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Hello beautiful people of the Hive blockchain! I am so happy to be writing another piece on the topic of kindness, and I want to appreciate you for following and reading my thoughts as I continue my discussion on this very important subject.
In today's Post, I have chosen to write about "Overcoming Barriers To Kindness".
Understanding Kindness
I would love to say that without a proper understanding of what kindness means, it will be useless talking about something deeper, like the barriers. You can read this post where I shared about what kindness means to me.
Identifying The Barriers To Kindness
Have you ever heard of going into battle against an unknown or unidentifiable/unidentified adversary? The outcome of that would definitely be total disaster. And, many times you may focus the effort and energy in the wrong direction, especially when you don't even know whether the foe you are trying to deal with is inside the camp or outside. After all, you haven't even identified it yet!
Keep This In Mind
Kindness is a two-way thing. Every one can give or show kindness. And again, everyone should be shown kindness. Sounds too intimidating? Yes, possibly... but I just said that to help us take a deeper look at the barriers I will talk about below. So, I will not be dwelling on that statement.
Barriers To Showing Kindness
Here are some things I have identified that may prevent someone from showing kindness to others.
🔸️Lack of proper understanding of what kindness is, and also of ways to express it.
🔸️Childhood conditioning especially when growing up in a hostile environment, or in a home devoid of love and kindness.
🔸️Bitterness and unforgiveness that stem from past experiences of rejection, especially when we offered to help.
🔸️Fear of being misunderstood, especially in cultures where certain acts of kindness can misinterpreted as something inappropriate.
🔸️Lack of self confidence which, most of the time, is a deep indicator of inferiority complex, fear and insecurity.
Barriers To Receiving Kindness
Once in a while, we hear people talk about others treating them unkindly. I have learnt not to quickly take sides when I hear such. This is because, while it is true that there are some people who just have that habit of bullying and victimising others, many times the case may not be as simple and straightforward as the victims present it to be.
The following things may be the reason why someone is not being shown kindness.
🔸️Lack of self respect and overstepping boundaries can result in someone being treated in a rude and unkind way.
🔸️Entitlement mentality may end up putting off people who would have loved to help or show kindness.
🔸️Feeling undeserving or unworthy of kindness can send out signals and create an atmosphere that repels kindness instead of attracting it.
🔸️Being unkind to others can make even strangers treat someone unkindly. After all, whatever someone sows he/she would reap. The thing to note here, however, is that the harvest comes multiplied.
Overcoming The Barriers To Kindness
🟠A problem identified, they say, is already half-solved, so permit me to emphasise again that the first step to oververcome all these barriers is to identify and acknowledge them.
🟠After this, the next step is to work on our mindset and change our mentality. It is important to move from the mentality of being entitled to kindness to the mentality of being channels of kindness.
When it comes to working on our mindset, we find out that it is deeper than saying it. It may involve
🔸️Forgiving ourselves and those that hurt us in the past.
🔸️Healing from past traumas especially childhood experiences. This may call for professional help.
🔸️Practicing self-kindness.
🔸️Choosing to love unconditionally, as we all have the power to choose.
🔸️Practicing meditation and mindfulness.
🟠The next thing would be to take the bull by the horn, and just be kind. Sow seeds of kindness in thoughts, words and actions!
I have deliberately focused on dealing with the barriers as it concerns us personally. No matter how we point fingers at others, it all begins and ends with us.
Let's do our own part, pulling down the barriers and then building bridges to reach others with our own acts of kindness, be it a thought or a prayer, a word or a smile of encouragement, a hand or a gift. When the harvest comes it may be an avalanche.
Thank you for reading my post to this point. I, @ngwinndave, have written this as my entry for the final week in the ongoing collaboration challenge between the Kindness community and Dreemport. Learn more in this post.
Much appreciation to @gregscloud and @dreemsteem for putting together this amazing challenge. It has been an amazing 3-week experience.
Please, take a look at my kindness journal below 👇👇
First image: Digital art created by me prompting Bing, powered by DALL.E 3
Kindness Journal: Image file from my Kindness Journal created on my phone's Samsung notes.
Please feel free to share your thoughts in the comments section, and I will get back to you. Thank you once again.