Episode 35: Kindness

Well, hey, everybody, welcome to the 35th episode of Don’t lose your balance, my name is Mallory Durrick. I cannot believe it’s 35 episodes. I’m going to say that from now until 50. Anyway, I don’t know. I said, I don’t know. Because in my head, I’m thinking I don’t know what I want to talk about. But I do know what I want to talk about. And I more or less want to rant, I think about the word kindness and what it means. And somewhere along the line, I think people I don’t know, I think people may have lost sight about what kindness actually means. I’m not talking about let’s see, helping helping people in their time of need kind of kindness. I’m talking about general human kindness, the kind of kindness that impacts the way we may speak to another person, or how we behave towards another person. I feel like I want to get this off my chest, because as of late, I’ve been so aggravated by some things that are pretty like basic to one person, but they’re more or less important to me. I feel like when I read comments on social media, and I know that we all read comments on social media, and everybody’s mean to one another in a lot of ways. But think about if you were at a party with somebody, would you say to somebody says face? Would you say it to somebody’s face, what you would write in a comment, I have recognized that monitoring one’s own behaviors. It’s not only challenging to do, but it’s something I think should be required. And the realization of this is that when we’re feeling something, whatever the something might be, we could very well have, let’s say, there’s an upset going on for us for whatever reason, and somebody else responds to us towards us about something, we may be in a completely different frame of mind and bite at them or bark at them. Or maybe they’re barking at us. And that’s not very kind. And I don’t think it’s a deliberately mean thing. I don’t think somebody is setting out to do something that is unkind. But I think that there’s this thing that has to be where we have to monitor ourselves and say, How am I feeling right at this very moment? Am I aggravated about what is happening? Or am I aggravated about something else? And then I’m reacting towards somebody else negatively? You know, I talk about this in the Facebook group that I moderate and I don’t do a whole lot of moderation anymore because the television show for shits Creek, which has been over, since I don’t know 2020 doesn’t have as much activity. So the way that people treat each other isn’t so bad in that group. I don’t see it. I don’t have as I always have a lot of control over it. But I don’t see a lot of that negativity. But I do see it in other places. I see it when I scroll through news articles. I see it when I read comments on YouTube. And it’s brutal. Because I don’t think that people are constantly monitoring themselves about how they may sound and their tone. Even when people send I don’t know, emails, people who send emails when they’re feeling aggravated by something. I have a client who are like him, he’s a nice guy, and I wasn’t going to talk about this. But the whole reason why I feel like I want to talk about kindness is because I feel like I’m not being treated well. And just because I do work for somebody doesn’t give them a license to be rude. I guess it’s rudeness that I’m talking about. Not as much as that, you know, help help a person in need kind of kindness, but it goes hand in hand to me, you know, I He also this week, I had a doctor’s appointment, and I was 10 minutes early. And in the day of COVID, they don’t overbook the way they used to, you know, you could sit in a waiting room of a completely full waiting room of people. And now they have maybe four or five people, maybe four, I think when I got to this doctor’s appointment, and everybody’s spread out, and they don’t have magazines, or television or anything, and that’s okay. I’m just giving you like a framework. And I watched each person go in before me, who was there, when I got there, and now I’m the only one in the waiting room, and then four or five more people come in, and they get brought into the back. And I finally said to the reception, you know, look, I don’t have the time to wait for this doctor. So, you know, if you could just give me what I came here for.

05:54

I’ll leave. And they said, Well, you could reschedule or the doctor will be 10 minutes she’s running 10 minutes behind is what they said. I said, No, she’s actually running 45 minutes behind. And rather than having general respect for my time, I was just sitting there. And I thought, when did this become an okay thing? Again, I don’t want to sit in an environment in public for 45 minutes, if I don’t have to, and I hadn’t even yet gotten to a place where I could actually see the doctor. Why was this aggravating to me, because I didn’t feel that it was very kind of anybody to not recognize that my time was equally valuable, you know, I have a tendency to drop what I’m doing to help. And when I say help, I don’t mean help. I mean, I guess what I mean, is I’m doing my job. So if a client reaches out to me, I don’t wait around for two days to respond. I handle it immediately. And I might be in the middle of something. And then I guess I weigh the task. And I say, Okay, well, which is going to be easy for me to complete. First, who’s a bigger priority, not because they’re more important. But what task is more simple to solve, if it’s a problem or accomplish or just remedy? And yet, I don’t feel that way lately that that’s being you know, that is being honored in return. And I think it’s, it’s hard because instead of this one client that I was just telling you about, instead of him saying, Well, we have a problem with a, he’s saying, Well, why don’t you just find it? And I don’t mean, he said, go find it. He said, Pick anything you want. And you’ll see it’s not working, I have no idea what’s not working. And I’m thinking to myself, Why am I putting myself through this? I don’t, maybe I don’t want to have a confrontation. But I’m thinking to myself, well, it’s Saturday morning, this is what I woke up to at 7am my time. And I’m thinking you’re not even giving me any insight, you’re just saying everything is broken, everything is wrong. And when I tested it, it worked perfectly. So I still don’t know what the problem was. But what is bothering me was not that I can’t find the problem. It was the way I was spoken to. And the way I was spoken to was pick anything, it doesn’t work the customers is having a bad experience. And I have lately come to the conclusion that as a web designer, and a developer, if you will, of what I do 90% of problems is user error. And 10 may be something that I have built. I’m not saying that I don’t make mistakes, clearly a link could be broken. But usually people are so quick to just and I probably have fallen victim to this. People are just so quick to say it doesn’t work, you need to fix it. And this happens a lot because somebody doesn’t hit that pause button. And I think hitting the pause button is something that we all need to learn how to do I think we can have a more and I know this is gonna sound a little ridiculous but a little bit more of a balanced day by hitting the pause button because there’s these ebbs and flows of what aggravates us in the course of a day. It could be something very simple or it could be something much more deep rooted into what is happening yet. When I thought about this day’s topic I was thinking about talking about perspective and perspective is something I’m going to talk about, but you know, be a little kinder to one another keeping things in perspective of what is a priority and what is not and think about the recipient of your message, your tone of voice, your tone in your email your accusation. You know Well, I’m not saying that I haven’t done this, of course I have, I also recognize, you know, you get more bees with honey. So when I’m having, let’s say, a problem with customer service, I know that it’s not the fault of the customer service representative, their job is to find a solution to help me and you know, I have to provide customer service to my clients as well. But that doesn’t give my clients a license to speak to me in a way where they say, this is broken, this doesn’t work. Because each time that has happened, especially with this one particular client, it’s never what they say it is, it’s maybe a lack of understanding of how it was intended to work to begin with.

10:46

Now, that’s another thing, you know, make sure you’ve got all your eggs and ducks in a row. And you understand what was one way that something was set up versus saying it doesn’t work. And when in fact, it does work. It just wasn’t set up the way it was intended. I’m not sure that’s making much sense to the people here. But I think if I can explain it any other way, I don’t want people to come at me and say, you know, this doesn’t work, I guess it does work. Or when I read comments on social media, and I see people just go at it with one another, I don’t like this or you look terrible like that. You’d never say that to somebody, if you were at a party with them. You would never walk into a room and announce yourself and say, I don’t like what she’s wearing. I don’t like who he’s with. So why don’t we do it on social media? Why do we feel like the internet provides us a forum for which we can just be so I don’t know, free to share our opinions. Because we’re not accountable. We have no accountability, when we say something to another human being, you know, I have actually had moments especially on Facebook, where I’ve argued with people about being kind and they are equally unkind to me, you know, life is just too short to be having these arguments in these discussions. The fact that I’m recording a podcast where I’m talking about not losing my balance, I feel really imbalanced right now. Because I have had this, remember I said, and the other week, I said, I feel like something’s just off. I can’t tell if I’m not tolerant. Or if there’s just this shift. Or maybe it’s a mood change. Or maybe what I’m feeling is tension and anxiety about maybe what’s happening in the world. And that is causing me to feel not okay, I was looking on the news yesterday, and I couldn’t believe what I was reading, I try not to expose myself to too much news, because it can really pull me down a rabbit hole. But what’s happening in Ukraine, I cannot not talk about Ukraine, because of what I avoid looking at, which is horrible that I avoid it. But it will cause me so much upset. I can’t, I can’t, I can only expose myself to so much of it. And I can I can’t think how people in war have no regard for human life. And where anybody feels like this is an okay thing. And anybody would be those that are fighting, and hurting and killing, not those who are defending, you know, think about whether that could happen here, or whether it could happen. Even just close within your own circle and your own network war is so incredibly unkind. And there’s very little that I can do as one person of many. I wish the government’s could do something I wish the you know, militaries could do something, but I don’t know what that answer is. I just know that I feel really aggravated by what I’m listening, listening to or what I am watching or what I am seeing, when I think about kindness and lack thereof, I think about human spirit. And you know, when we all see a car accident off the side of the road, we are thankful it isn’t us. But what if it’s somebody that we know or what if we’re involved in it, but we’re not hurt? How do we? How do we step up and come to the table with a level of kindness and respect for humanity? Because I don’t see a lot of that. I see a lot of people who come from this place of self righteousness, you know, I seemingly am still bothered by what I watched Will Smith do on the Oscars were in his realm of thinking Did he ever believed that? Once he left that chair and continue to go do what he had in his mind to go do? Did he ever think it was right or kind and he did. And he didn’t think he said that he came to an emotional state of mind right then and there and he acted inexcusable. The time to recognize that we’ve done inexcusable acts is not necessarily after the fact is before we actually go do them because he couldn’t hit that pause button. And I know what it feels like to have this like, charge inside of your body, and then not be able to control your impulses.

15:29

I know what that feels like. And I have recognized that I have been impulsive. In my past. What I’m very concerned about is because it was such a public forum, I don’t really think anybody ever said, you know, he, he’s got anger management issues, or maybe they have and I have, I just don’t watch enough social media and television and the news. But that impulse was so awful. And I’m not here to bash on, Will Smith. I’m here to talk about the inexcusable act of not controlling an impulse which I get, but then behaving in such an unkind manner, yell, scream, leave the room leave the stage, but to violently hit another human being is beyond my comprehension. In the gratitude room this morning, we were talking about aging. And it was a great prompt it was talking about what would you tell your, you know, teenage self? And what can you be thankful for, and feel gratitude for as you age and what you’ve learned or how you are? Now, one of the things that really struck me and stood out for me was this idea that as a younger person, we lacked maybe in elementary school, for example, we lacked this sort of self confidence, right? And I would like to say, where did we not get that self confidence, you know, thread, and how it carried us into adulthood. And I brought up this idea that back in our youth, at least in my youth, there were a bunch of girls who were all part of this one group, this would have been probably, I think, in sixth grade, fifth and sixth grade, and maybe one person in the group would selectively decide who would be her friend for that day. And then, if you were her friend, you were gold. But if you weren’t her friend, there was a possibility you were left out, do you know how incredibly unkind that was. And yet, somewhere along the line, we all lacked this confidence within ourselves to say to this girl, this is terrible behavior, because nobody would ever wanted to be called out for anything or to be excluded from something. But this kind of unkindness starts at an early age. That’s what I think we learn it from somebody, it doesn’t have to be our parents, we see somebody behaving in such a way, and other people think it, maybe it’s cool, but it has a negative impact on another person. I don’t believe I’ve always been kind. But it was never my intention to not be kind, and I have watched other people intentionally not be kind in their life. And I cannot tell you how upsetting it is for me, you know, I have another friend, they used to speak about random acts of kindness. And I would think to myself, you’ve never done a random act of kindness in your life. Nice Person, don’t get me wrong. But a random act of kindness is random. And it’s kind. And it could be as simple as that, well, let me buy that person behind me, whatever, for sorting through their Starbucks order. Or it can actually be, you know, really helping somebody, like I said, In the beginning, in their time of need, you know, I do think there’s one way that we don’t lose our balance in life. And that is to check in with ourselves and ask ourselves, Am I being kind today? Did I do something awful towards another human being? How can I be a better person? What are some steps I can take to improve myself? And what do I need to make those things happen? For me and for others? I think you have to check in and pause when you feel this sense of aggravation or upset.

19:43

I didn’t fly off the handle when I was at that doctor. This week. I just left. I left the office and I told them I was going to leave but I said I’m leaving. I you know I wasn’t unkind to the reception. I wasn’t even unkind to the doctor. I don’t want to be the per person that people talk about and say, oh, yeah, she’s not a very nice person I and I think that we’re all entitled to have moments, maybe not the one I’ve watched with Will Smith, and certainly not those who are fighting at war, not defending it war, fighting at war, taking what doesn’t belong to them. But coming from a place of true compassion, love, and kindness, it’s the greatest gift you can give yourself, you’ll feel really good about yourself when you know you’ve achieved that, or you’ve even attempted to achieve that and to do random acts when you can. But most of all, and I guess I didn’t even think about this. It’s not just only about being kind to others, it’s really about being kind to ourselves, and not being so hard on ourselves all the time. You know, I also think in the gratitude room, we talked about how we care or not care as we age about what other people think of us. And while that may be true, as we age, we probably care a little less, or maybe a lot less about what other people think of us. But I said it like this. If you care about what people think of you from a positive perspective, if you care what they think that you’re a good person, and that you’re kind and that you’re sweet and generous, then you’re gonna care if they don’t think those things of you. So while it’s probably not realistic to say, I don’t care what other people think of me, I think if you can do your very best and you check in and you say yep, I’m doing my best. I’m doing everything I can to be kind and most of all, I’m really kind to myself, by making sure that I get what I need. You’re winning. That’s what I feel. That’s what I think. So that’s what I got. Well, if you like this or any other episode of Don’t lose your balance, you can share it you can download it. You can even write me a review. You can also follow me on Instagram, I have two handles the first is Mallory underscore Duric. And the other is Don’t lose your balance. Am SC That’s Mary Sam, David. Don’t lose your balance, MSE and I also have a website which is Don’t lose your balance.com I hope today tomorrow and always you don’t lose your balance and I look forward to hearing how you didn’t lose your balance along your life’s journey. I’ll see you next time.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Hi, I am Mallory Durrick. I am a creative. A Marketing Strategist and Web Designer with a small and modest boutique Marketing Agency living in the suburbs of Philadelphia. I am the creator and narrator of this podcast, Don’t Lose Your Balance. This is a culmination of decades of self-help books, countless doctors, numerous hospitals, including rehabs. Once a wife, now divorced, a mother, a grandmother and an addict in recovery. These are things that I am and have experienced.

I’m sharing it all. Baring it all. Hoping to help others; not lose their balance.