How Being Understanding Not Kind Will Help You To Find Balance

• A real-life exorcist who believes he is curing young people of possession by demonic forces.
• A woman called the “crazy baby lady” whose hobbies include waving plastic fetuses in the faces of young girls who are planning to have an abortion.
• A former jihadist who created the bomb recipe for the Boston bombings.

He doesn’t live in an echo chamber and it means he has developed unconventional opinions. He despises the phrase “be kind” because he knows more than most that kindness is open to interpretation.

He promotes the idea of being understanding instead. This mindset helps him to learn more from life and be less angry when people disagree with him. Living your life ruled by your own sense of morality can lead you to make decisions that take you down a path of burnout and stress.

This article is based on the Mindful & Driven episode with Andrew. You can listen here or find the YouTube video at the bottom of this article.

There is no unselfish act

It’s become popular to associate what you do with a deeper meaning. People convince themselves they are changing the world for the better as a point of pride.

Yet things aren’t so simple. Andrew thinks we all need to recognize that we are led by ideology rather than fact. We often live our lives in a way that allows us to paint ourselves as either the hero or the victim. Of course, we could never be the villain or a minor character.

Some people work crazy hours because they tell themselves what they are doing is vital for others even if it isn’t. Their need to portray themselves as the hero might be greater than the actual need of the people being helped.

If you’re burning out then ask others if you can take a break from your responsibilities. When I’ve done this in the past, people are far more understanding than I expected.

Demons and fairies don’t exist

Demons do not exist. Neither Andrew nor I advocate the use of exorcists.

Yet some people with mental illnesses have been temporarily cured by using an exorcist. This is because the mind is so powerful that it can overpower itself when you believe something wholeheartedly.

This situation happens with those addicted to hard work. They believe so strongly their success is due to them breaking their back that they can’t stop. The Intelligence Trap by David Robson hammers home this point. The smarter we are, the more able we are to convince ourselves of anything even if it isn’t true!

Take Arthur Conan Doyle, the brilliant mind behind Sherlock Holmes. The master of logic believed in fairies because of a prank where fairies were pinned above his head when he was sleeping. As the pins looked like belly buttons, Arthur concluded fairies could reproduce and had to be real.

If it can happen to him, it can happen to you!

The intern pyramid

A good example of using understanding rather than kindness is the intern pyramid created by Andrew’s friend.

The startup founder hired four interns who he wanted to keep on. The natural next step in my mind would be to start paying them yet he had a better idea. He talked to the interns and learned what drove them. They wanted more responsibility rather than more money so he hired more interns for the first batch to manage!

He now had a pyramid of free labor who were all happy because their needs were being met. His business could get more done and his own stress decreased!

First instincts can be wrong so always look out for opportunities where you can decrease your workload and keep the people who help happy. It’s a win-win.

I hope you found the mindset reframes useful and can see ways you can apply them to your own life. If you’d like to hear Andrew talk about it with me in more detail, check out our conversation in the video below.