Respond Kindness Kickoff with Orly March 7th 2021

Hey guys, Orly Waba here, founder of LifeVest Inside, and I want to thank each and every one of you for deciding to kick off your week with me on the Weekly Kindness Kickoff with Orly, coming at you at the beginning of every week, where I do a reading from my book, Kindness Boomerang, How to Save the World and Yourself Through 365 Daily Acts, and then I give you, myself, all of us out there, an exciting kindness challenge based on the reading. For those of you that don't have a copy of the book and you want to get yours, you could pick it up directly on the LifeVest Inside website. All of the funds go directly to the non-profit to help us continue to spread kindness and goodness into the world. So check it out at lifevestinside.com. You could also pick it up on one of the online retailers, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books A Million, Indie Bound, iTunes, Target, and of course, you can win your copyright here. In the very beginning of every month, I do a drawing where one person gets to win two copies of the book, one for themselves and then one to give forward to somebody else. The next drawing is going to be happening the beginning of April, so make sure you stay tuned. So how do you enter to win? Simply by engaging right here on the platform, leaving your thoughts, your comments, what was it like doing that specific act that week, what was maybe a little bit difficult about being able to do the act. So share your comments, share your thoughts. I want to share with you guys one thing before we get started and jump into the act for the week. So some of you may have heard of the dance party that we have going on. We had our first dance party, our first monthly dance party in February, and it was awesome. We had the best time and we're doing our second dance party March 23rd. It's coming up March 23rd. So make sure that you sign up. I'm going to be actually uploading the dance over the course of this week and you could find it directly by going to danceforkindness.com. On the homepage, you're going to see information about the dance party. You'll see the video and you'll also see an opportunity for you to sign up. You just put your name, your email. When you do, you'll also get entered to win prizes and the winner is going to be announced at the actual dance party on March 23rd. It's so much fun. Each month we're going to have a new dance. I'm not going to tell you what the dance is for this month. You'll have to go ahead and check it out. It's going to be so much fun. And then after we do the dance, we come together. We're also going to be engaging in three acts of kindness in real time on the Zoom and sharing our thoughts about what it was like engaging in those specific acts of kindness. So I want to encourage you guys to sign up. If you're, if you're coming to us from a school and you want to get your school involved, you can let, if you're a student, you can let your teachers know. If you're a teacher, you could get your class involved. You can even get your colleagues involved from work and so on and so forth. So we'd love to see you guys on. That's March 23rd. You could check it out danceforkindness.com. All right, we're going to jump right into the reading and the reading is coming to us from March 6th and the act goes as follows. Respond to someone when they ask you for a favor. And the quote, we must all face the choice between what is right and what is easy. And the reflection, we're all busy between family, work and other social obligations. It's easy to become involved in our own lives, lost within our own little bubbles. Then out of the blue, when you can't imagine taking on anything additional, comes the request for a favor. It may be a simple request, one that won't take much time, but our minds and bodies are on overload. There are times when we feel as though we're maxed out, that we just can't give anymore. We may put ourselves through a guilt trip. How can we say no? We must seem like such a heartless person. But remember, it's okay to say no, to understand your limits and know when you need to give a bit to yourself. Giving should never feel like a sacrifice. A response, even an unfavorable one at that, is better than silence. People are more understanding than we give them credit for. So I know it might seem strange. How is this really an act of kindness? You know, the act says respond to someone when they ask you for a favor. It doesn't say say yes to somebody when they ask you for a favor. Now, of course, when we have the opportunity to say yes, we should take advantage of that opportunity because every act of kindness is that. It's an opportunity to make somebody's day and to make our own, you know, just as a result of it. But there's also the act of kindness of just responding. Sometimes we can't say no. I'm never going to tell you guys, you have to keep giving until it hurts and just keep giving. And even if you don't have time, you could always make time. It doesn't work like that. Sometimes the greatest kindness that we can do is to respect ourselves and recognize our limitations, recognize when we need a little bit of time for us, when we need to be able to say no. Now, it's not always fun saying no, especially if you're a person that generally says yes and that people generally come to you to ask you for favors and you love being there for people. If you love being a giver, it's really difficult to say no. But what's better, saying no or just trying or ignoring the request that somebody made of you? So the real act here is simply just to respond, respond to someone when they ask you for a favor. Because I'm sure we all remember, there are times where people can ask us for something and we don't know what to say. We feel uncomfortable. We want to say no. We want to say we can't. We want to say I'm sorry, it's not the best time. But we feel the sense of guilt to say no. So we sometimes just ignore the request. But I tell you something, being on the other side of a request that you send forward, being ignored, it doesn't feel very good. At the end of the day, people are much more understanding than we give them credit for. Now, I'm not saying that that's the case with all people because it's not necessarily. We'd love for it to be the case. It's not always the case. But those people that really care about you, they'll understand. It took me a while to understand how to incorporate this act of kindness, to recognize my own limits. It really did. And it's, to be honest, it's something I still struggle with. It really is. But I try to work on it. And like I said, like it says here, this is a very, very important line. Giving should never feel like a sacrifice. And you guys have heard me say this so many times. When giving is coming from a place of depletion, when you feel depleted after you give, that's not a good giving. Sometimes you need to be able to turn the giving on yourself and give to you. By saying I'm so sorry, it's not going to work for me. I have a prior commitment or I need a little bit of time for myself. People really do understand. I myself had to do this just this past week a couple of times. And it was hard for me. It definitely was hard for me because I want to be able to say yes. I get excited to want to help or to do something, but sometimes we can't. And so simply being okay with that, that in itself is an act of kindness, not just for us. It's an act of kindness to the person that is asking of us because it's much worse to be ignored. I'm sure all of us have experienced a specific situation where maybe we message somebody on WhatsApp or on Facebook or whatever it is. And we know that they read the message. We know they saw it, right? You have a little check marks. They saw it. And then they didn't respond. It's a terrible feeling to feel ignored. Now, yes, on the other side of that, when we find ourselves in that position, it's very important to give people the benefit of the doubt because just because it shows that somebody read it doesn't necessarily mean that they're ignoring you. We've all had that situation where you get a message, you're looking at it, and then somebody calls you in that exact second, and then you forget to respond. So we do have to give, we have to understand both sides here, okay? We do have to give people the benefit of the doubt, but we also, we don't want to be somebody that because we feel guilty to say no, we actually just ignore someone. So the act over the course of this week, the challenge over this week is to simply respond, to acknowledge what you need for yourself and to respond in obviously in a kind, in a polite way. And the other person I'm certain is going to be able to understand. And if they don't, that's not your issue. If a person's like, I don't understand, how come you can't make time for me? That's not your issue. All you could explain is, listen, I need a little bit of time for myself and whatever, whether I'm going through something or whether, whatever it may be, it's okay to say that. And that's exactly what we're going to try to practice over this week. Just being able to respond and knowing when the response, even if it's not necessarily a positive one, how to do it in a respectful way and to respond regardless. And for those of us on the other end, to give people the benefit of the doubt in case they're not able to respond as fast as we want them to and to acknowledge that. All right, guys, I'm excited to hear what goes on with this specific act. So share your thoughts, share your feedback. Have you ever experienced something like this? And let me know how you incorporated this act of kindness into your week. Remember the more that we begin to practice kindness, the more awareness we have, the more we're able to actually incorporate it into the regular, everyday life. I want to thank you guys so much for joining me. I want to remind you guys, okay, so number one, the dance party, March 23rd, go to danceforkindness.com. You can register there. It's so much fun. The video, the dance video should most likely be up over the course of this week. So if you don't see it there yet, it will be there. You could still sign up. And then when you sign up, you'll definitely get an email from me with the actual dance itself and the song. So this way you can practice the dance moves before we actually have the event. So that's number one. Number two, we have obviously our newsletters. We have the Daily Kind that goes out Monday through Friday. The Kindness Flash. The Kindness Flash for March is actually going out. If I'm not mistaken, it's going out. It should have gone out yesterday, today. So you should hopefully receive that. And so you could subscribe to either one of our newsletters directly by going to lifebestinside.com. And when you click on sign up in the top right corner, they'll take you there to sign up for our newsletters. Don't forget to check out the and to also check out the awesome, awesome merchandise we have on our website. Like I said, all of the funds go directly to the nonprofit. It's 100% tax deductible. You can give a donation there as well. I want to thank you guys so much for joining. I want to thank you for sharing your thoughts and your positive feedback. And remember, it's kindness that keeps the world afloat. Love you all, guys. Bye.