If you prefer to read, here is the transcription of the video

In this video, I want to share with you a way to increase our fulfillment. And this is by practicing kindness and compassion. Kindness and compassion help us see the other people in more positive light. Kindness and compassion can also release stress, relieves discomfort, relieves the stress and guilt. It leaves a very positive self-perception. When we have done something good for somebody else, this makes us feel well. It also jumpstart a cascade of positive social events. So basically, when we do something good for somebody, something good is coming back to us in different form. But this is always like a trigger for something good to come back to us. Compassion and kindness also help us stay aware of our own good fortune.

How can we practice kindness and compassion?

This is a subject which is special and dear to me because for one year I took the challenge to increase my kindness and my compassion. I’ve worked daily on cultivating those virtues in me and the way I practice was: Every morning when I wake up, I would set an intention for myself, for the day. And the intention would be that I will stay kind, loving and compassionate in my thoughts, in my emotions, in my speech and in my actions. So, I would try to close the door gently to not bang the door or, even when I manipulate an object to be kind to how I put it down. When I come in contact with a person, I will try to stay attentive, listening and kind to this person. Every time when I feel impatience or irritation, I would mentally tell to myself “Patience. I'm practicing kindness” and I will bring into my body the feeling of patience. Little by little, I became much more kind in my thoughts.

What I would do at the end of every day would be: I will go through the day and will look back at how my day went and will give myself a tap on my shoulder every time when I stayed kind, every time when I was patient and every time when I was compassionate. And every time when I was not able to stay in this state, I would look at that situation and would erase mentally my own reaction. Then I would remind myself, how I would like to react next time. And I would set an intention for myself next time to try again. This is something I've been doing for one year every day. And honestly, this practice very much changed how I am as a person. I used to be a much more directive and authoritative. Also working in the corporate world where I was leading big projects, many teams and I was having a lot of stress, responsibilities, budget timelines, people… Often I was juggling with many, many things, and I did not always have patience to listen to people. I really changed how I feel as a person and the way I do my work. This practice changed also how people see me.

I cannot say that I'm a different person, because kindness and goodness are part of who I am and I believe part of who we all are. It's just on top of it, there is all kind of conditioning, like “I'm in a hurry and I don't have time for this.” or we get a little bit irritable or we feel righteous to do or say something. But in our heart, we really have the quality of kindness, the need to connect, the compassion for other people.

So I enjoy much more the interaction with everybody. Basically, when I am in contact with someone, I pause the world around me and I pay attention to this person.

So this was my story about how I was practicing kindness and how I made it part of my life. But there are different ways, right?

What I've done, is this self practice on my self. But what you can also do is for example, go for a volunteering work or help, whether this is, by, spending your time on something you are good at and doing it for free to help certain charitable, humanitarian organization or this can be also helping financially. If time is more difficult for you to allocate, maybe you can put a little bit of money aside to help somebody.

And kindness and compassion is to be there for other people and elevate the suffering of other people. This is the mentality of being open to give a hand to somebody who might need it. So just keeping an open mind of how you can help your partner, for example, or your child or someone in the office… And instead of pretending that you don't see that for example a colleague of yours is not feeling well, you can talk to the person and ask “hey what’s going? How are you doing?” I'm not saying that you should be someone you are not, but like I said, I believe that this is really part of who we are. We just need to get in touch with and get attuned to the kindness in us.

And this increases tremendously our feeling of fulfillment and how we feel about ourselves. Since we are kind, good people, we are proud of who we are. Also, something which is becoming more and more important for me, having a toddler, is to be who I want to be, so that this is the example my son follows. be a good example of who I want to be so that, this example for my son.

This is it! I just wanted to share a little bit about this, a little bit neglected away of increasing our fulfillment. Give it a try, it is worth it.

Thank you for your time.