The SECRET To Healing Yourself & Making An IMPACT In The WORLD! | Houston Kraft

I was given some ways to think about things in my brain that shape the way I act in the world. And my guess is as someone that interviews a lot of smart people, you're like constantly learning. And my guess is you've talked to some people and you've heard them talk about something in a way that changed your brain.

Oh, for sure.

And you're like, I need to give this to someone else. Yeah, that's sort of. My sensation is like in high school, at a leadership camp in the middle of nowhere, Washington, someone said that kindness is this. There's a different way of doing kindness, that love isn't just a feeling. You don't have to like someone in order to practice love towards them. That everyone's a leader because everyone has influence. And my brain went, oh my gosh, this is how, yeah, I do my life.

Welcome to Stuck to Unstoppable, where we interview the world's foremost thought leaders to break things down in order to help you get past your hurts, habits and hang ups and finally level up and move forward. I'm your host, Stephen Scoggins. Now let's go ahead and get into today's guest and our featured conversation. You're not going to want to miss it. My special guest today is professional speaker, author, curriculum designer and kindness advocate who has spoken to over a half a million people internationally. As the co founder of Character Strong in Training, Houston, Craft has inspired countless cultural shifts to create compassionate schools and communities literally all over the world. In 2019, he was even featured by Lay's Barbecue and Jalapeno Chip Bags for Spreading the Smiles campaign, not to mention in conjunction with Simon and Schuster. Houston's first book, Deep Kindness, just hit the shelves and I can tell you personally that Amazon is having a hard time keeping its stock because I'm still waiting for mine. Guys, please help me welcome future best selling author and speaker and kindness expert, Houston Craft. Houston, what's going on, man? How you doing?

I'm good. You're in a leather jacket. I feel underdressed.

No worries. It's getting to be fall where I'm at in the country, so. You know, it's yesterday it was like 80 something degrees and humid. Now it's like 60 something, so go figure.

Yeah, I think it's getting to be fall everywhere in the country, but it doesn't look like fall everywhere in the.

Country right where you. I know you've been traveling quite a bit with the book launch and whatnot. Where you call, where are you calling in from today?

I'm In Southern California, which I grew up mostly in Washington State. And I remember a few years ago when I moved here, my partner at the time, she went into a grocery store, a Vons, and she saw a pumpkin and she started crying because she was like, we don't get fall in Southern California. I miss fall. So for those of you crying at pumpkins right now, I feel you not look like fall here right now.

The pumpkin spice is real in all its metaphorical forms.

Well, look, you know, one of the things that I, that I. That I try to share with people is obviously, you know, it's more than just a passion about kindness, but. And whatnot. But you're definitely one of the foremost thought leaders in that space, for sure. I know we have a mutual friend, Leon, who's. Who's obviously a big fan of kindness himself. And, you know, but one of the things that we, you know, that I think would be an important, maybe talking about point would actually be the difference between another, what a surface level kindness versus what is deep kindness. You know, I know you've got an interesting way of thinking about, you know, how kindness is exhibited and whatnot.

Yeah, it's. It's interesting. You know, whatever lane you choose in life, when you start to pay attention to something for long enough, I think you just start to see details naturally that people don't consider even if they can appreciate it on a surface level. You know, you go into the Louvin, you see the Mona Lisa, and you're, wow, this is amazing. But it's different than the person who was an art history major, and it's different than the museum curator who's like, literally spends every day looking at this thing. And I feel like a little bit the same with kindness. Kindness is one of those sort of commonplace ideals. Certainly it's something that I think everyone values. And yet I think people like Leon or myself, who've dedicated at least 10 years so far in my career to thinking and talking about kindness. I'm like, you know, why is it. Why is it that so many of us say that it's a good thing, and yet you collectively look around and you're like, we're really not good at it.

Yeah, we're really far apart at the moment. Yeah, for sure.

And I think so much of that has to do with language, with the way that we speak about it. I've noticed an uptick in conversations around kindness or compassion, I think in response to a lot of cruelty that we're witnessing in the world. And I think my frustration is just because we're talking about something more doesn't mean we're talking about it better or more effectively.

Yeah.

And one of the most common narratives I hear around kindness. I've worked in schools for a long time. I run a curriculum company alongside one of my best friends and heroes. And we think about teaching this stuff and working in schools. Just about every school you've ever been to has kindness as a part of their motto or their theme. And they're just telling kids, like, here we're kind of okay. What does that actually mean? Yeah. See posters on the wall, like throw kindness around, like confetti. Yeah. And I think all that stuff is well intentioned, but. But I think it can actually do more harm than good in the sense that when we reduce kindness to something that you just quote, unquote, be.

Yeah.

Or it's tossable, like confetti, or the most dangerous, dangerous of all, in my mind, that kindness is free. I hear that all the time, like, why don't people be kind? It's free. And I'm like, no, it's not. No, it costs us something. If it was free, we'd live in a full kumbaya world. That's not how it works. Kindness costs time, energy, it costs comfort, convenience, ego, pride, discipline, consistency, all those costs that we don't always consider with it. And if we don't speak about it in a way that honors how hard it is, I think we have this internal human thing where we don't value it. We say we value it, but we don't allocate the resources of time, energy, practice to actually become good at the thing because it's free. And that's damaging.

No, no doubt. You know, it's funny, you know, I think even as a human being and I, I'm someone who believes that I do my best to help a lot of people pouring into them, doing stuff like that. I do my best to be kind, but I also know at times I'm not. You know, there's. There's definitely a mirror. A mirror kind of look. What do you think is the leading cause of people not being able to.

Exemplify or even illustrate kindness on a day in and day out basis? Because, you know, if we were all kinder to each other, the entire world would change, you know, almost in an instant, you know. So what do you think prevents us from pursuing that as people?

Yeah, I think there's this interesting thing we do with values, things that we profess to care about, where we give ourselves permission to say we are A thing in a way that we don't assign to, like, skill sets.

Yeah.

Right. Just because I fixed one bike doesn't make me an engineer.

And yet a lot of times, like, people will say, I'm a kind person. And I'm like, well, how much time do you allocate to the practice of that over time? You know, how much research have you done? Like, how well do you understand how kindness operates in your life or the skills needed to practice that kindness? And I think it's this weird sort of gap that we have between skills in our life and values where we think we are a thing, when in reality sometimes we might do a kind action.

Yeah.

That doesn't necessarily make me a kind person in embodiment and fullness. So I think that's one barrier. Right. Again, just like a gap in the way we think about it more statistically speaking. You know, Dr. Michelle Vorba, a friend of mine, wrote this book, unselfie. She spent 30 years researching empathy and compassion.

Yeah.

And what she discovered is, is that the biggest barriers for empathy are.

Anxiety, fear, and narcissism. All three things, I would suggest have increased in our world. Yeah. And prior even to a pandemic or quarantine, we were already experiencing record levels of anxiety. Right. The average teenager today has as much anxiety as the average psychiatric patient from the 1950s. Anxiety is going up, and it has a direct correlation to a decrease in empathy in our world. Empathy has dropped 40% in the average college a student since the year 2000.

Wow.

Dr. Boba calls it the empathy gap, and she says it's widening. And that makes sense.

Yeah, no, it totally is. You know, I was watching a. I'm not a. I'm not a big TV watcher, but my wife said you have to watch this show called Social Dilemma or something. It's about social media and the impacts of it. And, you know, it's profound that the empathy decline has declined. As such, as social media has seemed to increase, almost like. Because it goes to that state of comparison and that state of trying to put your best face forward rather than being authentic. Do you? I think it's said that most of us judge us by our intentions, like we judge ourselves by our intentions and other people judge us by our actions. I mean, it seems like that kind of what you're saying with pride and narcissism and these different facets. I mean, all of that kind of comes down to that brief stance. You know, it's a comparison, at least in my perspective. There's elements of comparison, there is elements of pride and ego and stuff and self centeredness that gets in the way. There's an element of trying to prove that you're better than somebody else rather than trying to help someone else kind of scenario. I mean, you've obviously made it a career choice to really pursue this with all your heart, all your might, with all your, you know, all your intelligence. What made you decide to go down this road? It's, you know, this kindness road yourself, like what, what, how did this, how did this even become a thing for you? Because, you know, to your point, I've. I know two people in the entire world now that actually have a sincere heart to illustrate, show, teach, you know, and share kindness throughout. So how did you even get started on this journey?

Yeah, two parts there. The first one is the social dilemma. Right. The social media and its advent and how it's increased anxiety. And I think we see a lot of direct correlations. Some of them are just logic. Right. Like when we know we're constantly being bombarded by other people's highlight reel constantly. In contrast to our own like, you know, really slow moving movie. We're like, you got really good things going and I feel like I'm struggling here. That's naturally anxiety inducing is the contrast we see. Yeah. I think the thing that we forget sometimes is the increase in data consumption that has been an exponential increase in our lifetime of how much inbound data we receive. Right. We process gigabytes of media per day. We process over 100,000 words a day. We're looking at some form of screen or entertainment for on average it's like seven or eight hours per day. And those things are increasing consistently. They have data that goes back as far as the 80s when a lot of televisions are being introduced into homes. What they saw was with the advent of televisions and homes, they saw a decrease of boredom.

And boredom is actually from a neuroscience perspective where things like creativity and empathy are cultivated. Yeah, I don't have time to let my mind wander or daydream. I lose some of that ability to contextualize my world or reimagine my world or draw lines that previously didn't exist. And so when we don't let ourselves be bored, right. Used to be the tv, but now we have a never ending supply of non boredom in our pocket. We lose some of that empathy. And I think we forget also just how many messages come at us and that we haven't evolved quick enough. Of course we haven't to provide filters and think about all that inbound data in your brain and how ill equipped, simply from a timeline, evolutionary perspective we are to actually navigate that data effectively. Yeah, it's like this just jet stream of information and my brain isn't parsing quickly enough. Okay, here's some simple questions like is this good for me?

Yeah. Right.

Is this true? Right. Is this capital T true? Is it worthwhile? Does it apply to me? Because there's so many messages embedded in that. Right. Everything has an angle of some kind that's trying to convince us that we're not good enough over here. So you need this thing to supplement it or you're bored over here. So look at this shiny thing over here and that constant sort of messaging. I think we forget sometimes how anxiety inducing that is and how many lies we get sold by culture that I would argue or talking about, quote unquote, what gets in the way of a more compassionate world. Well, so many of that. Those data bits teach me or provide a narrative to myself like that I'm not worthy of blank. Or that I need to be afraid of failure or that achievement looks like X, Y or Z. And in order to be lovable in this world, I need to achieve X, Y or Z. Yeah. And I think it's easy to forget like how those insecurities usually don't drive us towards connection.

Yeah, for sure.

They drive us towards scarcity. And that fear of that I'm not enough unless I blank. Yeah. Sort of like the model capitalism is built off of.

Well, you know, I'm sorry, go ahead.

Sorry. It's a two part big question, like what gets in the way of a more compassionate world? How does social media play a role? And then how did you get into this? Yeah. And the short answer to probably a longer question is simply I was lucky enough to experience paradigm shifts when I was young around what it meant to lead in this world, what it meant to be a leader, what it meant to show up in compassion, kindness. I was given some ways to think about things in my brain that shape the way I act in the world. And my guess is as someone that interviews a lot of smart people that you're like constantly learning and my guess is you've talk to some people and you've heard them talk about something in a way that changed your brain.

Oh, for sure.

And you're like, I need to give this to someone else. Yeah, that's sort of. My sensation is like in high school at a leadership camp in the middle of nowhere, Washington, someone said that kindness is this. There's A different way of doing kindness. That love isn't just a feeling you don't have to like someone in order to practice love towards them. That everyone's a leader because everyone has influence. And my brain went, oh my gosh, this is how I do my life.

Yeah, that's a truth with a capital T. Yeah, for sure.

Capital T, truth. And I think anytime anyone experiences one of those capital T truths that reorient themselves in the world, you can't not want to share that with others.

Yeah, for sure.

And So I spent 10 years trying to figure out how to do it.

Yeah, no worries. Yeah, absolutely. You know, one of the things that you'll get, whether it's digitally or in person, I've had to, obviously the honor, obviously meeting you digitally. Now you are carrying around a certain presence about you because you can tell that this is something that you're practicing, you're passionate about. Gary V. Recently said that kindness is one of the most underutilized skills and that it, you know, that practice, practically practicing it can obviously make you a lot stronger and a lot more empathetic and things of that nature. But how does one go from not practicing sincere kindness on a regular basis to essentially becoming someone who is even thought of as a. As a leader in the spirit of kindness? I mean, that seems like there's a. There's this massive, you know, gargantuate, like Grand Canyon, if you will, of. Well, it's so. It's so big of a Grand Canyon, why should I even try, you know, kind of scenarios? It's kind of what I think one of the fears would be. So how do you go from here to here? I mean, what are, what are some of the practical steps that you've seen work?

Yeah, the.

I think Gary V. Is spot on. I think maybe my argument or my pushback would be that kindness is actually less of a skill and more of a behavior informed by skills. And I think that's one of the misnomers or the paradigm shifts around kindness for me is you ask kids in the context of school to be kind or you want that part of your workplace culture, kindness. And yet, if we haven't equipped people with the tools in the toolbox to do that, well, we're asking people to do an external thing without the internal equipment.

That's good.

For example, I don't know. You know, empathy is a good one for me. Empathy, I think, is such a critical ingredient to the practice of kindness. Empathy is my ability to understand what you're feeling, what I'm Feeling to take on your perspective and to then hopefully translate it into some sort of compassionate action.

Yeah.

And one of the more profound examples I stumbled upon in writing the book is it comes out of Newtown, the Sandy Hook shooting.

Yeah.

Where after this global tragedy, people wanted to respond with kindness. Of course. Sort of our natural human instinct, oh, here's an opportunity to be kind. And usually we wait till people are hurting until we try to help. Yeah. People from all over the world sent stuffed animals, so many stuffed animals, in fact, that Newtown had to rent a warehouse just to house all the inbound gifts.

I did not know that.

Yeah. It's a logistical problem for a town who's suffering emotionally. And one of the guys that ran the candlelit vigil said there were more stuffed animals present than there were people. And in a really profound quote, he goes, a teddy bear is great, but a teddy bear doesn't pay for a funeral. Teddy bear doesn't pay for counseling.

And here's this paradigm shift for me, right. Kindness, the action of kindness without empathy that lives beneath it, usually serves me, the giver, more than the person on the far side. I feel good because I think I did a kind thing. But did I ever bother to ask, is this what you need?

Mmm, that's good. Yeah.

That's a skill set, right? Yeah. The ability to take on that perspective, the ability to ask those questions, the ability to listen in that way is a whole skill set that if I haven't been taught it or taken time to develop it, then my action of kindness is weakened or sometimes I won't even do it at all because I don't know how to.

When I think that's where everybody really struggles at is, you know, it's. I think I know it's a. We're in a crazy, obviously situation in our entire world right now. It's probably mental. Been a little more polarized than I think it's ever been in history, at least from my lifetime, and I'm sure yours as well, you know, but yet when I bump into people at the grocery store, I bump into people now at the gym that now they're open, thank God, you know, And I bump into people in public.

I don't. I'm not bumping into people who don't want to be kind or don't have a. However, like an ill intentioned spirit. I'm bumping into people who are like, I just don't really know how to even ask those right questions. I don't even know. It doesn't dawn on people to ask the question you just asked, you know, is this really what you need? It doesn't dawn on it. You know, as someone who's. Who's always in a situation to serve people in a lot of ways from an income standpoint as well as service standpoint, my first inclination is, okay, I'm going to invest some resources over here to help this initiative. That's my. My initial reaction. And then I learned that probably one of the most. One of the kindest things that I could personally do was to actually invest my time because it's the one thing I can't make more of, you know. So my wife and I, we decided a long time ago, like during the Christmas season.

Rather than buy our kids a bunch of gifts and stuff like that, what we typically do is we'll go out and we'll take resources and we'll just go, Secret Santa people. Right? And.

The first time we did it, I would say that we probably touched on what you touched on earlier. Hey, look, this will make us feel good. And there was some truth to that, especially the first time out. But one of the things that happened was we went into a Target shopping center. Target, you know, just Target building. Walked in. We had, you know, some resources. We were. We were hand. Selectively, you know, helping out people that we thought might need the income, you know, trying to use some prayer, if you will, to kind of guide us towards the direction. And then we bumped into this younger lady who was actually raising her grandson, which I was raised by my grandmother, at least early on, while my parents were off doing their struggling. And we had the situation where she proceeded to tell her story. Right. The resource opened the door. But the connection was actually made during the story. And we had to. I mean, it was so powerful, we had to sit down and keep talking to her for hours on end, you know, and those are some of the things that I think that seem to mean the most to people is when you invest time. It seems like also that when you. When you have the practice of empathy, you know, a lot of things is. At least for me, I've always had to ask this question. How can I better understand how they feel?

Do you think that's a good practice? Or are there some different skills and techniques that help open the door for more empathy? Because if. If kindness is the flower and empathy is the root, I want to know how to get the root going.

Stephen, there is literally a leaf blower right outside my door.

I apologize. They.

We can't hear us. You're in good shape.

Oh, really? Yeah. Good. It's just deafening on my end. Perfect.

The metaphor of kindness is the flower, empathy is the root, is so good. And I will happily steal that for my next book.

More than. Welcome to.

No. Yeah. I mean, that practice of identifying need is. Is one of the most critical ingredients, and I think that people just need frameworks to know how to do it. I. Instead of just offering people, here's 10 ways to practice kindness, I think the bigger deal for me is to think about how we think about kindness.

Yeah.

For me, I use a little model that I call intersectional thinking.

Okay.

Which is like a little Venn diagram for your brain.

Okay.

So instead of just asking the question, how can I be kind today? Which is maybe a passive question in some people's life or maybe even a proactive question in some people's life.

I think that question is so massive, I liken it to sitting down at the Cheesecake Factory and opening up the menu, and there's just so many choices. It's overwhelming.

Yeah. It's so big. Right. The paradox of choice would say that we actually have less choices when we have too many.

Yeah.

I think the same thing is true with kindness. The first time I ever went to the Cheesecake Factory, I ordered the chipotle chicken pasta, and it was delicious. So guess what? Nine times out of ten, when I go to the Cheesecake Factory, I'm getting the chipotle chicken pasta. And I think that exists in the kindness world as well, that we don't always think about, but we so often talk about the pay it forward and the coffee line behind you or help the old lady cross the street. Those have become the chipotle chicken pastas that, like, if those are the only context, if those are the only examples I have in my brain, then those are sort of where my brain tends to go when I think about kindness.

Yeah.

So my brain says, how do I reduce that massive choice and put some constraint? Right. Constraint amplifies creativity. So I'm going to put a circle to narrow the focus. And I'm categorically named that circle, people. Okay. Instead of the question of how do I practice kindness today? How do I practice kindness today towards my mom is a very different question. How do I practice kindness today towards the person who runs this food bank? How do I practice kindness today towards my roommate, whatever that question is.

Yeah.

I think specificity immediately drives action and drives meaning. Let's add another circle to make it the true Venn diagram sort of spirit, which is, let's say time. Let's say I don't have a ton of time on a given day. Right. Time is definitely one resource I can invest in people. But reality is, in our busy lives, I don't always have three hours to go and sit, listen to a story. Now can I make time for that and should I? Absolutely. On occasion, let's. We need those stories to propel us, but on a day to day practice sort of basis. What if I only have 10 minutes?

Yeah.

And the question of how do I practice kindness towards my mom in 10 minutes is different than how do I practice kindness towards my mom?

Yeah.

And all of a sudden that provides sort of direction for me. How do I practice kind of what I know. Today as an example, my mom landed in North Carolina. It's her first flight she's taken.

Tell her to come say hello.

Is that where you're at? Yeah.

Based on North Carolina.

Yeah. Amazing. She's in Raleigh with my steps and we're in Raleigh. No way.

Yeah. Live event center. I'm actually, we're actually live sitting in the studio right now in Raleigh, North Carolina, in our live event center.

Mom, are you there?

That would be amazing.

I'll be the best surprise ever. So she's landing there and she's gonna be with my stepsister who's about to have her second baby. And I know my mom is like, you know, stressed about being there to like, she wants to be helpful. Yeah. And so I know that one thing I could do is send like an Uber Eats coupon down there because I know they're like probably all overwhelmed. That's one thing. Or I could get hop on the phone and Facetimer for 10 minutes. Or I could send a video to both Nikki, my sister and my mom and just let them know, hey, I'm thinking about you guys during this time time. So immediately by asking those sorts of questions, by providing constraint, I'm able to meet needs, which is what empathy and the story about Sandy Hook, I hope teaches us, is that kindness that meets needs is what I would say deep kindness is all about. It's. We listen well to love. Better. Yeah. Otherwise we're just meeting the things that we perceive our needs which typically aren't always right.

Right.

My mom, as an example, went through stage four colon cancer. And it's so interesting to see how people show up in those moments. Yeah. You get the people that just deliver food, some of which like, it's great, but like maybe isn't. You know, we got five meals today. I don't, I can't Eat this right now. It's not what I need, or it's not the food that I want or need or isn't related to the diet I'm supposed to be on.

Yeah.

Some people ask the question which we think is helpful, which is, how can I help?

Yeah.

And you know what that does is that that creates a task for the person in need of help to come.

Up with something to help with.

Yeah, absolutely. So if you're thinking again back to that practical strategy of how do I get to the root. Show up to a conversation like that where you want to meet a need with at least two options, give them at least a binary to reduce the friction of choice on their part, to say, this is what people have a hard time asking for help. So I might say, hey, mom, what was what's more helpful tonight? Me hopping on to a FaceTime with Nikki so you can spend some time doing your own thing or sending you guys an Uber Eats gift card.

Yeah.

So by giving that choice, because I've listened, because I know the circumstance, I immediately I think I'm able to meet a more effective need. A, because I'm getting specific, and B, because I'm not asking for them to be the one coming up with the kindness.

I love it. I love it. Let me ask you, this is gonna be kind of a weird question. It popped in my mind as you were sharing your story and sharing the, you know, the complex of the. Not the complexities, but the different ways in which we could show up.

Do you find it easier? Well, maybe it's not maybe. Do you find it easier? What do you think would have. Would affect this world that's depression ridden at the moment, anxiety ridden? What do you think it would be. Affect us more showing up in kindness at. In the public square, you know, somewhere in the public gas station, wherever, or starting in your own house? Because I find I see people that are very kind on the front side, but they're not kind to their own family. And I think it seems like it would. It would be a spiritual conflict to a degree. Like I would have a hard time reconciling that. And so I'm curious to know if we're going to make the biggest impact. Which one do you think would be the. Probably the best starting place?

Well, we can lean on some of Mother Teresa's work. Who says, if you want to change the world, go home and love your family.

So often. Yeah, we neglect the people closest to us. We take for granted their generosity and their love and want to give it everywhere. Else but the place that it's probably most complicated.

Yeah.

I find myself guilty of that all the time. But particularly, you know, I was in a previous relationship that ended in large part because I was dedicating my life to like telling other people how to love better. Meanwhile, I went home and was exhausted and would go home just to do laundry and turn around and hop on the road again.

Yeah.

So I've lived that narrative and I think the danger when we think we are doing good in the world, you know, the more purposeful we perceive our pursuit to be, the more self righteous we can get and the more excuses we give ourselves in pursuit of that to neglect the people closest to us. And that's the danger of being someone that thinks they're doing purposeful work, which you can be. But actually the model that helped me a ton, I read about online.

I stumbled upon it. It was called the four burner theory. I don't know if you've heard it before, but pretty simple in premise. The idea is that we all have four burners. Family, friends, work and health. Four burners they offer. And the premise, it was sort of a business article.

Yeah.

And the premise, and it wasn't. Wasn't saying that this was a good thing. It was saying to be traditionally successful in work, you have to turn off one of the other burners. Said to be really successful traditionally successful in work, you have to turn off two. And I remember reading that and frameworks helped me so much. Right. Paradigms. Yeah. And I was like, I find myself successful in work and I think I've turned off all three of the other burners to some extent.

Yeah.

It makes sense. Right. Like we only have a limited amount of fuel, however you want to name that fuel. Energy, effort, time.

Yeah.

And we can only allocate so much in a given direction. And I had stopped hanging out with my friends. I was always on the road. My family was my relationship at the time. Which had neglected to the point where we were going through the end of our relationship.

Yeah.

And my, my physical health wasn't good. I was eating airplane lunches and Hampton and breakfasts. Yeah. And it occurred to me that I'd like I'd reached this traditional, you know, version of success only to find myself without these other three burners in my life.

And I think that just, you know, comes back to again, the lies that culture provide for us, which is that achievement or productivity is the number one pathway to success. And I quote my friend Kyle Shealy all the time who says my definition of success is the number of nights I come home smelling like campfire. I'm like, that is good. Yeah. One of my favorite questions to ask people is like, what. What's a non traditional metric of success you measure your life by? Because if it's only what the world has offered us, I think we're going to find ourselves successful. But sad. Yeah.

You know, I've shared some of, some of those same experiences that you just talked about, especially in creating, you know, businesses and stuff and trying to overcome homelessness and all that stuff. And, you know, it's. I think, you know, I tell you all the time, expect. In fact, I got a young man that works for me. His last name is Craft, by the way.

Connor. I tell him all the time, you know, because when I first met him, he was like, I'm gonna, I'm gonna make a billion dollars and I'm gonna have an airplane and a car. Like, I'm like, dude, you're, it's. You're, you're gonna, you may get. You may very well get that stuff. You may very like, and that's gonna be great, but you're gonna, there's gonna be a sacrifice. You'll be a price to be paid for every level of success, no matter how what form it comes into. And you're. The four burner thing I'd never heard, but I love it. But one of the things I told him is, you know, I've, I've. I've had the honor of developing businesses at the point where I've had resources that I could share. And I promised him in the moment, I was like, it will not make you happy. It may make you comfortable, but it won't make you happy. And to be fully. Since you just shared a transparent story, I'll try to share a quick one with you if it's okay.

Yeah.

A couple years ago, a couple, three years ago, I was going through a very difficult time with one of my companies. I had a previous executive team that I had to replace really overnight for embezzlement and collusion and all kinds of stuff. And up until that point, I had this epiphany when all that was going on. I had this epiphany that I had been disregarding my wife, who is amazing. Right. For this, this climb. And she. What we, what I discovered was that she was also getting sick. So she's, she's got a chronic illness that began to really. It really kind of manifested now, but during that season, it was getting progressively worse. And I was telling Connor and A few other people recently, I said if there was one thing I could do differently and take back, I would have not taken it granted. Taken for granted the two years of her health, to spend time with her, to build any of these businesses, none of these businesses. Because when it all came down to it, when I was going through my worst and I was going through this place where I just wanted to give up all over again and I wanted to, you know, just kind of crawl under a rock and hide and whatever, it was my wife who was standing beside me. It was my wife who has encouraged me. It was my wife that put up with my overly moody behavior because I wasn't getting enough sleep and hyped up on caffeine and driving all these crazy miles trying to figure out a way to hold this company together while I was trying to rebuild it, you know, and it gave me a brand new perspective. I love the fact that you use that word a lot as perspective because I find that the quality of our questions obviously determines the quality of our answers. I don't know who said that first, but it's one of those capital T truths, as you mentioned.

Right.

So the more and more understanding I got, the more and more I began to look at my overall atmosphere and I began to love my wife better. I'm still not great at it. Like, I'm stubborn, I'm a hard head, I'm a hard driver by nature. I don't. I don't know if I ever completely get, you know, work my way out of that. But I did learn that where I was happiest was actually beside the fire pit with my wife.

Dreaming about going to Finland or going to, you know, Scotland or Ireland and, you know, stuff like that. And I think there's an intangible element there that is growing this, this kindness crop, if you will. Yes, there's. Yes, there's empathy for sure. That's definitely a seed. There's, you know, maybe perspective is the root, you know, whatever. But I find that there's this element even now of compassion.

Like the activity of offering compassion that changes thing. My wife softened my heart during that moment because she was compassionate, compassionate with me when I was a complete doofus to her. And it changed me in the process. I mean, have you. Have you seen that playing that played out in your life or in the lives of the people that you work with? Travel all over the place?

Yeah, it's perhaps the most generous thing we could do is to give.

Forgiveness, I suppose, in this context, in the face of a painful Experience to us. Forgiveness is the toughest chapter I wrote in the book, and it is.

The way we talk about it at character strong with the curriculum that we try to offer young people is that forgiveness is separating the person from the behavior. You did a bad thing. You're not a bad person. And the people that hold that perspective toward us. I mean, is there a greater gift than someone that can see us not as a mistake, but as a series of misdirections or a series of mistakes that we've made behaviorally? But it doesn't mean we are bad. Yeah.

And I think that that sort of what that does when someone looks at us through that perspective is it offers us the ability to look at ourselves through that perspective. And that's transformative. Right. Because no outside entity is going to change us. But if we change the way we see ourselves, that's going to change the way we show up in the world.

Yeah. So I have experienced that from people in my life. I've witnessed that happen. And I think a lot about that. Like, I think about the, you know, how frustrating and challenging the world can be, whether it's the closest relationships to us or whether it's just sort of a general frustration with the state of the world. Yeah. What can we do to ease that burden? And I think about perspectives to come back to that word. But, like, what are the barriers I put in front of me between me and the world that save me anguish?

Yeah.

What are the filters that I process data through that prevent me from the anxiety or frustration or even resentment that I feel towards the world? One of those lenses. Right. Is this perspective of people do bad things, are not bad people.

Yeah.

One of these perspectives, as Brene Brown offers, is everyone's doing the best they can. Yeah. Dr. Ross Green says kids do well when they can. I would say people do well when they can. My empathy statement towards the world is like, none of us were fully equipped with the tools. Yeah. And all of us have things that are happening in the background that affect the foreground. Yeah. If I'm. If I can carry that perspective and literally see the world through it, it shapes every single one of my interactions.

Yeah.

And I think we can do that in our closest relationships. What a gift to give. What an offer of daily forgiveness sometimes. And I think we can hold the world through that lens to say.

There is hope here. If I understand that there is hurt beneath it. There are tools not in this person's toolbox. Will I still respond emotionally? Of course. But can I regulate those emotions to Respond ultimately with empathy and kindness. Yeah, yeah. And that's what, you know, compassion in Latin translates to to suffer with, to suffer alongside someone. And then in psychology they say that compassion is not only to suffer alongside someone but also have an active desire to alleviate that suffering. So step one is that can I take you in and recognize you not as an attack or something personal, can I remove the personal piece of it? Can I hold you and your hurt, separate the human from the hurt? And then can I say, all right, how do I make this better? And that whole practice is a lifelong pursuit. Right. Because there's a lot to be frustrated with.

Right. You know, it's funny, I've experienced that as well. You know, I obviously I grew up in a pretty difficult household overall, which is why I ended up being raised by my grandmother for a little while.

Had a lot of, grew up as an adult, had a lot of various hurt at different levels, abandonment and all the different things that to kind of counteract. And I had a good friend of mine that was based out of Nashville, Tennessee and I remember I was with him somewhere and we got on the topic of forgiveness and basically I discovered there were really two types of forgivenesses. But the one that we were leaning into at the moment was.

He instinctually knew that I had a forgiveness issue with either with both of my parents, but specifically with my mother.

And he said, I want you to remember something. He said, first of all, I want you to understand that no one probably taught your parents how to be parents. So back to Bernays, doing the best that you can. Absolutely Right on top of that, I want you to, from now on, I want you to picture her every time you feel like being resentful or anger, easily angered or something like that. I would like you to envision her as a six year old girl who just fed out on the pavement with skin knees, who's getting up off the thing and simply just raising her hands like help me, like hold me like a parent would do if your daughter was to fall on the floor. And I got to be honest, in that moment I envisioned my mother at, you know, at that level. And I started weeping, I started weeping. It allowed was the first time I remember actually sensing her hurt, sensing her, the things that she went through, like abuse and some other things that I didn't even know about till I was well into my 20s. It was transformative just by going in that other, that other moment. Not long after that, we had a situation where the other type of forgiveness came up when I was doing a Live event here. And I had this. I get quirky ideas all the time. You know, when I was. I was doing some stuff from stage, but one of the things I did was I bought everybody mirrors and I placed it at all the different tables, Right. And I'm presenting. And I said, all right, I want everybody repeat after me. You know, pick up your mirror and everybody repeat after me. And they're, you know, I said, you know, joking around. So, okay, look at yourself. Say, hey, girl. Hi, boy. How you doing? Like, you know, kind of, you know, flirt with yourself a little bit. Right. Everybody's having a good old time. I said, okay, everybody repeat after me. And I was like. And I was like. They were like, okay. I'm like, I. Like, I. And then I said, forgive. Forgive you.

We had seven people, I think, hit the floor crying and weeping.

That moment just popped up in my head the more and more I listened to you talk about kindness. And seems to me that one of the quickest and easiest place for us to learn kindness is to actually learn it from ourselves first.

And I appreciate the fact that you were focused on this journey because it definitely helped me. I just. I just. I mean, I'm getting chills now. So.

Yeah. You know, I admire Dr. Brene Brown so much, and she has the research lens, which I love. She says in all of her. In all the data, she found that the people that are hardest on other people are most hard on themselves.

It's true.

And I think we have this narrative that in forgiving someone, we excuse the action and that it's okay again in the future. And. And I think that's a damaging narrative around forgiveness, whether that's towards yourself or towards others. Right. We can say, I forgive you and you're never allowed to treat me this way again. We can draw strong boundaries and we can love people from a distance and say, this behavior isn't allowed in my life anymore. Yeah. And I think one of the challenges or practices that I believe in is the behavior from the feeling and the separation. We have a hard time identifying with behaviors we find ugly even though we're equally capable of them.

Yeah.

And so when you're feeling frustration from someone, instead of saying, this person's being a jerk, they're treat me like X. What if it's. I know what it feels like to feel helpless.

Yeah.

To the point of your mom. Like skin in the knees reaching up.

Yeah.

This person cut me off. What a jerk. I know what it feels like to be in a hurry or to worry about someone. I Love.

Yeah.

Just that idea of thinking through the lens of the feeling as opposed to the behavior allows us to identify more easily with the things that, you know, we find ugly in others but are capable of ourselves. We can more easily identify with the feeling. To the self forgiveness part. You know.

To launch the book, I talked for 13 and a half hours with 39 people, Leon among them.

Yeah.

And I would say 36 out of the 39 talked about self care, self compassion in some component. And I always have a. I wrestle with that one because I find it can, for some people, feel self indulgent. It can even feel fluffy, I think, for some. But I think there's two big things that help me recognize the value of it in my own life. The first one is the recognition that anxiety and fear are some of the biggest barriers for empathy. Which reminds me that if I don't take care of myself, if I live each day overwhelmed, stressed out, anxious, then I will never see beyond myself.

Yeah.

So to me, that's like, that's part of the equation of self care is I need to reduce just anxiety in my life, which allows my life to get bigger.

Yeah.

Part two, of course, is that self care is. Is separating me, the person from some of my behaviors. Brene Brown makes that great distinction between guilt and shame. Guilt is I, you know, I made a mistake. Shame is I am a mistake. And when we start to identify with our behaviors as A, unchangeable or B, fundamentally who I am, then I fall into that trap of that I will live my whole life as a mistake.

Yeah.

And if that's my disposition towards the world, then sometimes I think I'm being kind to others when I'm just trying to comply and be loved, which sometimes that's not kindness.

Yeah.

That's acquiescence. That is, that's obedience. And it's doing things that you don't actually want to do out of a sense of compliance instead of out of a sense of real joy. And so, yeah, all that to say that self care component, I think, well, it can for me at least have a. It's a narrative that I have to continually kind of fight back against. I think that we have. It is the most critical ingredient to do that self work. First to look in the mirror. Yeah. And own up to this. That like, I am both capable of loving and deserve to be loved by myself. Yeah.

I love it, man. I love it. Well, let me, let me do this, obviously, because literally my brain is going like a thousand different questions. Like I just. Like I could I could pick your brain for days.

Why did you choose why now? Why now is deep. Why now did you choose to write Deep Kindness? Why is the right season now to put that book in as many hands as for as many people as possible? And you know, what do you think that they can gain from reading the book?

Hmm. Besides the obvious? Yeah.

Yeah. You know, I feel like it's, it's weirdly timely at this point in the sense of I started writing it last year and obviously we had division in our world and in the US But I feel grateful and proud that it has made its debut right now because I think it's important right now.

Yes.

I think it's important for the recognition that we can disagree and still care for each other. I think it's important for the recognition of more than anything that self confrontational work is so important, those self reflections that I think most people just don't have the tools or the resources. They don't know the right. Right. Those questions to ask themselves. And I think that we are collectively in the midst of a humbling.

Yeah.

Personal humbling, A collective, national, global humbling.

Yeah. I would agree with you.

And I think that those humblings provide room to identify gaps. And if we don't see those gaps, if we aren't willing to explore those gaps, we'll never be able to close those gaps. And so while it's painful to be humbled, humility is oftentimes the only time we experience true friction and opportunity for change in our life.

Yeah.

So I'm proud of Deep kindness and its relevance to the world right now because I think we need to reinvent the way we think about kindness, the way we understand kindness, and to echo Gary V. To recognize it as the most essential ingredient to heal a world that is broken and to heal a lot of humanity that's broken. And sometimes it's just about figuring out what tools I need in my toolbox and how to look at the world with enough things filters on my perspective to not make it overwhelming.

Love it. Let me ask. I guess I got, I got one final question, if you don't mind. Who is this? Ideally now, I would firmly agree that everybody in the entire world should read this book.

All right.

I've ordered several copies for myself and my team.

Right.

Because I too believe that kindness can go a long way, especially when you've got broken bridges everywhere. Right. It is a unique bridge that says, why don't we talk rather than let's, you know, let's bear arms against each other. Kind of scenario. If there was one person on the planet that needed this book today more than anybody else, describe who that person would be. What are they facing? What are they struggling with right now?

The reason I work in education is because we hold a belief that education is the pathway to a better world. The skills we teach today are the behaviors we see tomorrow. So I believe people who care about education and helping the next generation be effectively better.

I think people who hold positions of leadership because they're the ones so often who dictate metrics of success.

I think that people who run businesses and people who are in positions of leadership with whether that's politically, organizationally.

I want this book to help shape the way we think about productivity and real achievement in the world.

And then probably the last one is for the person that.

Is struggling to be kind to themselves and.

Needs someone there to hold a mirror next to them to say, yeah, you're not alone in this process and we both got work to do.

I love it. I love it. I love it. I can literally could talk to you about this all day. I love your thoughts. I love the concepts. I love the. I love the fact that you also like visualization. From the four burners to all kinds of diagrams. I'm very much the same way. It helps my brain kind of fire. I can't say enough. I can't thank you enough for even taking the time to come on today. I feel like that the audience is going to get a ton of. And I know there's a whole lot more, which is why they should definitely go out and pick up the book for sure.

I don't know. There's not enough kind words to say honestly.

Right.

It's clear you've done the research. It's clear you've walked the walk. It's clear that you're trying to teach from an honest place of heart and not from an honest place of. I gotta be self promoting. Right. The humble confidence that you've been exuding this entire show I think will resonate with pretty much anybody and everybody listening. And I also think it's gonna set the tone for a beautiful, beautiful awakening that you get to be a part of and really on the forefront of. So thank you for taking the time to be on the show as well as write the book, my friend. How can other people kind of get to know you and learn more about your work and all that good stuff?

Thanks, Stephen. That's a deep kindness compliment. That was well executed. It was true.

Because I felt it.

Appreciate it. Yeah. The book is@deepkindness.com we have a bunch of resources there too. It's not just links to buy stuff. There's like videos from conversations I've had with people. We had that big day long conference where I literally talked to 39 people and we talked to people who are activists, we talked to people who are in education, neuroscientists, educators, coaches, survivor winners. Leon, who had the kindness diaries. So if you're interested in just listening to more conversations about how kindness relates to literally any world or work, deepkindness.com has those and opportunities to check out the book and dig in a bit more. And then if you're in that education world, character strong characterstrong.com is where the curriculum side of things live. Would love for you to check that out.

That's amazing, dude. And we'll put all the show link or put all those in the show links as well so you can make it super easy for everybody. Go find it. Guys, thank you so much for tagging along, dude. Thank you again for coming on the show, man. I really appreciate you and I look forward to seeing you again in the future and even having you back on. Because, Lily, I could talk to you for days on this stuff, I think.

So let's do it, man. Say hi to my mom, will you? She's over there somewhere.

Hey, send her my way, man. I'll take an Uber. Eat over to her if you need me to, so just let me know.

That would be amazing.

All right, well, I'll take you. I'll talk to you later. Thank you again, my friend.

Sounds good.

Hey, guys, I hope you enjoyed that video with Houston Craft. I can tell you what, I learned a lot from him. In the meantime, make sure you don't forget to check out Deep Kindness. It's in stores now and it really helped you out. Also check out this next interview right here to keep you moving forward.

So much of our issues with inadequacy and confidence come from us looking at a situation and deciding that it's meant something.