A short conversational transcript of a YouTube video titled "True Kindness Is Uncomfortable | Simon Sinek." The speakers distinguish "niceness" (a performance that avoids discomfort) from "kindness" (action that may cause discomfort), give practical examples (e.g., telling someone they have something on their face), and argue that true kindness is uncomfortable and linked to courage and sometimes requires hard feedback. The exchange emphasizes kindness to others and to oneself and notes overlap with but difference from generosity.
Chapters
If you ask most people, what is kindness? Everyone thinks first and foremost about like a person that you're interacting with. Very seldom do we think of kindness to ourselves and very seldom do we think of kindness to someone that's not there that we don't see.
How are you defining kindness?
Well, the way I break it down is I go first, I go, what is not kindness? Niceness is a good example, right? A lot of people are nice. Yeah. You know, I find a lot of like for instance, Scandinavian, Swedish people, not very nice, but very kind. And it's a very complicated thing to understand, you know, because niceness is the performance of kindness, but it's not necessarily the action. You know, it is a nice thing to say something to somebody. It is a nice thing to smile at somebody, but kindness is doing something, you know what I mean?
Giving somebody harsh feedback, hard feedback is kind but not nice.
Yes.
Not giving somebody feedback is nice, but not.
It is very nice. For instance, this is a small thing, but I'm always thrown when someone has something on their face and no one tells them it's very nice to not tell them you have something on your face. Don't tell them you're being nice. It's better to be kind and be like, hey, man, your face. Do you get what I'm saying? And I think it's a very simple example of it, but it's also a very complex idea because one makes everyone feel like everything's going right. The other one is being able to embrace the discomfort of what's not.
In a way, I think you're touching on the thing that I think we're both teasing out of this, which is true. Kindness is uncomfortable. Nice is not uncomfortable.
Yes, yes.
That's the difference. There's a discomfort in kindness. Being kind to yourself is uncomfortable because it means I have to put myself first. I have to give myself grace. And sometimes it's easier to just beat myself up or not. And I think kindness comes with, dare I say it, courage. I think courage and kindness is different than generosity.
Yeah, they overlap, but they're not the same.
They overlap, but they're not the same. Like being generous is giving money to a cause. Look how generous. Kindness is giving a non redeemable commodity, time, energy. And though we want generosity and we want people to give money, Sure. I think when, if somebody gives you. If you're moving, you have a. And your. And your friend says, I'll pay for the moving van. Very generous. Somebody else says, I'll come to your house, I'll help you pack the boxes. I'll go with you, help you unpack the boxes. That's a non redeemable commodity. They'll never get that time or energy back. And I think that. I think as I think this through with you, as I think out loud about this, I think kindness, there's a discomfort, but I also think there's a degree of sacrifice that comes with kindness. Again, one is not better than worse. It's not better than the other. It's not a judgment. I want to see generosity in the world and kindness in the world, but I think we sometimes can conflate the two and I don't think they're the same. And that's sort of one of the things I'm getting from this.
