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Category Archives: Kindness

Speak the Truth…

09 Saturday Dec 2017

Posted by Cheryl Ries in Attitude, Character, Choices, Courage, Empathy, Encouragement, Ethics, Faith, Freedom, Inspiration, Kindness, Life, Love, Maturity, Strength, Trials, Truth

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Decision-making, Honesty, Knowledge, Lying, Reality, Truth

Sometimes we sugar coat things, thinking we’re sparing others upsets or upheavals. But, if we choose to deny anyone the truth by withholding from them the reality of a situation, we don’t really do them any service at all! Speak the truth, give the facts as you see them, relay honest appraisals whenever possible. Trust and deliver the difficult truths with kindness, compassion, and an earnest heart determined to help others.

Our challenge shouldn’t be how we can hide facts and the truth, for now, to protect someone we love from possibly being hurt, but rather our consideration should be how we can best deliver or present to others what they may need to know to make the most optimal choices for them, to face their dilemmas head-on as they are presented in life, while standing up to what they must! Some of the purposeful omitting or concealing we do may seem to soften a blow to others, but truthfully, it might also be that we don’t want to be responsible for having to give bad news or to burden another when they’re under significant duress! It might also be that in white-lying, omitting, or actually distorting reality, we are making assumptions about others which suggest that we believe them weak or incapable of facing reality. And that projection upon them might be a serious disservice to them!

The truth is truly what each of us deserves to know, process, and ruminate, even when that truth seems like a bitter pill to swallow or a hard left to our already-battered head! Some of the storms we face in this life actually provide great lessons and the impetus for significant and positive change, but if we’re always hiding in a shelter of our own making or in one provided too readily by others, we run the risk of missing those important life lessons! Not all storms can and should be evaded. They serve as necessary opportunities for individual growth and personal development! We have to give that chance to ourselves by facing each obstacle and trial in life head-on, but also others deserve that same opportunity! Honesty, reality, and truth are the power of knowing what to do, where to go, and how to proceed. The light of truth reflected in life is always preferable to the darkness of uncertainty and ill-preparedness. 

In This Together . .

05 Tuesday Jul 2016

Posted by Cheryl Ries in Attitude, Character, Compassion, Contentment, Family, Gratitude, Kindness, Life, Maturity, Wisdom

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God, Humanity, Peace

Have you ever seen a baby born? I’m sure we all have, whether on television or in real life! We’ve noticed the striking similarity of all babies born in the world, regardless their skin color, their nationality, their nation’s economic status, or the timing of the arrival. All babies born in the world come without anything. They come sans clothing, food, shelter, shoes, or material goods of any kind. They all come via some parentage, but many are even separated permanently from that human connection. What we should find most striking in this comparison isn’t that we come at all, but that we all have made it as far as we have! 

 

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We have much to ponder when we consider this fact:  perhaps we don’t have all that we would want to live by our own standards when born, but in some way we have all we need, otherwise we would surely all come bearing something more than just ourselves. Perhaps we’re truly meant to find our way into various compassionate communities (for example – family, friends, neighbors) where we are taught to be good members of that community and to be responsible for one another? It is only when we start to believe we won’t be given all we want, that we start to think we’re deserving and entitled to more than we need.  Our desire to have that which isn’t our’s easily or naturally morphs from a noble motivation to attain and achieve some personal goals as well as dreams, into instead a raging fuel which ignites our lust, jealousy, greed and thus, tyranny.  

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Whatever it is we amass from birth with integrity, through our own efforts, with a lack of malice is ours rightfully. God blesses us each differently, each uniquely according to His desires. What is ours is ours, what is someone else’s belongs to them. It is not our place to deem His motives, but to make righteous our own! And we have each other, lest we forget that the hands we rely upon to take us from our bare-naked infancy to sustainable life, are our fellow humans. Why do we then learn so easily to repudiate these essential components of community into which we are surely purposefully born, all the while choosing often to be self-serving and self-involved instead?! We’re meant to be for each other without taking from each other. We’re meant to coexist without coveting. We’re meant to weave together as one patchwork of variation (language, color, beliefs, etc.) without repudiation! Perhaps what was inside of you when born actually matters more than anything on the outside anyway?!

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Making Contact . .

19 Saturday Mar 2016

Posted by Cheryl Ries in Attitude, Choices, Friendliness, Kindness, Positivity

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Friendliness, Greeting, smiles, Welcome

When I go hiking, I am sociable; saying hello or good morning, and smiling at others on the trail. I don’t usually know the people I greet, sometimes they’re familiar as I’ve seen them hiking before, but they’re strangers for the most part. They’re usually just a randomly amassed group of people of all ages, gender, faith, color and language who chose to do the same thing at the same time. I’m not the only sociable hiker, there are others as well, and probably 90% of those hiking respond to others in kind! We greet one another with smiles, hello’s and good mornings!  attitude-motivational-quotes

So I wonder, are we all as friendly once we have left the trails, throughout the rest of our day? What if we stopped in our busy endeavors long enough to make eye contact and to smile? And suppose we took note of the random people passing by rather than ignoring them because we surely had other things on our mind? It’s truly just by habit, this desire to connect or not! I know I don’t always smile and greet others, I get busy and self-involved I suppose. But if I find that microcosm of the trail so comfortable, why aren’t I also just as friendly the rest of my day?011

I’m reminded by my daily hikes to be more friendly elsewhere; that often it’s not important that we humans have a truly noticeable or obvious reason for connecting in our experiences. Just in crossing paths throughout our day, we have more than good reason to be friendly with those with whom we come in contact! And I can surmise from my experiences on the hiking trails, that probably 90% of people with whom I interact will respond to my friendliness in other situations and places just as they do while hiking! It surely can’t hurt this world to be purposefully and genuinely friendly! Smile, welcome someone with a hello or a good day . . today!

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April Fool’s Day . . A Prayer For the World

01 Wednesday Apr 2015

Posted by Cheryl Ries in Attitude, Choices, Contentment, Faithfulness, Goodness, Happiness, Joy, Kindness, Life

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Contentedness, Joy, Peace

 

On April Fool’s I look for things purposefully foolish; those things which aren’t real and haven’t any meaning but in the way they surprise me or make me laugh. Sadly, there are just too many things these days which I realize are far too enduringly foolish, foolhardy, vexing or problematic in life and of the world; enough things and situations I wish were just tricks or ruses meant for this day which persist with some longevity and purpose! some-beautfull-life-saying-quotes_Inspiration-Quotes-of-life-16

 

Wouldn’t it be nice to have this day be filled with nothing but just silliness, well-meaning pranks, loads of laughter and a lot of “Just kidding!” in the world?? Wouldn’t it be lovely to see the world so filled with joyousness and contentedness from within each heart, that a lot of manmade suffering would cease for the sake of wanting just to be actually “laughing out loud” instead? And were it the case that such joy and contentedness could prevail all over the world, I would personally want to declare each and every day, Fool’s Day! (Even for the pranks I might endure, in spite of the jokes which shock or surprise me!) bible-verses-4

 

I would delight in a world more intent on laughter and lightheartedness, rather than one inflamed by ongoing discord, hatred or anger! My prayer is that God so fill people with love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness,faithfulness, gentleness and self-control from within that it becomes almost impossible to find anyone so centered on themselves or their own course of opposition! (Galatians 5: 22-23) And that even with our individual suffering, we might know lasting peace and contentment within us, so as to have our steadfast joy be assured in life; our happiness not forever tied or tethered to the changing emotional tides, events or to circumstances beyond our control. And how I pray for us all to awaken to how very precious and treasured this life is, for our own sakes and for that of the world as a whole; may we know God’s enduring love for each of us, His faithfulness and promises to us are not passing jokes or whims. May we learn to rest in His peace, contentedly and with our joyful hearts expectant and faithful in Him!   Signature02

Humility is the Key!!

16 Wednesday Apr 2014

Posted by Cheryl Ries in Humility, Integrity, Kindness

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humility with frame-25 Humility enables us to accept the flaws, mistakes, poor choices, bad habits, unwise thoughts and imperfections of ourselves so that we may be able to say, “I’m sorry” to others when our mistakes effect them, or to develop beyond whomever we are now or to achieve some greater state of wisdom and growth.

Humility is the key to accepting our own equal state of humanity with that of others. Without first being humble, we cannot then be empathetic, sympathetic, compassionate, kind, gentle, loving or honest. We must be willing to be openly humble to speak earnestly, with integrity, as well as to accept our trial-and-error course in life.

We will fail, we will falter, we will not be the best, or the most . . . the prettiest, the most handsome, the wealthiest, the most talented, etc. But when we’re genuinely humble enough to acknowledge that we’re on a journey to become more and to do better, even with our imperfections, we’re in the right frame of mind to accept ourselves as well as others. With humility, we know we aren’t always going to be right, we won’t always know things, we aren’t always expecting to be or to have or to do . . with humility we just are!


humility2-smallHumility is as defined by Merriam-Webster: hu·mil·i·ty noun hyü-ˈmi-lə-tē, yü- : the quality or state of not thinking you are better than other people : the quality or state of being humble

And humble: 1hum·ble adjective ˈhəm-bəl also chiefly Southern ˈəm-
1: not proud : not thinking of yourself as better than other people
2: given or said in a way that shows you do not think you are better than other people
3: showing that you do not think of yourself as better than other people

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Its A Chance For Discovery…

29 Saturday Mar 2014

Posted by Cheryl Ries in Character, Choices, Ethics, Faith, Fullness, Gentleness, Happiness, Inspiration, Integrity, Joy, Kindness, Life, Love, Wisdom

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ATear-25

Remember today as you go out into the world of discovery, that some souls might be fragile, heartbroken, saddened in grief, feeling fear or suffering in some other way. Inside, they may be impacted by events in which we haven’t any knowledge or awareness, nor for which we see any obvious signs externally. We might not know exactly what others are enduring, but we can be compassionate in our journey, kind in our steps thus giving others respect, patience, our love & our best first so that if they’re suffering in some way, we seem to them to be safe waters in their already stormy lives.

I remember the days right after my father died unexpectedly so many years ago . . I was feeling so vulnerable and broken that I felt I was operating at a different speed than the rest of the world, into which I had to venture out routinely, especially since it was fairly close to Christmas. But when I encountered – amidst the busy-ness and frenetic pace – kind people with loving hearts and gentle smiles, I felt somehow safer and less fragile.Being kind, compassionate, gentle, patient and loving isn’t always easy and sometimes seems in opposition to the events of our day and perhaps even our moods as a result, but we truly never know what others are enduring! We should endeavor to give the world our best for one day it might be us who needs theirs in return.                                                                         kindpeoplearebest

We should endeavor to give the world our best for one day it might be us who needs theirs in return. And we should try to see and to believe the best of others because we don’t know their full story. What might seem standoffish to us, may be someone trying to hold themselves together for the sake of not breaking down!s fragile. Being kind, compassionate, gentle, patient and loving isn’t always easy and sometimes seems in opposition to the events of our day and perhaps even our moods as a result, but we truly never know what others are enduring!

fruit-of-the-spirit_25These are the fruits of our spirit from Galatians 5:22-23, nine things in which we already are amply endowed, may we practice them today and everyday when we meet one another as strangers or even as friends: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.

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Flexing All Your Muscles . .

23 Thursday Jan 2014

Posted by Cheryl Ries in Character, Choices, Faith, Faithfulness, Gentleness, God, Goodness, Growing, Joy, Kindness, Love, Patience, Peace, Self-Control

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character, Choices, Faith, Faithfulness, fruit, God, Goodness, Growing, Joy, Kindness, Love, muscles, Patience, Peace, Self-Control, Spirit, spiritual

Flexing All Your Muscles….

FruitMusclesPeople are capable of amazing & wondrous things in life . . it just takes a heart braced in awareness of what fruits lie within! Inside each one of us are the fruits of our spirit . . nine essential qualities or traits which we already have in ample supply, which merely require our awareness & our determined effort to flex like muscles. We might not use them, they might turn to mush, but they’re there regardless, just like other physical, fleshy muscles in our bodies. They’re just as real to a human as flesh & bone. We prove to ourselves that when we use our flesh-muscles, when we practice with them, strengthening them, purposefully flexing them, we make our bodies healthier & better able to cope with life. So if we do the same with the fruits of our spirit, we in fact make those traits stronger in turn, preparing us for life in this world filled with people, giving us the much-needed support & help to face life head-on! Flex all your muscles, those of flesh & those of fruit, learn to use what you have or lose the potential for what you might be! Developing the fruits of your spirit truly is just a disciplined effort to be a better human being . . one who lives in the world wearing their heart as a banner & exuding the following essential traits:  love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. The fruits of your spirit are nine muscles within you which empower a lifetime of amazing gifts!
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Cheryl Ries-Author & Model

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