"Whether you are conscious of it or not, it's in your power to increase other people's joy, satisfaction and safety through simple acts of kindness. A thoughtful word, a smile or acknowledgment, giving something that's needed, listening with care, extending your patience, expressing your concern appreciatively, ordinary courtesies, refraining from criticism or outbursts, acknowledging someone else's point of view or legitimate needs, making time for someone who is struggling, assuming the best: that power is worth everything. It's the basis of your confidence in yourself. It lets you know that regardless of what is happening outside your control, your life is vital, sustaining and absolutely worth living.

"Kindness drives connection and engagement, empathy and comfort. It is thoughtfulness in action. It is self-respect and concern for others in action.

"Kindness lets you live life to the full. It expresses your gratitude for who you are and what you can contribute.

"You can't become kinder to others without also benefiting yourself. You can't be more genuinely self-supportive without also asking and needing less of others — and benefiting them also.

"Kindness doesn't mean surrendering your boundaries or meeting every demand that comes your way. It doesn't mean becoming a doormat that others can walk over. It can mean being much clearer about saying no as well as yes. Nonetheless, kindness pushes you to take other people into account constantly, even while it also saves you from harming, demeaning or sacrificing yourself.

"Kindness helps you physically as much as it does emotionally and spiritually. It keeps you connected. It relaxes you. It radically reduces tension and stress. It doesn't depend upon status, education or wealth. It doesn't depend upon brilliance or age. And it certainly can't depend only on things always going well for you. (Easy to be kind when everything is going our way. Far more vital to be kind when life is not going our way.)

"Kindness, as a way of life and living, depends on choices made and remade on a daily basis. Sometimes it will be self-evident and easy. Sometimes it will be an effort. Sometimes it will seem intuitive. Sometimes we will have to silence those self-righteous reasons why we should not be kind.

"Perhaps we learn most about kindness when we have to think about it, when we are forced by circumstances to leave our comfort zone, question our emotional habits and think hard about the effect of what we are doing or saying. It is particularly powerful when we can be kind for kindness's sake and because we are free to be kind, rather than because it will make us a hero in other people's eyes or win us favors.

"Many regard kindness as something sweet. It can sweeten life, sometimes immeasurably. But in practice and as an ideal, it is far tougher than sweet. Whoever we are, and however much self-awareness we have, to behave and live with kindness challenges our egocentricity and the delusion that we are the center of the universe with needs that should always take precedence over others.

"Kindness is learned moment by moment. But it will always carry most weight when we take it up as a fundamental attitude rather than as a series of individual acts: when we see it as cause and as effect."