Kindness includes so many wonderful things, like friendliness, pleasantness, generosity, and understanding.  Where kindness is practiced at work, there’s cooperation, not power tripping.  … Respectful teamwork, not bullying or harassment.  … Welcoming of differences, not hostility or favoritism.

All this makes for a workplace where people are more likely to be excited about going to work than dreading it.  At the end of the day, there’s a spring to their step and time for a rich life, not exhaustion or the urge to escape.

All this means that kindness also is a benefit to the financial bottom line.

As Jodi RR Smith, director of Mannersmith Etiquette Consulting in Marblehead, MA says, “People’s discomfort chills the workplace dynamic. When people feel respected, they are more likely to be fully present and engaged, ready to roll up their sleeves for effective work.”

Kindness is the Appropriate Form of “Love Your Neighbor” at Work

Khalil Gibran has called work, “love made visible.”  Jesus has said that the most important commandment after loving God is to love our neighbors as we love ourselves — with “neighbor” being expanded way beyond the traditional definition of a fellow tribesman or person who lives nearby.

The Golden Rule used to be touted as best way to love our neighbors.  Lately, there’s been talk of a higher standard, or the Platinum Rule.  Instead of doing unto others as we want them to do unto us, we do as they would wish to be done unto.  In other words, rather than assuming how someone wants to be treated, get to know him or her and discover their preferences.  (A great basic marketing practice!)

When we remember that others also want the blessing of being seen and honored as beings with unique viewpoints and preferences, the full Golden Rule works quite well.  Indeed, what employees want most from employers or fellow workers isn’t money or status.  It’s appreciation and acknowledgement — basic forms of kindness. Clients also want kindness in the form of honest, friendly, authentic service or products.

Legal Cases Show the Need for Kindness at Work

A few of the things I’ve seen while working part-time for employment lawyers over the years are very painful:

• Employees throwing a noose over an African-American employee’s head and calling it horseplay;
• Employers humiliating employees and retaliating against those who speak out against abuse at work;
• Insults based on employees’ sex, age, race, creed, or disability;
• Bullying, favoritism and sabotage at all levels of the corporate ladder.

When I entered the workforce in the 1960′s, many of these reprehensible activities were perfectly legal.  Over the years, employment law has slowly expanded to provide more freedom from harassment and a more equal job playing field.

Legal support for kindness — or at least protection against the worst unkindness — is moot if people don’t take the help that’s available to them.  Having summarized hundreds of depositions in employment law cases, I’m saddened by the number of people who don’t know how to set and maintain good boundaries.  Sometimes, they are motivated by their own misguided good intentions.

Witness an employee who thought if she simply pulled away every time her superior touched her inappropriately, he would get the message.  She didn’t want to humiliate him by speaking out, she said, and when he kept his hands to himself, she basically liked and respected him.

Like the neighbor in Robert Frost’s poem “Mending Wall,” we need good fences, or boundaries.  Sometimes, the greatest kindness one can do to a fellow employee or supervisor is say something like, “stop,” while a wrongdoing is small. That’s not easy for those of us who find it harder to be kind to ourselves than it is to be kind to others.

Kindness Goes Beyond Good Manners, Though That’s a Great Start.

A basic tenet of good manners is respect for self and others.  Ordinary good manners provide a great foundation for practicing kindness at work.

One of the most satisfying articles I ever wrote was for Workforce Management Magazine about a growing, informal etiquette for spirit and work, including an etiquette that which might be acceptable to atheists, spiritual eclectics, and devout believers of any faith. I hope you’ll check it out and add your own thoughts about kindness at work here..

Imagine:  a workplace filled with kindness.  It starts here, now.  It grows steadily, act of kindness by act of kindness.

As always, many blessings,

Pat McHenry Sullivan

Distorted positive thinking can cost you money, sleep, your job, peace of mind, and maybe your life. It can also be a catalyst or enabler of fraud, waste and abuse on an individual or social scale.

Even the best models of positive thinking, like The Little Engine That Could, can be distorted. Yes, many obstacles can be overcome and dreams can be built when we affirm, “I think I can,” then follow through with action and stay on track. But sometimes, wisdom and integrity call us to accept what we can’t do. Sometimes, our best path is to go off track, even if we don’t yet know the best path to follow next.

However, if you anchor positive thinking in reality, then give it due diligence, you’ve always got the start of something great.

Real Positive Thinking is Grounded in Reality

Thanks to Stephanie West-Allen, JD, a very compassionate lawyer and creative person, I’ve just discovered Bright-sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America.

How exciting it is that people are now confronting the many distortions about positive thinking! Here are some thoughts after pondering Stephanie’s post about the book:

• It’s positive thinking to affirm that the world is filled with many options and opportunities.
• It’s positive thinking to affirm that in following options and opportunities, we look past what’s already known or customary.
• It’s positive thinking to be guided by the truth and wisdom of our souls, not by fear of fear or by pride, self-will, or a search for the easy way out.
• It’s positive thinking to celebrate a faith that recognizes we can deal with any challenge, including things we really don’t want, like death.
• It’s positive thinking to practice a faith that calls us to use challenges as a stepping stone to meaning, growth, and the capacity for joy.

That’s the kind of positive thinking that allowed Randy Pausch to have a breakthrough life filled with joy and service, both before and after he received a diagnosis of pancreatic cancer.

That’s the kind of positive thinking that has supported all sorts of breakthrough lives and contributions, including Auschwitz survivor and author of Man’s Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl.  That’s the kind of thinking that guided a group of mostly uneducated market women in Liberia to overthrow the rule of a corrupt government and competing warlords, then initiate new vitality for their country.

And that’s the kind of positive thinking that you can employ any time to make sweet lemonade from the best possibilities and bitterest challenges of life.

Too Much of What Purports To Be Positive Thinking Isn’t Positive, Because It Isn’t Real.

The bliss bunny version presumes that if you think only good thoughts, only good will come to you. This distortion of positive thinking seems to fear even mentioning anything “negative” (seemingly defined as anything unwanted).

Of all the bits in the movie “The Secret” that irk me, none hits my buttons more than the scene where a man is worried about losing his bike, so he locks it to a post and “of course” someone saws off the chain and steals it. Yes, obsessing about what can go wrong can destroy possibilities and sometimes invite what we resist, but too many people take the “only positive thinking” idea way too far. E.g., comments like “we shouldn’t admit our financial deficit because that’s a downer” or a business owner’s statement that planning represents a lack of faith.

The bliss bunny distortion has been around for ages in many forms. In the fifties, when I was a child, it wasn’t nice to talk about racial injustice, religion, anger of any kind (especially the anger of women), or doubts that progress was really as wonderful as it seemed. In fact, all doubts or angers or fears were taboo. We’re still recovering from the fallout from this kind of thinking at home, the workplace, environment, economy, and places of worship.

Having spent many years as a paralegal in employment and business law, I’m steeped in stories of how often the “see no evil, think no evil” mantra leads to either the doing of evil or allowing it to happen.

I can’t count the number of stories I’ve heard from employees who avoided help from abuse or harassment for years because they just kept hoping it would get better. Or people like the church member who had been so pressured to think positively of her pastor that she allowed him to lead her into a contract that eventually cost her to lose her home. Or a man who ignored his doubts that Madoff’s promised returns could be so great, because he trusted the friend who connected him to Madoff.

Due Diligence Plus Hope — a Foundation for Real Positive Thinking

Due diligence in the legal sense means to provide the kind of attentiveness and research that’s necessary for a wise decision. It means to get curious.

Instead of assuming and hoping everything will work out, take the time to clarify what you really want and research what it would take to get there. Face what can go wrong, then take necessary precautions so you can move optimistically and realistically ahead.

“Diligence,” from the Latin “diligentia,” is connected to the word “diligo,” which means to love, value or appreciate. Diligence includes the meanings of care, attentiveness, and regard for.

Due diligence is a great spiritual practice as well as a powerful creative practice. It helps strengthen dreams and visions so they can live in the real world. It supports financial abundance with integrity, purposeful work and loving relationships.

Due diligence at work leads away from fraud, waste or abuse to a workplace filled with compassion and efficiency. In business, due diligence is a foundation for more conscious capitalism and a critical key to socially responsible investing.

You probably already practice some form of due diligence. Before you let your child drive, you take the time to ensure that the child has proper training, proper attitude, and as safe a vehicle as possible. As a host or hostess, before you invite people into your home, you make sure your home is safe and that the food is prepared and served safely.

Due diligence is a perfect partner to hope. Put hope and due diligence together, and we have really positive thinking.

What Are Your Thoughts About Positive Thinking and Due Diligence?

• What’s your definition of real positive thinking? Of due diligence?
• How have you acted with real positive thinking so far and thrived?
• How have you distorted positive thinking into something unreal? What has that cost you?
• What happens when you practice due diligence combined with hope?

As always, many blessings. Please comment below and help others learn from your thoughts and feelings.

Best wishes, Pat McHenry Sullivan

I really want that right now, not just around the ever-present health care financing issue, but around everything else that’s dominating the news today, like how hard it is for many of us to make a living right now. Like how many people we know are stuck in painful jobs they hate but don’t dare leave. Or for those of us who are entrepreneurs, where the next clients are coming from in a time when so many are still cutting back.

Healthcare financing and all our other money or work issues could benefit from some individual and collective deep breaths.

Won’t you breathe with me right now? Just take one breath, then another, and feel your energy rising. As you breathe, listen to the silence. Trust that you’ve got something worth saying, starting with yourself, so make that commitment to hear yourself.

Listen more than speak to yourself. Listen past your own assumptions and beliefs and pet projects into the stillness of your own heart. And when you are ready, share what’s true for you with another.

One thing I know for sure is that whenever two or more of us come together long enough to really see each other, to really listen to each other, we are wiser. Confusion becomes clarity. Enmity becomes dialogue, then collaboration. Money wasted, lives harmed turned into money used well for the best of human and earthly life.

It’s not easy to find money or work wisdom in a noisy, divisive world.

Even in my quiet office with candles burning, it’s hard to put aside all sorts of ideas and assumptions so I can be present to a deeper Presence. Even with years of practice in hearing what really matters most to others and myself around spirit, work and money, it’s hard to hear the one thing I need to hear right here, right now.

The wisdom I find in the silence calls me down from my high horse and holds a mirror to truths I’d rather evade. It calls me to say or do things I’d not otherwise dream or dare, things that risk ridicule or failure or even scarier, a hope and awe that make me tremble

And so, being human, I often run from the silence, and I bet you do, too.That’s why it always helps to have companions on the journey of dealing with what matters, whether on the mundane or spiritual level.

The world is filled with tips and resources for finding wisdom for money, work and other spiritual or mundane issues.

As a kid, I loved watching my mother and her best friend share everything from recipes to laughs to prayers to tips on sewing and how to handle us kids. As a business plan writer and teacher, I love sharing resources and ideas for how to turn a dream into thriving reality. As a writer and speaker in the field of spirit and work, I’m passionate about sharing tips and resources from all the world’s faiths for all types of work.

Here are some favorites you may try:

Go to the place where you feel most attuned to your wisdom source. For most people that’s the bathroom (no.1 according to a survey of business executives, especially the shower), a place of worship (not necessarily your own religion) or nature. If you can’t actually go to your wisdom place, go there virtually. (www.workwithmeaningandjoy.com/ww_-_retreat.pdf)

If you are under time pressure or are uncomfortable with meditation, run or do whatever else that helps you get your body, mind and spirit into a non-competitive zone. Many lawyers I know find that answers that eluded them during hard thinking come easily on the run.

Work off your anger or frustration safely, like our grandparents did while chopping wood or beating rugs over the clothesline. Some friends and I one had a great time working off some political fury by smashing yard-sale chipped pottery against a concrete wall. By the time we had carefully swept up the shards, we had a lot more energy that we could focus positively.

Tomorrow, by request, some tips from writers and speakers about how to get your most meaningful points across in a noisy, crowded world.

As always, many blessings. And come back again real soon,
Pat McHenry Sullivan