Donna Cameron - A Year of Living Kindly: Choices That Will Change Your Life and the World Around You

Advance Praise for
A Year of Living Kindly

Donna Camerons contagious warmth, compelling stories, persuasive logic, and useful advice make this gem a joy to read. After I finished each lovely little chapter, I understood the path to kindness a bit better, my inspiration to keep moving down that path increased, and my resolve to forgive myself and others when we slip into unkindness grew stronger.

ROBERT SUTTON, Professor, Stanford University, and best-selling author of The No Asshole Rule and The Asshole Survival Guide

Just being nice will not be enough to save the civility of todays world. It will take the patience and focus of true and loving kindness. Dont assume you know what is needed or how to do it until you read Donna Camerons A Year of Living Kindly. You will find inspiration for every experience and season of your life.

JOHN KRALIK, author of A Simple Act of Gratitude

This book will absolutely light your heart on fire for kindness! In A Year of Living Kindly, Donna Cameron encourages us to suspend our spectator status and fully embrace whats happening around us. Through collected research and her own wise observations, she generously shows us how to lead fuller lives through kindness.

NICOLE J. PHILLIPS, author of Kindness is Contagious and host of The Kindness Podcast

A Year of Living Kindly is not only a beautifully written memoir, its also an insightful and inspiring guidebook, a fountain of wisdom, and a timely gift to the world. In an era when mean-spiritedness, anger, and polarization are so rampant, Donna Cameron draws from her own lived experience, as well as extensive research in medicine and the social sciences, and demonstrates that being kind is both a challenge and our essential nature, that it makes a real difference in the world, and that it enhances our own health and well-being in the process. Highly recommended.

SUSAN AVERY STEWART, PhD, MFT, Professor Emerita, Sonoma State University, and author of Winters Graces: The Surprising Gifts of Later Life

Its irrefutable that being kindon purposeimproves health and wellness. With fifty-two delicious, bite-sized chapters containing actionable examples that help readers weave intentional kindness into their daily lives, you can be sure A Year of Living Kindly is a book Ill prescribe to my clients.

LAURIE BUCHANAN, PhD, holistic health practitioner, life coach, and author of The Business of Being and Note to Self

Although being kind sounds a lot like being nice, Donna Cameron shares how these two acts are very different. A Year of Living Kindly has remarkable insights on how you can increase your dose of happiness by adding kindness into your daily encounters. In most situations, it doesnt cost a dime, and yet you will feel better than ever. Ive been inspired!

LINDA ATWELL, author of Loving Lindsey: Raising a Daughter with Special Needs

An exquisite thread of compassion and kindness is interwoven throughout Donna Camerons book, A Year of Living Kindly. With beautiful wisdom and utterly clear examples, this book leads the reader to a new understanding of how to make the world a better place for all of us. I will recommend it wherever I go.

DANNA BEAL, MEd, speaker, coach, and author of The Extraordinary Workplace: Replacing Fear with Trust and Compassion

A YEAR of LIVING KINDLY

Copyright 2018 by Donna Cameron

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, digital scanning, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, please address She Writes Press.

Published September 25, 2018
Printed in the United States of America
Print ISBN: 978-1-63152-479-0
E-ISBN: 978-1-63152-480-6
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018935738

For information, address:
She Writes Press
1563 Solano Ave #546
Berkeley, CA 94707

Interior design by Tabitha Lahr

She Writes Press is a division of SparkPoint Studio, LLC.

Names and identifying characteristics have been changed to protect the privacy of certain individuals.

To Bill Wiederkehr, wherever you are is home.

Kindness is in short supply these days. Its evident on our highways, in crowded public spaces, in our political discourse, and in social and commercial media. In place of everyday courtesy, we encounter glaring contempt. Gracious acknowledgment has given way to disregard. And where polite conversation or civil debate once reigned, we are blitzed by name-calling, insults, and derision. Outshouting the other guy has become the strategy of the day. It doesnt feel good, and it doesnt feel right.

Beyond not feeling good, theres plenty of evidence that the unkindness and incivility that surround us are destructiveto our health, our relationships, our happiness, and even our career success. And theres a mounting body of research showing that kindness improves health and extends longevity, strengthens our relationships, boosts business success, and contributes greatly to our overall happiness. There may be a few bullies and tyrants who scoff at kindness, viewing it as a weakness, but the truth is very much the opposite: kindness is a strength, a superpower that has the capacity to transform lives and change the world.

If theres going to be a change, its up to us to make it. Creating a kinder world is something we all can doit doesnt require rallying people or institutions, its not costly, we can do it anywhere and anytime. It doesnt demand that we be smart or rich, or that we be articulate or outgoing. It only requires that we pay attention, and when we face a choice of how we will respond, we choose kindness.

It sounds simple, and it is simple... but it isnt easy. We dont always pay attention to our lives; we often act out of habit or in instant response to a perceived insult or provocation. We all have our own insecurities that propel us to act in ways that arent always compassionate (or even logical). We get tired, we become impatient, we grow fearful, we see slights when theyre real and sometimes when theyre not. Lets face it, were human.

Ive always admired kind people. I wanted to be more like them. It seemed to me that they travel through their days with a sort of grace that leaves pleasure and calm in their wake. It just feels good to be in the presence of kind people. Over the years, I repeatedly made a commitment to being kindsometimes it was even my New Years resolution. And I was kinduntil kind wasnt easy, or wasnt convenient. Until somebody or something pushed my buttons. Until I felt threatened or insecure or inadequate. And then I spoke harshly, or sarcastically, or simply turned my back and pretended not to see that I was passing up an opportunity to enrich someones day, and maybe even improve the world.

I settled for being nice.

Finally, I said I wanted to walk my own talk. I christened 2015 as my Year of Living Kindly, and to make it harder to let the commitment fade, I blogged about it weekly and invited people to follow the blog (https://ayearoflivingkindly.com/). During my year of living kindly, I recommitted each day to being a kind person, and each day I learned more about kindnessand about myself. Since there isnt a kindness switch, and I had several decades of self-centered niceness as my fallback behavior, I knew I would fail as much as I succeeded. I told myself, though, that if at the end of the year I was a kinder person, I would have achieved what I set out to do.