Look carefully at your most prized relationships and ask:  “What is the most essential ingredient in these relationships?”  Yes, love.  But love is a rather vague catch-all word.  How about kindness, patience and thoughtfulness?  Wouldn’t it be awesome if you gave and received these unconditional expressions of love?

 And what can we learn from research? What do you imagine to be the most important quality that women and men seek in a sustained relationship? David Buss tested over 10,000 people from 37 different cultures and concluded that consistently the most important attribute was kindness.*  Whereas this conclusion may not be surprising, it is certainly reassuring.  Kindness is  powerful and universally appreciated. It is valued in all our relationships and interactions.

In all our hurrying about, do we spend enough time being kind?  Do we speculate what random or deliberate acts of kindness we might do to improve another’s day?  The word LOVE is sung and wrote about, but is that really what the world needs more of?  Yes, love is wonderful, but how about just acting in a kind and thoughtful way?

An interesting way to bring kindness to life is to schedule or timetable it into your diary.   What explicit act of kindness would you partner appreciate? Then make it happen.  Rather than speculating or pondering it, be kind.

Kindness is an action word; it is something one actually does (or does not do).  Kindness can be seen and explicitly experienced by others.  Acting kindly requires one to think about or imagine someone else’s situation and directly engage with them.  Kindness and thoughtfulness are a team, with thoughtfulness starting the process. The Dalai Lama, when asked how to be kind had a simple suggestion, to ask authentically and unconditionally:

“How can I help you?”

 We as a species are described as manKIND.  Being kind is part of our job description. Let’s release our kindness and live up to our name and calling. 

Reflection Source: www.smallercup.org

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*:          Buss, David M. 1989. “Sex Differences in Human Mate Preferences.” Behavioral and Brain Sciences