What If a Kinder Future Starts Closer Than We Think?

This theme takes a lot of space in my brain.

Not the kind we post about. Not the quote we share on Instagram or the reminder to “be kind” that we see on a coffee mug.

I mean the kind that gets a little harder when someone frustrates us. When we feel misunderstood. When we’re convinced we’re right. When we encounter someone whose view of the world makes absolutely no sense to us.

That kind of kindness.

It’s one of the reasons I said yes when my friend Michael Neece invited me to become one of 25 co-authors from around the world contributing to a new book called Our Future Is Kind, launching this November on World Kindness Day.

Michael and I had already spent a lot of time thinking about these questions together. We worked alongside one another to launch The Human Summit, an experience born from a shared desire to bring people together, create more meaningful human connection, and explore what becomes possible when we approach our differences with more curiosity and compassion.

Somewhere along the way, I started thinking about a question that felt even more personal:

If we want more kindness in the world, where does it actually begin?

It’s easy to look outward right now.

Open your phone and you don't have to scroll very far before finding someone to disagree with. Politics. War. Identity. Culture. The way someone said something. The thing they didn't say. We make assumptions about people we’ve never met and sometimes entire groups of people we don’t really know.

I’ve done it too.

That last part matters.

Because the more I’ve explored kindness, both personally and through my work as a coach, the less interested I’ve become in telling other people how they should behave.

I’ve become much more curious about what happens inside of us before we behave at all.

There’s this tiny space between what happens to us and what we do next. Sometimes it’s so small we barely notice it. A judgment. A story. A tightening in the body. An old insecurity showing up at exactly the wrong moment. We react, and only afterward—if we’re paying attention—do we wonder where that reaction came from.

That space fascinates me.

And it became the starting point for my contribution to Our Future Is Kind.

I don’t want to give too much away yet, but my chapter explores the relationship between awareness and kindness—and why I’ve come to believe that our ability to create a kinder world may have much more to do with how well we know ourselves than we realize.

Because kindness isn't always easy. Sometimes it asks us to get curious when we'd rather judge. Sometimes it means recognizing the story we've created about another person may not actually be true.

And sometimes the person who most needs our kindness is the one staring back at us in the mirror.

I certainly haven't mastered any of this. That's partly why I wanted to write about it.

My own life has given me plenty of opportunities to see what happens when fear, judgment, insecurity and the desire to belong start shaping the stories we tell ourselves. It has also shown me what can happen when we become aware enough to question those stories.

That's the territory I'll be exploring in the book.

And perhaps that's what excites me most about Our Future Is Kind. Twenty-five people, from different parts of the world and with very different life experiences, asking in their own ways what it might take to build a future we'd actually want to live in.

I don't think any one of us has the answer. But maybe building that future begins with asking better questions. And maybe one of those questions is surprisingly simple:

What's happening inside of me right now—and how is it shaping the way I show up for you?

Our Future Is Kind launches November 13, World Kindness Day. Over the coming months, I'll share a little more about the book, the people behind it, and some of what writing my chapter has brought up for me.

And I'm also looking for a few people who would like to become early readers before the book officially launches. If this idea speaks to you and you'd like to be one of them, send me a message with the word KIND.

I'd love to have you along for the journey.