Kindness is often treated like a weakness. But what if it is actually a survival skill that can help us manage stress, interrupt negative thoughts, and reclaim our power?

Nicole Phillips, founder of Kindness Is Contagious and host of The Kindness Podcast, which Oprah Magazine recognized as one of the top happiness podcasts, joins Women Road Warriors hosts Shelley Johnson and Kathy Tuccaro to reveal how intentional kindness transformed her habits, marriage, family, and outlook on life.

A breast cancer survivor, recovering alcoholic, former hospital chaplain and television journalist, Nicole brings extraordinary warmth and lived wisdom to this conversation. She has spoken at more than 200 events, reaching over 30,000 people, and has been featured by NBC Nightly News, the Hallmark Channel, People Online, Reader’s Digest and Woman’s World. She is the author of five books, including The Negativity Remedy.

Nicole’s journey began with an unexpected encounter with a young mother at a public swimming pool. One simple act of generosity sparked a powerful personal transformation—and a kindness movement. Within a year of intentionally looking for and practicing kindness, Nicole had quit drinking and smoking, lost 30 pounds, renewed her relationship with her husband, and changed the atmosphere in her home.

Nicole explains why negativity may seem more prevalent when “the worse is simply louder.” She also reveals how confirmation bias, judgment and social media algorithms can reinforce negative thinking—and how we can train ourselves to see more of the goodness that is still all around us.

In this empowering conversation, discover:

• How kindness can reshape automatic thoughts and negative beliefs

• Nicole’s “worry, hurry and jury” pattern—and how to interrupt it

• Why the first thought may be automatic, but the next thought is where your power lives

• A simple 24-hour exercise for developing a kindness mindset

• How to practice self-kindness and stop destructive inner criticism

• Why the Platinum Rule can be more compassionate than the Golden Rule

• How asking “What else could be true?” can prevent fear from becoming panic

• The difference between healthy perspective and toxic positivity

• How to feel the pain of life without feeding the panic

• Why paying attention may be more powerful than simply paying kindness forward

Listen now and discover why kindness is not passive or powerless. It is a practical mindset tool that can strengthen resilience, reduce conflict, and change how we experience ourselves, other people, and the world.

Learn more about Nicole Phillips, her books and The Kindness Podcast at NicoleJPhillips.com.

Visit WomenRoadWarriors.com for more inspiring conversations that power women on the road to success.

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https://www.linkedin.com/in/phillipsnicolej/

ndnessMatters, #ChooseKindness #SpreadKindness #TheKindnessPodcast #NicolePhillips #WomenRoadWarriors #ShelleyJohnson #KathyTuccaro #WomensEmpowerment

This is Women Road warriors with Shelly Johnson and Kathy Tucaro.

From the corporate office to the cab of a truck, they're here to inspire and empower women in all professions.

So gear down, sit back and enjoy.

Welcome.

We're an award winning show dinner dedicated to empowering women in every profession through inspiring stories and expert insights.

No topics off limits.

On our show, we power women on the road to success with expert and celebrity interviews and information you need.

I'm Shelley.

And I'm Kathy.

Have you ever noticed how so many people have become unkind or even mean?

Sometimes it feels like negativity, outrage, and criticism have become the norm and kindness is treated almost like a weakness instead of a strength.

Our guest today says kindness is actually one of the most powerful remedies we have for stress, conflict, and many of the struggles people are facing right now.

Nicole Phillips has made it her mission to help people shift their mindset, navigate challenges more effectively, and reconnect through kindness, compassion, and intentional living.

Oprah magazine has recognized her show, the Kindness Podcast, as one of the top happiness podcasts out there.

And Nicole has shared her message with thousands of people at over 200 events across the country.

She's been featured by NBC Nightly News, the Hallmark Channel, People Online, Reader's Digest, and Women's World.

What makes Nicole's message especially powerful is that it comes from real life experience.

She's a breast cancer survivor, recovering alcoholic, former hospital chaplain, and television journalist who understands firsthand what it means to overcome adversity and choose hope instead of bitterness.

Nicole's also the author of five books, and that includes the Negativity Remedy.

And she's also the founder of Kindness is Contagious.

We want some of that contagion.

And Kathy and I are excited to have her on the show today.

Welcome, Nicole.

Thank you for being on Women Road Warriors.

My honor, Shelley.

Hi, Kathy.

It's so awesome to have you here.

And I love what you're doing.

Holy socks, right?

We need a little more kindness in the world.

That's what people tell me.

I'm 100% with that.

100%.

Everything I do is kindness based.

The three questions I always ask myself before I do something.

Is it true?

Is it necessary?

Is it kind?

Oh, it's so good.

That's right.

True, necessary, kind.

Yeah.

Does it need to be said by me right now?

Maybe not, Right?

Yes.

Sometimes.

What?

Biting our tongue, refraining from saying something we would regret later.

Nicole, before we jump into our journey into kindness, I was wondering if you could give us a brief summary of who you are and how you got started in this marvelous endeavor.

Oh, boy.

Well, kindness duped me.

I'll tell you that much straight off the bat, because I was not on a mission to make my life better.

I was on a mission to get through life.

And one more load of laundry.

I don't know, I don't do math.

I write books.

And I had three small children.

And honestly, I had everything I had ever wanted.

I had my.

I was married to my childhood sweetheart.

You know, healthy kids, we lived in a nice house.

And I had just retired from my job as a television news anchor because I wanted to find more joy in my life.

And what I found was that I was on the edge of what anyone would call an alcoholic, a drinker, a smoker, an overeater, angry at my husband all the time.

You know, the people in my life who were.

Support.

Supposed to support me were not feeling very supportive or doing a very good job of making me happy.

I later found out that actually isn't their job, but at the time, you know, you feel that way.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And so I.

That's where I was when I walked into the swimming pool in Fargo, North Dakota.

That's where we were living at the time.

And, you know, Kathy, you're a.

A Canadian, so maybe you understand.

I don't know if you're Canadian, but you.

You work in Canada, so I don't know if you understand the amount of warm days that a person in the north gets, but in Fargo, we get like one hot day every summer.

Like, real, real hot day.

Oh, my God.

Yes, I do.

I. I lived in the Yukon, that's right, by Alaska, for three years.

So I. I understand.

Yes.

One hot day is what, when the Chinooks come through.

Yeah.

So.

So everyone and their brother was at this Fargo public pool, and.

And I show up and I am.

I am carrying 27 tote bags and, you know, ushering my three kids in.

And my daughter was seven, my son was five, and my littlest was one and a half.

And my daughter walks in and she finds the one open lounge chair, and it's next to a girl with long blonde hair in a shiny gold bikini, which.

Why would that matter to me?

I don't know.

Like, people have the strangest thoughts and weird.

The weirdest first thought can come into a person's mind.

But my first thought was, you know, she's sitting here in a shiny gold bikini and I'm wearing my mom suit, and it starts at my neck.

And it goes down to my ankles because I don't want anyone to see any part of me because I feel so gross about myself, right?

And.

And my littlest.

The one and a half year old sat down, and he started to eat cheerios and share Cheerios with the one and a half year old that this gold bikini girl was there watching.

And at some point, he looked up and he saw a woman across the pool wearing a mom suit and having, like, flippy brown hair like mine.

And he started pointing and yelling, mommy, Mommy, mommy.

Like, like, he's saying, like, that's my mommy.

And so I'm like, no, no, no, no, I'm your mommy.

I. I'm your mommy.

And gold bikini girl starts to laugh, you know, And I was sitting there thinking about, like, how am I gonna get her phone number so that she can babysit my kids so I can figure out something to bring myself some joy in life?

And as she starts laughing, she says, that happened to us just the other day.

My daughter was looking out the window of our apartment, and she started pounding on the window and yelling, mommy.

When she saw a woman across the street get into a car.

And that woman had long blonde hair.

And my heart just sunk because this wasn't the world's best babysitter.

This was the mom.

And after talking to her for a little while, I realized, like, she had a smaller support system.

Much smaller support system, fewer resources, and she was doing a much better job than I was because her attitude that day was that she got to be there with her daughter.

And my attitude was that I had to be there with my kids.

I had to wear them out.

We left the pool at about the same time, and I got into my car, and I had just felt this overwhelming, like, voice inside of me say, stop.

Go give her some money.

And, you know, it's not like we had lots of excess money.

I kind of wanted the money that we had for us, but that voice just felt so insistent.

And I reached into my wallet and I grabbed what I had, which was 320 bills.

And I walked over to her as she was buckling up her child, and I said, excuse me.

I. I know we're never gonna see each other again, but I just have to tell you, my.

My best friend died of cancer when she was 30.

And she taught me in her life about the power of people to lift up people and specifically of women to lift up women.

And I just want to tell you, you really inspired me today.

And we kind of both got a little weepy and kind of hugged and I turned around and got back into my minivan.

And she got back into her little compact car.

And, you know, I didn't give her life changing money.

I gave her enough money to, you know, fill up her tank of gas and maybe take her kid to McDonald's a few times.

But what I got, getting back into my own vehicle felt like a high unlike anything I had ever experienced in my life before, from any of the bad decisions that I was making, trying to fill up this void and you know, as, as the universe or luck or God or whatever, whatever it is, would have it.

I had been called several weeks before that by the publisher of our newspaper in Fargo, saying that they were looking for female writers and would I write a weekly column.

And I was like, wow, I don't want to write about politics, I don't want to write about cooking, I don't want to write about parenting.

I mean, I kind of suck at everything right now and don't care about anything.

So, you know, he basically threw his hands up, the publisher did, and he said, when you think about what you want to write about, you call me.

So I had this experience with this young mom and I went home and I wrote it down and I sent it to him and I said, what if we asked people to send in their stories of kindness?

What if we asked people to share about a time when they were kind and how it made them feel, and also times when kindness showed up just when they needed it?

So he said, okay.

They gave me a weekly newspaper column.

We called it Kindness is Contagious.

And it ran for 10 years.

10 Years.

Wow.

But the really cool thing, yeah, it was amazing, right?

And.

But the cool thing was within one year of being really intentional about looking for the kindness around me and writing about kindness, I had quit drinking, I had quit smoking.

I lost 30 pounds.

I refell in love with my husband.

And the entire atmosphere of my home changed because I changed.

And you know, it happened because, you know, our.

Our brains are so plastic.

We have these pathways in our brains.

We have these automatic thoughts that we often let have the real estate in our brain, right?

They.

We allow them to camp there and we start repeating thoughts that then become beliefs that then become facts.

And my facts were that people were not there for me, people were not supporting me.

But when I interrupted that thought by seeing the kindness around me, I realized, wow, people show up for me every day.

And it feels powerful when I get to show up for someone else too.

It really is.

And it's something we need so much of.

Stay tuned for more of Women Road warriors coming up.

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Welcome back to Women Road warriors with Shelly Johnson and Kathy Tucaro.

If you're enjoying this informative episode of Women Road Warriors, I wanted to mention Kathy and I explore all kinds of topics that will power you on the road to success.

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We want to help as many women as possible.

We're talking with Nicole Phillips about kindness.

She's the host of the Kindness Podcast, the founder of Kindness Is Contagious, and author of the Negativity Remedy.

She's got a unique perspective on the topic.

She teaches that kindness is not simply as something nice we do, but as a genuine survival skill for all of us.

Kindness has played a huge role in Nicole's life.

She said it became the medicine that helped her see what was still good and what was still possible.

She brings a new spin to the word kind and helps people practice it as part of their daily lives.

Kindness, it's something that's so needed today and yet it feels so incredibly lacking.

Nicole, your perspectives that you're bringing to people are so powerful.

But I did want to mention this is a study I actually ran across and I'd like your thoughts on it.

Yeah, it's not our imagination that empathy and kindness seem to be on the decline.

Now if you fast forward to now, apparently it's gotten worse.

What is happening?

What the heck has happened to our society?

Did we forget the basic principles of how to treat others?

I mean, is it our imagination that people seem meaner?

Well, I have two thoughts on that.

And the first is in total agreement with this study, just based on the fact that we now have the ability to normalize poor behavior and we see it around us, we can see it on the news.

And not just the news that shows up at 5, 6 and 10, the news that is on 24, 7.

Right.

And so in that, that I think is, I don't know, but I would guess that it can't be good for us, right, to see all the ways in which people are not helping each other.

Because then if you choose not to step in and step out of your comfort zone and step into somebody else's world and help, you're not being rude, you're just being normal, right?

If your neighbor needs something and you don't help, it's not because you're a terrible person.

Of course not.

Because you see on, on tv, people don help because it's dangerous to help, right?

So that would be my first thought on it.

But my second thought is kind of the flip of that because people will tell me all the time the world is getting worse.

And my thought is that the worse is just louder because when you dig in and you have human to human connection and you train your eyes to look for the good and the connection and the ways people are showing up for each other, you will find it every time.

That's true.

It's a matter of perspective and what you choose to see.

I believe like my daughter and I for years have been make a point of wherever we are, whatever we do, we make a point of complimenting someone regardless.

Guy, girl, who cares, right?

Like, oh man, my.

Actually my daughter got her recent job because she was dropping off donations at a women in need shelter three months ago and she didn't know who was who.

She was just doing a drop off and she looks at this lady that was outside and says, man, I love your jacket, it looks so good on you.

It turns out it was the owner.

The owner on the spot.

That is so cool that the owner hired her on the spot.

That says it all.

Yes, kindness pays, right?

That's great.

Kathy I love that.

I do believe that, too.

If I think it and it's kind, I will say it.

Oh, yeah.

100.

And even if you don't feel good and you give someone a compliment, it automatically lifts you both up.

That's how.

That's how I see it, you know, because you feel good, because you made that person smile.

And it doesn't require money.

It doesn't require anything.

It requires kindness.

It requires awareness, the moment to just stop for a minute and look around and say, hey, you see this woman with three, four kids at the bus stop, and, you know, you're walking by, boy, I love your hair.

Or look at that clip.

Or, my God, look at your children.

They're beautiful.

Yeah.

You know, it just takes a minute, a second.

No, I'm going to push back on that, Kathy, because I had a woman, as I've had people say to me, I compliment people, and they look at me funny.

So I had a woman, like, what's wrong with you?

Hey.

Like, they don't get it.

They're like, what?

I had a woman that I complimented, and it was.

It was at a church, and I complimented her because the color just looked great on her.

It just looked.

She just was radiant.

And I went over and I said that.

And she looked at me just sideways and didn't even.

She didn't say thank you.

She just looked at me sideways.

And then she turned around and I was.

I. I didn't think anything of it because I was like, okay, well, clearly she didn't feel like talking to me.

That's no problem.

What, you know, that's.

Whatever.

And about three months later, she wrote me a letter, and she said, nicole, I don't know if you remember me, but one day you came up and talked to me at church, and you complimented me on how a color looked on me.

And she said, and.

And I think I may have given you kind of a dirty look.

And she said, I just want to tell you what was going through my head at that time.

She said, I have never, never been complimented on how I look before.

And she said, I didn't know how to take that.

And it wasn't until later and I thought about it that I.

That I was able to just kind of soften to the fact that maybe you were being kind to me and that you actually meant it.

And she said, and that compliment has stuck with me.

It has meant so much to me.

So even when in the moment people are like, it didn't land, you have.

No idea how it might have Landed that ripple effect, right?

Yes.

And we can't read other people's minds.

We don't know what's actually going through their synapses.

They're going through.

Yeah, exactly.

Timing is everything.

And just doing something like that, you're validating them as human beings.

I see you.

I see you as one of the most powerful.

I learned that as a hospital chaplain, that there is nothing I can do in a hospital room to help somebody, but I can be there.

And, yeah, presence is everything.

I know, like, one.

One act of kindness that I started because I was homeless for a while.

I'm recovering alcoholic as well.

And I lost everything.

I lost my nursing career.

I lost, I mean, everything I own.

I'm standing here drunk and homeless with this guy named Toothless Joe.

Anyway, that's a whole story.

But that week of homelessness showed me how little people get water for people that, you know, the homeless people, they have no access to water.

So the minute I got my job with Exxon Imperial and, you know, I'm making good money, all this.

I realized one day it was really hot, and I'm like.

It's like this voice came to me and it says, they have.

They.

They have no water.

And I dropped everything I was doing, and I ran to the store.

I got seven cases of water.

I got coolers, I got ice.

And I started driving around the alleys and where the homeless are, and I just started yelling, free water.

And the lineups of people, it's unbelievable.

And they want the ice, they want the melted water, they want everything.

And just that random act of kindness.

Well, my daughter was with me, and she coined it Operation Hydration.

So now every city I go to, I do it.

I've made these.

These.

These magnets to go on the rental cars, and it says, Operation Hydration.

Free water.

But what I do, like, if I'm in Vegas, I've done this three times in Vegas.

I'll go to White Castle and get, like, 50 or 75 little hamburgers.

And I give out a water and a burger.

And I. I don't just hand it out rudely.

I mean, I say, hey, how's it going today?

You know, this isn't much, but it's something.

And so that has created this ripple effect, like we were saying to other people, saying, hey, that's a good idea.

Maybe I'm going to do that.

You know, and when I speak at conferences, the same thing.

Like, one time I was in Dallas last year doing that.

I was speaking at a conference, and they asked me I said, oh, you know, I'm doing.

It's hot in Dallas.

I'm going to do my operation hydration.

I had people from the conference join me distributing water, and I'm like, that's what it's supposed to be about, right?

Yes.

Terrific.

Yeah.

Oh, Kathy, that is.

That is the very best.

And how amazing.

I mean, your ability to pivot and rebuild.

Like, wow, I hope you sit sometimes and you.

And you hold that and you think, oh, my gosh.

Yeah.

Yeah.

In those moments, we feel weak, right?

To be able to.

To.

To say, I am powerful and I can do hard things.

That feeling of empowerment, it just comes.

And so now, yeah, I, I have 14 years sober, and it just.

It's changed the whole dynamics of my life.

And anyway, but it's not about me.

It's about you today.

Yeah, boy, it's gotta be about all of us, because that's what a great conversation's about.

Yes, yes, yes, yes.

Love it, Kathy.

Stay tuned for more of Women Roadwork.

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Welcome back to Women Road warriors with Shelly Johnson and Kathy Tucaro.

We're back with Nicole Phillips, founder of Kindness Is Contagious and author of the Negativity Remedy and the host of the Kindness Podcast.

Nicole describes a pattern many of us fall into as worry, hurry and jury.

We worry about everything, hurry through our lives, and then judge ourselves or somebody else before we've taken a moment to pause.

It's a clever phrase, but it captures how easily stress can put us on autopilot and on the defensive.

It keeps us from really seeing and experiencing life and stopping to just remember each other and practice that random act of kindness that can empower us beyond what we ever expected.

Part of the problem is we normalize bad behavior.

Today.

We see it all over social media and in public, and what we see, we tend to follow.

And kindness gets forgotten.

The bad should not overshadow our lives.

Nicole says if we train to look for the good, we're going to find it every time.

We just need to look for it.

Kindness is something that can and will empower us as well as others.

Nicole, you call kindness a survival skill that really Is empowering intentional kindness.

I mean, if everyone practiced that, can you imagine how we would all just blossom?

Yes.

And I would say for people who are like, this feels really uncomfortable, like, okay, great, then start with just making kindness your lens.

Right.

If.

If you are.

If it feels exhausting to.

To go out and do a random act of kindness, like it's not meant to be another diet plan that you have to do, you know, every day for 30 days or something.

It, to me, is really a lens that we look through.

And.

And the way that we can build that lens within our brain is to ask ourselves, within the past 24 hours, what is one act of kindness I did, one act of kindness I received and one act of kindness I witnessed.

And the.

The act of kindness you did, maybe it's, you know, it can be anything.

Like, I held my tongue when my husband said something that made me mad, or, you know, I. I didn't want to do this thing, and yet I. I gave the person the benefit of the doubt and decided to.

To show up.

Right.

So.

And instead of making it about your whole life, like, it really helps the brain when you can rewind just over the past 24 hours, an act of kindness I did, an act of kindness I received, and an act of kindness I witnessed.

That's a good perspective.

Yeah.

And I love it.

And it's kind of like baby steps.

If you're not comfortable with it, just kind of gradually introduce yourself to it.

Because aren't we taught?

I don't know if we are anymore.

The golden rule.

Is that taught anymore?

I remember hearing about that when I was a child.

Treat others the way you'd want to be treated.

And we don't want people being mean to us.

So being kind and generous, I mean, it takes a village to do that, and that's what empowers people.

Well, and I had heard somebody tell me on my podcast to aim for the platinum rule, go above gold, the golden rule, which, instead of do unto others as you would have others do unto you, do unto others as they would have.

As they would want you to do to them.

Right.

Because not everybody wants to be hugged.

So, you know, everyone, not every.

We all come from different backgrounds.

Right.

And.

And different sorts of trauma.

And so you, instead of doing what you think you would want, really think about the other person and what would serve them in that moment.

You know, I think just by being kind, it makes us more aware of the people around us.

Instead of being dismissive, which I think that we.

Society has gotten.

I mean, we're so stuck on our gadgets.

You go through a grocery store and people are just kind of glued to their gadgets while they're walking through the store.

I'm not even sure if they're aware of what they're doing.

If you're being kind, maybe you're interacting more, you're noticing things.

You're more in the moment.

Yeah.

There's a man I know named Don who said, you know, people are always talking about paying it back or paying it forward when it comes to kindness.

He said, why don't people just pay attention?

I like that.

I have held that for years because I'm like, yeah, pay attention.

And pay attention not only to what's happening around you, but what's happening in your own mind.

When I speak at conferences, when I do workshops, I am saying to people, think about what you're thinking about, because you might find that.

That you have let your brain really create a narrative that isn't helpful.

So think about what you're thinking about.

And then, you know, what you look for is what you'll see.

So if, if you allow those thoughts to become your lens and you start looking for the ways in which people are.

Are against you, you know, you're going to see it.

But.

But what you look for is what you'll see every time.

I think.

So it's.

It's called confirmation bias.

Right.

It's a.

It is.

There's robust research about it, but we can choose to look for the good confirmation bias.

That's.

That's an interesting term.

It almost.

If somebody does not want to interact and they don't want to maybe better themselves or be a better person.

Those confirmation biases keep them stuck.

The stereotypes, it keeps them from really seeing other people, and it gives them an excuse.

You're bringing people out of that.

They can't make any excuses anymore.

They need to actually live and notice people and validate, you know?

Right.

And again, think about what you're thinking about.

The problem with confirmation bias really is that it puts us into camps and our algorithms on our computers, on our social media, all of it will show us more of what we think.

Right.

It will confirm whatever bias we have.

And all of us, all of us have the.

Have a bias.

You know, it doesn't mean we're terrible people.

It just means that we have a certain way of looking at the world and believing about the world.

And there's.

There's a heavy push to, to put us into one camp or another, and it doesn't matter what the camps are.

It just is that.

That our algorithms want to push us one way or the other.

So if you stop really thinking about what you're thinking about, you're gonna end up really solidly someplace that you didn't intend to be.

I think, at least for me, that raises a question in my mind, Nicole.

You talk about the algorithms.

How much is social media actually shaping these perceptions?

So people aren't seeing kindness because they're seeing other things that social media and their lovely algorithms are feeding us?

Well, I think it depends on the person, because we train the algorithms.

Right.

So a lot of the people that I know have really great social media feeds because they have continually, every day, trained their.

Their algorithms.

You know, I want you to show me cute puppies.

I want you to show me meditations.

I want you to show me acts of kindness happening.

I want you to show me the good in the world.

And that is what then the social media will show you.

But it's.

It.

You know, the minute you click on something or spend a little time hovering over something that is more combative, you're going to be fed more of that.

Yeah.

And that's where.

Well, of course, that's what they talk about with kids and teenagers and so forth.

That's where they can be molded.

The parents could be teaching them kindness, but all of a sudden they're getting sucked into stu.

That isn't.

Yes.

When my children were little, from the time they were in preschool, every day I would ask, what was your glad?

What was your sad?

And what was your act of kindness?

And now that they are 22, 20, and 15, they still.

I still ask them those questions, and, you know, they'll roll their eyes.

And, you know, when my son was in high school, he'd be like, somebody gave somebody a pencil.

Like, he wouldn't even take the time to be like, joe gave Sam a pencil.

He was like, somebody gave somebody a pencil.

But it was.

It's funny because it was a practice within our household for them to be aware and because they knew I was going to ask that question and talk it through with them if they didn't have an answer, they would many times get in the car after school, and they'd be like, I did well on my Spanish test.

I didn't have a sad today.

And, you know, Joe's mom dropped off brownies for the class, so they.

They would.

It became a way of thinking for them.

And as much as I want to live in the world of panic that my kids are experiencing things, seeing things Living in some sort of world online that I, that, that terrifies me.

What good does it do, Shelley, for me to live there?

Right.

Why not?

With the, with the little bit of time I have left, especially with my 15 year old.

Why spend time in anxiety, staying up in the middle of the night, worrying about that when I can instead spend my time having conversations with him and showing him the joy that comes when we lean into the better thought, the.

The better connection with another human, just communicating.

That's something that a lot of families don't do as well on today.

I mean, if you see them in a restaurant, you see they've all got their phones out, just communicate.

Isn't that kindness?

You know, when you're going to talk to somebody, talk to them, put your phone away.

Right?

Yes.

And I would also say, you know, when we're in the restaurant and when we see another family and they all have their phones out, it doesn't serve me to look at that table and go, why are those, why, why aren't those parents talking to their kids?

Why are they letting their kids be on the social media?

I have no idea what their life was like walking into that restaurant.

I have no idea what their life is going to be like walking out of that restaurant.

Maybe, maybe they all just needed a break.

Right.

So I am, I am.

I think we can each do what we can do in our own moment for our own family, but we have to remember that our path is our path and we have to let other people have their path or we're jumping back into that negative thought loop.

Right.

Which doesn't put us in a kind.

Space that's 100% accurate.

Yeah.

So essentially we should not judge.

That's kind of the problem, isn't it?

People judge others.

Yes, yes.

I just, I was, I was speaking at a conference in San Diego a few weeks ago, and a woman came up to me afterwards and she said, have you heard about the three paths?

And I said, no, like three paths.

Tell me more.

I need to go down all three paths.

Right.

Clearly there's a path I haven't experienced.

And she said, no, no, no, no.

The three paths.

There's your path.

And we were, I was specifically talking about my husband with her, and he said, she said, there's your path, there's your husband's path, and then there's God's path, which she said can be like a natural disaster or whatever.

But she said, you can only walk your path.

And I thought, oh, that's so good.

It's so Good.

You know, we can't, we can't walk somebody else's path for them, so why would we try to jump over into their lane?

That's true.

I mean, when we're driving, we don't do that.

We stay in our lane, hopefully.

Yeah, we try to.

Yes.

Stay tuned for more of Women Road warriors coming up.

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Welcome back to Women Road warriors with Shelly Johnson and Kathy Takaro.

Our guest today is Nicole Phillips, and we're exploring the extraordinary power of kindness.

She's an expert in this area.

Kindness may sound soft in a culture that often rewards outrage, but this conversation showing us that kindness actually has a backbone.

It takes real strength to meet unkindness without allowing it to change who we are.

And one intentional choice can shift the atmosphere in a family, a workplace, or even an encounter with a stranger.

Just by being kind, we're validating others as human beings and we all need that.

As Nicole says, start by making kindness your lens.

Ask yourself, what is one act of kindness that you did or received in the past 24 hours?

We retrain our brain for a powerful tool.

Do unto others as they would want and practice kindness that can serve them in that moment.

Nicole, what is the journey?

How do we get on the path to kindness?

My greatest takeaway is always think about what you're thinking about.

And so that's a very maybe large thought for people who are like, okay, well, give me the practical application for that.

So to me, the practical application of think about what you're thinking about is to catch yourself in the middle of the thought before it ends up catching you.

So put a note, a post it note on your mirror.

If you get out of the shower every day and you look at yourself and you think, oh, gross.

So like, I, I am a breast cancer survivor.

I had a mastectomy.

So I can look in the mirror and I can say, which I did say after my surgeries, a lot of Times I would look in the mirror and I would think, oh, gross, how could anyone be attracted to that?

And when I began to think about what I was thinking about, I realized I heard myself and I realized I would never say this to my daughter.

I would never say this to my friend.

Why would I ever say this to myself?

But you have to catch yourself.

So having a little note, a post it note on the mirror that says thank you for this strong, healthy, beautiful body.

Right.

Is enough to say, like just, just to be able to say, I have a strong, healthy, beautiful body.

So that's one area that's really practical that you can.

Sometimes people need post IT notes on their computer screens.

Sometimes they need them in their car, on their dashboard.

Sometimes they need them in their ginormous trucks that Kathy has.

So you only, you know where you need that post it note, right?

And then the other thing that's really helpful is to put an alert on your phone.

That is whatever time of the day that, that is helpful for you.

She said she heard me, she heard me speak in a workshop and, and tell people to put an alert on their phone.

And I, I believe that thoughts fall into generally three categories.

We have like the hurry, the worry, and the jury.

So the hurry is like this urgency, I, which doesn't open our pathway to kindness.

The worry is the, the worst case scenario.

It's the fear, it's the dread, which also does not open us up to, to kindness.

And there's the jury, which is the criticism, the irritation, the judgment of ourselves and other people.

And that's not for five hours from now.

So why am I sitting in the middle of this right now?

Like that's not helpful to me and the rest of the things I need to do today.

So just becoming aware of it, once you're aware of it, you can choose to accept that thought or reject that thought.

But really, you know, the first thought we have might be automatic, but the next thought, that's where your power lives.

I love that.

Me too.

You're creating self awareness and it's kind of like people are also doing somewhat kindness affirmations.

We start with being kind to ourselves, being self aware.

The worry hurry jury really taking a moment and taking a step back and what?

Taking a deep breath and inhaling life and realizing it's not that bad.

It really is pretty good, right?

Yes.

And also I will acknowledge that we need to feel the pain of life, the pain of being human without feeding the panic of it.

That's a challenge when we are really hit with a boulder.

But your baby steps I think can help train people to deal with that, right?

Yes.

My husband was in a massive car accident last year.

He's fine now, but he hit a tree head on at 60 miles an hour.

And yeah, it was awful.

And I was a plane ride away from him at the time.

And so when I got this call, they said, you need to fly down from.

I was in North Dakota, they said, you need to fly down to Florida and find him.

And he was in the neurotrauma unit when I found him.

But one of the nurses gave him back his phone and he was able to call me while I was in the airport.

Every 20 minutes he called me and he would say some version of honey, I've been in an accident.

So sometimes he was like, hun, are you sitting down?

I need to tell you something.

You've been in an.

I've been in an accident.

Sometimes he would call me and he'd say, did you know that trees in Alabama jump?

One of them jumped out and hit me, you know, and he's being funny and.

But it was this.

Every 20 minutes my husband is calling me, telling me the exact same thing.

He clearly has no short term memory.

And my brain went, wanted to just crumble in that airport, hit the panic button and.

And I knew like, I cannot feed this panic right now.

I can feel this, I can feel that this hurts tremendously and I cannot feed the panic.

And the way that I shift from that and the way that as a, when I was a hospital chaplain, help people shift is by asking what else could be true?

And when we ask what else could be true, I realize, like, I don't know for certain that his short term memory is shot.

I have not talked to the doctor, so what else could be true?

Well, it could be true that this is part of the healing process.

And for us that was the case.

It was part of the healing process.

He's totally fine now.

His memory in fact is longer than I wish it was sometimes because.

He.

Can remind me of things.

Yeah.

So.

But when we Ask what else could be true.

We can open up.

The feeling of being human is hard.

And also, I don't need to jump to conclusions.

Oh, and people are good at jumping to conclusions.

No doubt about that.

And it's a matter of changing our perspectives, and that takes practice.

I mean, you've had quite a few years to practice this, and you're certainly helping a lot of people do it.

But, yes, it's so easy to just immediately go into fight flight, panic, taking a step back, that really is strength.

It's our power.

In a world where we can feel very powerless because there's a lot of things we can't control, our reaction is our power.

And it's easy.

If you're going through a difficult time, all of a sudden it can feel like a snowball, and you could feel like everything's against you.

It's like, what the heck did I do to deserve this?

Then you're into anger, right?

Yes, yes.

And I mean, I, I think about you, Kathy, in When Shelley just said that, because I feel like I would imagine when you found yourself homeless, that there could have been a snowball of, well, what did, what did I do to deserve this?

Like, yes, you knew what you did to deserve it.

And also, like, well, I've been dealt a shoddy deal my whole life, right?

I had trauma and I had terrible abuse, and I, I, I didn't get the advantage that other people got.

And so we can live in that victim mentality or we can choose.

You know, it was one decision.

On the seventh day of being homeless, I'm sitting, I'm in this homeless shelter.

I had my head down on the table, and I was beyond crying.

The depression was just so bad.

And I'm looking, I look up around, and I'm like, how the hell did I end up here?

I'm educated.

Like, you know, I'm a nurse, for God's sakes.

How happen?

And then I walk outside, and then that's when Toothless Joe was there, and he slapped me on the back, and he's like, you know, this is the life.

Live it.

Love was that moment.

I swear he's a guardian angel, because it's like when his hand touched my back, it was almost like an electric current.

And for the first time in my.

In a long time, in decades, I saw crystal clear.

I can't explain it, but it was, like, whiter than white.

And I'm looking around this homeless, these people, these zombies, and I've always known, since I've been a small child, there's a greater purpose to my life.

And as I'm standing there, I'm like, this is not it.

So I just said out loud, I'm like, what did you just say?

And I said, this is not my life.

And I actually stomped my foot and I said, this is not my life.

And although I had no goal, no purpose, no nothing, all I knew was that I had to take, do whatever it took to get away from that guy.

And as I pivoted, I turned around, the hospital was there.

And I'm like, that's where I'm going.

I went to detox for two weeks, and from there I went to a year long women's recovery center where you had to unlearn all the trauma, relearn who you are, and then accept it.

And.

But it was just that one decision that, that just changed everything.

And each step, you know, brings you to the next and next and next.

Right.

But I get chills.

It's so good.

It's so good.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And what you're teaching Nicole is just as powerful.

I mean, you're teaching people, they talk about positivity.

You're giving people the real foundation kindness.

That is positivity, right?

Yes.

This is not toxic positivity.

Toxic positivity really has no place in what I do.

I'm talking about perspective.

And perspective isn't denial.

It's a discipline of the mind.

And kindness is, is really one of the tools.

I love that.

I didn't mean to interrupt.

What is toxic positivity?

I guess I'd not heard that term.

I don't think I've heard that either.

Toxic positivity is a lot like totally denying the human experience of suffering and saying, well, just don't feel that.

Just, just don't feel that.

Just get over it, deal with it.

All right?

You know, move on and move on and pretend it didn't happen.

Right.

And so there's no spot to kind of dip into despair in that, which is, is really essential for our emotional reservoirs to, to be able to, to, to feel what we have to feel and be able to make meaning out of it in our own way, in our own time.

But yeah, so one of the points I make when I speak is to say, like, if you're getting nervous, like I make a few points and then about three thoughts and, and then I say, if you're getting nervous right now, good, because, you know, your alert is going off that says, is this toxic positivity?

Right.

And, and then we can name that and say, nope.

Two things can be true at the same time.

Two things can be true.

We can be having a really, really tough time, and we can choose our reaction in the middle of that.

It's empowering.

So, Nicole, where do people find the negativity remedy?

And kindness is contagious.

This is all so powerful.

I know people want to delve into this information more.

The books are all on Amazon.

You can also go to a bookstore and ask them to order.

They will do that for you as well if you prefer to support small businesses.

And my show, the Kindness Podcast, is wherever you find your favorite podcast, like this one, and on YouTube as well, if you choose to watch it instead of listening.

And then I amicolejphillips on the socials and I'[email protected] if you're interested in booking me to speak or just want to check out what it is that I.

Do, I recommend people listen to the Kindness Podcast.

I mean, what a great way, you know, you can start your day with a little kindness, right?

Yes.

Kindness matters so much.

It really does.

And we're recognizing our neighbors and other people.

It's kind of like you've got a different spin on you.

Remember Pollyanna?

Yes.

And the Glad Game?

Well, you've got the kindness game, and that's even more powerful.

Yes, I do like that.

Maybe that should be the name of my next book.

Shelly.

Thank you.

I'll give you credit.

Okay, how about the Kindness Game, where everybody wins?

Oh, she even gave me a subtitle.

I dig it.

Nice Boom mic drop on that one.

Well done.

Thank you.

Oh, Nicole, this has been fantastic.

Thank you so much for being on the show.

Oh, thank you so much for empowering women and choosing to make this your mission.

It's very, very kind of you.

We're totally stoked about doing it.

I can tell.

I mean, and the fact that the two of you found each other and came together and have just this depth of experience and wisdom, and it's like you're the perfect PA hair.

You are the perfect pair.

So I can see what the show is wildly popular.

Thank you, Nicole.

Thank you.

We really appreciate that.

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