A friend was asking me earlier about my recently launched radio show on www.webtalkradio.net, wondering why it is entitled This Kind of Business and wanting for me to share my thoughts about what I hoped to accomplish. Funny, I think about it all the time...and have for years; I just never realized until recently how important it is for me to try and communicate my message. My message is about hope.......about hope that runs deep and about hope that is for all people.
The radio show is a bit of dream and also a bit of a fluke. Few know the history of a television pilot I did about a decade ago -- three episodes filmed in my kitchen here in my beautiful home. The show was about helping people work out their struggles with a loved one in the kitchen with food as a great diversion. Diversions are helpful, especially when the conversation is tough. We had fun.....we had challenges....we had onions chopped by a woman who only when they were minced nearly into a pulp, came to recognize the reality that she was angry at her daughter. We had a newly engaged couple who smashed through cookie dough and realized they were needing to do a bit of battle to get to their fears about their upcoming wedding plans. Terry Murphy was my executive producer, she was exquisite. We had a great connection. But life happens. My family obligations occupied my mind and my heart and I needed to pause the show opportunities to tend to other, more pressing matters. She was such an incredibly kind woman.....I miss her.
The show is a fluke because all these years later, in the wake of trying to live through the passing away of my dear, sweet mom, I ended up on the telephone with a man who is so much like Terry Murphy -- smart, kind, genteel, humble, and visionary. He saw in me something that Terry saw. We talked, he listened and heard me....and heard a voice that he found refreshing and inspiring. Brad Saul is the man. He owns Matrix Media which owns Webtalkradio.net. What good hand of fate for me to have his ear and also his interest in what I might be able to offer an audience.
The show is about kindness because it is a concept I grew up hearing about from my parents all the time. They were very kind people and wanted to infuse our family with elements of kind. They did a good job.
When my mom was ill these past couple of years, everyting she and my dad taught me overtly and subtly took precedence. I knew it would....it had been creeping up on me in my work and in my personal life like a wave at the beach....gaining strength over time....never really disappearing.
All the old cliches about the Golden Rule are so true.....and we need to have the confidence as adults to live by it -- do unto others as you'd have them do unto you.......be kind, be generous, be good, be nice. We hear it as children and then somehow leave it on the playground and think we have to evolve to some other, more sophisticated philosophy. As a young professional, I found myself feeling a pressure to toughen up and separate personal from business. I heard people telling the stories of their business activities and describing why they needn't feel guilt -- because it was just business, nothing personal........
No....I elected to ditch that line of garbage and be a child, a tender heart, and do my business from the middle of my heart. And the more I commit to that and am vocal about it, the more I am meeting up with great people, really excellent human beings, who are of like minds. I find myself being thoroughly delighted as I hear so many men in particular being unafraid to espouse the same values I embrace and acknowledge that business is indeed very personal, extremely personal. And as such, you better get your heart straight and do kindness in your business or everyone is going to recognize how askew you are when you do harm unto others and operate out of a meanspirited space.
I've been the recipient of meanspiritedness.....and I myself have not been angelic each day of my life......but in any given moment, we each have the option to turn the corner and begin a new direction. We can begin anew and take massive action and turn the course of how we operate within ourself and with others.
The message of my show is exactly about this. And my intent with the show is to provide listeners with the dialogue I have with people who practice this philosophy, live it, and are succeeding in this life.......and I mean both personally and professionally. Success is not measured just by dollars but also by overall well-being....how well one is feeling and thinking and being......at home in private and out in their public life.
Maya Angelou is so embraced around the world for her writings and her talkings.....and she is so clear about making the point that people may forget what you say but they never forget how you made them feel. How true. And so in an era when we see such violence.....amongst our kids in their schools and on the streets, in places of employment as adults get stressed beyond what they can handle, we must ask ourselves as a culture --where is it that kindness left them? What could we have done to have infused kind acts into their world so as to have prevented tragedy?
Kind acts are never regretable. Kindness as a concept is always a good idea. Extensions of kindness inspire goodness and it is contagious. Imagine if every business moto included a promise to be kind...and that promise was acted upon for your benefit. Imagine........what would that mean for you? What would that mean for our community? For our culture? For our world?
