In this episode of the So She Did Podcast, Kristin shares a story about a recent encounter with an angry person. Rather than becoming obstinate and 'fighting fire with fire,' she had a moment where she recognized herself and her own behaviors in the man. 

She says: "I had this sudden realization that just as this man thought I was trespassing on his property, I have accused people of ‘ruining my day,’ ‘putting me in a bad mood,’ or ‘making me mad.’ My actions did not cause this man’s behavior, any more than the actions of other people have the ability to ruin my day.

Not only do I get to choose how I feel, but more importantly, I get to choose how I will respond. I didn’t feel angry when I left; I felt shaken, and dare-I-say it——shame. After all, I am more like that man than I am not.There is a quote from Stephen King’s ‘The Green Mile,’ that paraphrased, says:

I'm tired, boss… Mostly, I'm tired of people being ugly to each other. I'm tired of all the pain I feel and hear in the world...every day. There's too much of it. It's like pieces of glass in my head...all the time. Can you understand?

This week, I FEEL that.

We pursue our own best interest, at the expense of others, without any regard for what is in the best interest of the whole.

We say hurtful things, make painful comments or observations and then say we were ‘joking.’

We yell, get angry and take out our frustrations on strangers…or worse, on the people that are closest to us, whom we say we love the most.

We also do these things to ourselves, forgetting that we too need compassion and love." 

She then goes on to provide simple ways in which we can all better engage with the human experience in a way that is kind, and ends by saying, "I want to be a good human. I want to wake up every day, grateful for the opportunity to leave the world a little better than I found it, and fall asleep at night, knowing that I tried my best to do just that. Then, I want to wake up the next day, and try even harder.

I hope that this week, we are all working on being better humans. Imagine the impact if we all really just took this one piece of advice."