This is Optimal Living Daily Episode 1084, an excerpt from A Year of Living Kindly by Donna Cameron,

and I'm Justin Mollick, your very own personal narrator. Happy Thursday,

and welcome to an award-winning podcast where blogs are narrated to you for free with permission

from the websites, and sometimes book excerpts too, like today. The book is A Year of Living Kindly.

Donna spent over 30 years working with nonprofits and seeing kindness in action daily. That's where

this book idea came from. You can learn more about her and the book at A Year of Living Kindly.com.

Now let's get right to the excerpt and start optimizing your life.

An excerpt from A Year of Living Kindly by Donna Cameron.

Being nice isn't the same as being kind. Kind people go beyond what's expected of them.

They go beyond the easy response to offer the best of who they are. They do it without

expectation of something in return. They do it because of who and what they are, and their vision

of the world they want to live in. Most people would tell you, I am a nice person. I was raised to be nice.

Being nice was one of my mother's frequent mantras. It was repeated along with other instructions

that aimed to assure that Connie's daughters never gave the neighbors anything to talk about,

and also never drew too much attention, good or bad to themselves or to her. Sit up straight.

Don't bite your nails. Be nice. These were the refrains of my childhood.

My mother, while generally nice, was not especially kind. Nice allowed her to keep her distance

from most people and avoid connecting or interacting at more than a superficial level. She was almost

always civil, but effort and warmth were generally absent for all but the closest friends or relatives,

and sometimes even then her kindness was restrained. A string of losses from early childhood on

had taught her not to trust or hope for too much or to set her sights too high. She lived with a

deep regard for safety and a persistent fear of more loss. With my mother as my model, I learned

...