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You don’t have to look far to see people acting in mean and selfish ways. Is this because people themselves are fundamentally mean and selfish or is there more to it than that? And is there anything WE can do to make conditions for kinder modes of human behaviour and engagement?

We will always encounter rudeness in other people. It’s an inevitable part of life. But these people can have a big impact on our health and confidence. So what can we do about them?

This episode explores two core ideas:

• How to build a practice of creative gentleness
• How to build gentleness into a creative practice

We’ve got to think about both sides of this if we want to build a life of creative flow.

Who Are These Mean and Selfish People?

“It’s a fact of life that we will encounter rude people. It happens every day. People cut in line. They speak to other people like they are a piece of s**t. People lie and take credit for your work. Not only will this happen, but many times there will be no consequences for this.”

The Daily Stoic

It’s without a doubt tempting to label people as mean and selfish. It feels obvious that some people are that way by nature. So we engage with them accordingly.

When we use these kinds of words we then treat other people as if that’s who they are.

But this is a symptom of a fixed mindset. And it provides little wiggle room for the story to change.

Our Place in a Mean and Selfish World

We tell ourselves a story about the way things “should” and “shouldn’t” be. And how other people should be.

It’s tempting to get caught in the spirit of the world around us. As such we might permit and even contribute to conditions that give rise to the kind of selfishness and meanness we want to get rid of.

The rebellion of gentleness is about shifting our stories of shame. Including the stories we tell about who we are, as well as the shame we bestow upon other people.

 

Hold Gently Within Our Encounters

This article from the Daily Stoic says about mean and selfish people, “they’ll have to wait in line less than you. They might get promoted ahead of you after taking credit for that work. And when we see this, we are tempted to respond in a couple of ways:

• Get angry.
• Resent it.
• Use it as an excuse
• Begin to plot our revenge.

None of these reactions are Stoic. But more important, none of these reactions reduce rude behaviour in the world either.”

When we grip them too tight, the words and actions of others can consume us. And we can end up creating more of what we don’t want in the process.

How might we increase the space around the holes, corners, and cul de sacs we can ALL end up stuck in?

It can be fun to corner people who say and do things we really hate. But when we do this things can become more violent and destructive. Especially if they have to fight their way out of such a corner. This creates the conditions for a future that is not good for any of us.

The Hold of Past Guilt

Most of us are haunted by times we didn’t do as much as we could have.

Maybe we walked past someone in need because we were too busy or we made an excuse to avoid helping out. Some of these moments stick with us. They might even wake us up at night.

These choices can stay with us and make us feel ashamed. But cruelty and callousness in actions we have taken don’t make us cruel and callous people at our core. And the same goes for other people.