindness, consideration, compassion, understanding, communication, honesty, honor and loyalty.

Let’s focus on KINDNESS.

Have you ever considered the tremendous power of kindness to turn a relationship around?  Think about the popularity of the phrase “random acts of kindness”.  In one sense, this is a wonderful, uplifting thing we can, and should, all engage in – but the flip side of that is, why should ‘acts of kindness’ be ‘random’ and not constant?  Yes, spontaneous kindness is great, but how about going a little deeper, making every single act you perform, an act of kindness?

What is kindness?  It is the quality or state of being warmhearted, considerate and empathetic.

When you’re disagreeing with your spouse, do you throw unkind jabs at each other (that you later wish you could retract)?  When you’re in a position to help someone with something seemingly small like opening a door, do you automatically do it, or is there a slight hesitation where you consider whether it’s convenient for you?

Kindness is a key component to nurturing a healthy, loving relationship.  It takes a great deal of self-control to remain kind in the face of anger and confrontation – but it is the difference between an amicable outcome or an outcome that will cause you to hold deep resentment and bitterness.  It is not easy to always take the higher road… but it is an enormous step in personal growth that will ensure better, healthier relationships.

I encourage you to contact me for coaching on how to foster kindness within your relationships, so that you may reconnect with each other, see the good in each other, and heal the wounds.

Joy Leggett
joy@joyleggett.com