Choose Kindness

Headspace Studio. Hello and welcome to this new week and to Radio Headspace. It's Eve here. I hope you had a lovely weekend and were able to get some rest. So as a meditation and mindfulness teacher, I get asked a lot of questions and some I get asked a lot like, is my mind supposed to be totally clear while I meditate? And the answer to that is no, thoughts will always arise. But the other day I got a really interesting question that I wanted to share with you and it was, how do I continue to practice compassion even when it has been taken advantage of? And I thought this was so interesting and it actually reminded me of a situation I was in a few years ago. It was when I was working in London at an advertising agency and one of my clients, who was normally really friendly, kind, and respectful, started being very critical, very unfriendly, and on more than one occasion was pretty rude to me and the team. And even though it was years ago, I still remember it. Of course, being our client, I couldn't respond in the same way. It would've been deeply unprofessional, and I would've risked losing the account and potentially my job, but it felt deeply unfair. It wasn't until I had left this agency to actually go and work at Headspace that I met up with a friend who told me that she'd found out the client was actually going through a divorce. And apparently, it wasn't going well. It explained so much. She must have been in so much pain, potentially feeling lonely, hurt, and isolated. I think a lot of us tend to have a gut reaction to respond in kind when we're treated poorly. And that's a very natural reaction, to treat someone how they treated you. But at this point in my life and experience, I know that it is possible when someone is treating us poorly to set firm boundaries, but to do so with kindness and compassion. I think it's worth calling out though that there can be an association. Being kind or compassionate means that you can't ever feel angry, that you have to appease someone or avoid conflict at all costs. I know I've definitely done that in the past. And I've even heard kindness and compassion being talked about as a sign of weakness, particularly in the working world. It can be seen as passive and that you'll never get ahead. I actually think kindness and compassion are like superpowers. The more you give it out, the more you receive it back, but it can be done in a way that maintains a sense of respect. And often when someone is acting poorly or with some malice, there's a pretty high chance that something is going on behind the scenes. Setting boundaries in any relationship, whether it is working or personal, is really important. And I know...