A short spoken anecdote by Vishen Lakhiani about receiving a snarky email and choosing to respond with compassion. The speaker reflects on earlier, less-gracious reactions and describes a shift toward empathy—seeing hostile respondents as "little kids" seeking to be seen—so he now replies with understanding, offers support, and moves on if the person isn't ready to engage.
Chapters
You know, I got an email the other day from someone who. I sent out an email, and someone wrote a snarky. Like, just a snarky response. And I wrote back, hey, is everything okay? Like, it seems like, you know, like. Like, I'm here to listen. She wrote back. She's like, oh, my God, I'm so sorry. I wrote that really late at night, and I was just going through a really hard time, and. And I'm really sorry for me, when. When I meet someone in that space, you know, ask me two and a half years ago, and I've been like, all right, let's. You know. And I was not, you know, as gracious. And then I realized, oh, my God, like, it's. They're. They're. They're all just little kids just wanting to be seen and heard. And when they're not, they just lash out and act out, and that's just. And now, like, I just send them more compassion, more love, more connection, more attempt to inspire them even more, you know, and if they're not ready, that's okay, and I just sort of move on.