{"id":30061,"date":"2018-09-07T03:35:10","date_gmt":"2018-09-07T10:35:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/?p=30061"},"modified":"2018-09-06T14:20:43","modified_gmt":"2018-09-06T21:20:43","slug":"we-are-hardwired-to-be-kind","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/2018\/09\/07\/we-are-hardwired-to-be-kind\/","title":{"rendered":"We are hardwired to be kind"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dr. Brian Goldman is an emergency physician at Toronto\u2019s Mount Sinai Hospital. (photo by Christopher Wahl)<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

According to Dr. Brian Goldman, author of The Power of Kindness: Why Empathy is Essential in Everyday Life<\/em> (HarperCollins Publishers, 2018), we all have the innate ability to be kind, gentle and to give of ourselves without the need to get anything in return.<\/p>\n

Goldman, who works as an emergency physician at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto, said the idea for The Power of Kindness<\/em> had been germinating in his mind for a long time.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had originally pitched a book on empathy and health care,\u201d he said, \u201cand my publisher, HarperCollins, came back to me and asked why I don\u2019t instead aim a little broader and write a book about empathy in the world at large, not focus just on the hospital.\u201d<\/p>\n

About the concept, he said, \u201cThe wise physician knows how to say, \u2018I don\u2019t know.\u2019 The book doesn\u2019t say how it feels to say \u2018I don\u2019t know\u2019 17 times in a row. At some point, you\u2019re terrified that they\u2019re going to say, \u2018Why don\u2019t you get us someone here right now who can answer our questions?\u2019 And you\u2019re afraid of being unmasked as being inadequate.\u201d<\/p>\n

In recognizing this in himself, Goldman decided to travel the world to speak to some of the kindest people to hopefully internalize their kindness and find ways to pass their enlightenment onto others. In doing this, he said, \u201cI found answers and, for the rest, you\u2019re going to have to read the book. But, I will tell you one thing. I found that some people are born with empathy.<\/p>\n

\u201cI found one extraordinary child,\u201d he said, by way of example, \u201cwho was nicknamed \u2018Ta Ta.\u2019 And he, at the time that I met him, was [almost] 3 years old. His mom, Shala, adopted a man on the streets of Sao Paulo who had been homeless for nearly 40 years and called him her soulmate. The striking thing about her situation is that her son, as a toddler \u2026 without ever having known what his mom had done, adopted his own homeless man. You can\u2019t make that up.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt a time, whatever nurturing she provided had set the stage for him to be as empathic as her. But, he [also] feels things and understands things intuitively about Adriano, the man who he befriended in the same way that Shala did.\u201d<\/p>\n

Goldman met people for whom empathy comes naturally and some who are gifted in empathy, but he also realized that we all share the same common experiences \u2013 adversity, disappointment, shock, loneliness, physical ailments and failure.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think, more often than not, it\u2019s these experiences that are the engine for empathy,\u201d said Goldman. \u201cBecause, after that, you can either die or you can pay it forward. And the way you pay it forward is to provide comfort and empathy for people who are going through what you went through. That was probably the common denominator that I saw again and again.<\/p>\n

\u201cShame-based people tend to absorb the idea that they cannot make a mistake. If they do, it will be the end of everything.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy intuitive guess is that a lot of health professionals feel that way and that\u2019s why they go into the health professions … because they are hoping that, if they can do enough good works, it will make up for the one mistake they made.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was very much like that. I wasn\u2019t totally like that, because, if I were more like that, I\u2019d be unaware of all the things I\u2019m saying right now.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"image<\/a>According to Goldman, kindness and empathy are the ability to imagine what it is like to be somebody else, to see things through their eyes and act accordingly, to put yourself in their place.<\/p>\n

\u201cUnless you have a narcissistic personality disorder, in which your brain circuits will show you\u2019re less capable of empathy, you\u2019re capable of empathy,\u201d said Goldman. \u201cEveryone is hardwired for empathy. But, the thing is that, at the highest levels of executive function, empathy is a choice and we are constantly being distracted by competing priorities \u2013 my needs versus yours, my family versus your family. I\u2019m running around like a pinball … boy, that\u2019s a dated metaphor … but I can\u2019t be all things to all people all the time. It\u2019s impossible. Somebody is going to judge what I\u2019ve delivered as unkind care.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo become more kind in everyday life,\u201d he said, \u201cfirst of all, believe in your hardwiredness to be capable of being kind and empathic. Know that there are things that get in the way and they are very stereotypical \u2013 lack of face-to-face time, spending more time on social media, contacting people on social media, and less time on listening and face-to-face and being able to recognize cues that say that somebody\u2019s more unhappy than their words are telling you.\u201d<\/p>\n

Goldman suggests learning which factors get in your way and to start creating ways that work for you to push those distractions aside. In The Power of Kindness<\/em>, he talks about breathing exercises \u2013 about how we get distracted by unpleasant thoughts and feelings and how to re-centre ourselves and allow the negativity to float away.<\/p>\n

\u201cI use the metaphor of a parade,\u201d he said. \u201cThere are beautiful floats and they represent nice thoughts \u2013 happy things that have happened or that I\u2019m looking forward to \u2013 and you let them float by without judging them. Then, every once in awhile, there is a lousy float that\u2019s ugly \u2013 the boss who is yelling at you, the coworker or somebody who you think is whispering about you behind your back, or the person who gave you the finger in traffic when you were both driving.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe reason I like the float metaphor is that, with a lousy float, you let it go by \u2013 you imagine you\u2019re in the stands, reviewing the floats as they go by. If it\u2019s a parade, you let it go by, because there will be another nice one down the road in a couple of minutes.\u201d<\/p>\n

As for what sort of reception the book has garnered so far, Goldman said it has been very positive.<\/p>\n

\u201cMaybe the world is ready for a book like this because we\u2019re all living at such a time when … people are going for kill shots on Twitter and there\u2019s so much nastiness…. We\u2019re watching, in the United States, kids being separated from their parents and put into cages. We need kindness.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rebeca Kuropatwa<\/strong> is a Winnipeg freelance writer.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dr. Brian Goldman is an emergency physician at Toronto\u2019s Mount Sinai Hospital. (photo by Christopher Wahl) According to Dr. Brian Goldman, author of The Power of Kindness: Why Empathy is Essential in Everyday Life (HarperCollins Publishers, 2018), we all have the innate ability to be kind, gentle and to give of ourselves without the need […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":29991,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[784],"tags":[5419,2703,2864,8302],"class_list":["post-30061","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-books","tag-brian-goldman","tag-empathy","tag-health","tag-lifestyle"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30061","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30061"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30061\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29991"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30061"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30061"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30061"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}