Kindness is a Stress Killer

In today's age of quarantining, mask wearing, a pandemic and many other Variables, stress is most definitely prevalent. From the kids being at home during the lockdown, to now with regulations etc, some kids remain at home. Stress comes in the form of worrying about the kids well-being, having the proper engagement with others, will they succeed and do well within this new environment and world we are all newly navigating. Your spouse is now home working, and so are you. Problems and issues might now be magnified by the simple fact, there's nowhere to cool off, you’re both in the same space. Trying to continue to create that relationship from home, ensuring each other is doing well. Of course there’s bills and finances to deal with. Jobs are scarce, harder to do and navigate being the majority of it online now. If bills aren't up to snuff, ensuring stress doesn't spill out on each other. Of course the general stress of the pandemic. Worrying about being sick, getting others sick, the news telling us daily how horrible this thing is. The news tells us all the tragedies daily, more now with the economy, jobs lost, businesses lost. Don't forget the total and complete divide of this nation as Democrats, liberals, Republicans etc, cannot hold a conversation anymore. As we look around I think we can all agree that there might just be some stresses to overcome.

As we deal with these stresses we come up with solutions or ideas in which to relieve that stress. But what happens when those around us in the entire environment are stressed. For example, restaurants in California are now open. You walk in, order a nice spaghetti dinner and enjoy a nice conversation with your wife. The waiter brings you 2 waters but forgets the lemons. He goes back stressing about all above, and brings back 1 lemon. You are patient and remind him of the second lemon. He comes back and you go back to your nice conversation. He brings out dinner and it's the next table's food. Apologizes and gives the plate to the proper table. Come back with your food. Place it down and by golly he's forgotten the meatballs. Now although this is simple, not that big a deal, just a bit inconvenient, at this point dealing with all your stresses, and now dealing with his, it would be very easy to just get very upset with this waiter.

In businesses we find that the common excuse or common problem stated is that the pandemic caused my loss of money. The pandemic is gonna lose me my business. Under a variety of factors some business fixes came down to the simple point that THEY WERE UNDERSTAFFED! Return rates of customers and bad reviews poor in as the staff is “Too slow to get the meals out” or “they messed up the orders” and so on. All of these stresses, all of our troubles can so easily be pointed towards the pandemic.

The real question is despite all the troubles in the world, in our lives, what really can kill these stresses. Blaming the pandemic only gives you a reason, it doesn’t actually solve anything for you, for me, for anyone. It is just a reason. What if we took the time to thank the waiter for bringing us our food? Yes it was wrong, but it got there. What if we took the time to be kind to the nice lady in line at the grocery store, who looks to be in a hurry, and let her skip you in line. What if we took that time to help the man on the corner find a coffee shop? As we’ve all experienced in life, a little kindness goes a long way. A little kindness when there is no reason for it, nothing necessarily deserved, kills stress. I can remember being a 12 year old boy at the grocery store buying some ingredients for my mother, and I had $50 from her to buy what we needed. The total ended up being a little over $53. As I started to seach my pockets for change and then asked the lady what item cost $5 so I could put it back, the man behind me handed me $5. No matter how hard I tried he wouldn’t accept a no. There I was a young kid, holding up the line, searching for some quarters and giving no reason for that kindness. To this day that man impacted me. Ive of course encountered it. More stresses in my life, but for that week, all I could talk about was the generosity of this man. My stress was gone. So help someone load their groceries, support your local restaurants and businesses, check up on loved ones, and help change that stress to a smile.