Kindness-By-Post: Reflections on Disappointment

Introduction

It’s natural to feel disappointed if you sent a card or letter for kindness-by-post to someone, and didn’t receive anything in return. It’s OK to feel this way. As organisers, we very much share that feeling when things don’t work out for the participants as we had hoped. Disappointment is always a tricky thing to deal with, but it can also be an emotion that helps us reflect on our patterns of thought and how we interpret the events in our lives.

This article speaks to the experience we go through when things don’t go as we expected. It includes a range of practical resources that can be helpful when trying to make sense of the feeling of disappointment. We’ve brought together a collection of resources made by leading experts on the subjects of vulnerability, self-compassion and the inner critic that we hope you might find useful as you participate in #KindnessByPost, and in other areas of your life.

Is it me?

Not receiving something can even feel personal, and our minds sometimes jump to conclusions about why this may have happened. There are lots of reasons and explanations for why we might not have received a card or letter, or why the one we received didn’t meet our expectations. Many of these explanations are in fact very innocent and benign.

Below are some thoughts that some participants in #KindnessByPost have described about not receiving a card or letter, or receiving something that didn’t meet their expectations; and also some of the most common reasons why cards and letters don’t arrive.

Thoughts some participants have had about what happened

• I’m not worthy enough to receive a card or letter
• I don’t deserve one
• I’m always unlucky
• I’m always left out
• The world’s against me
• Everyone got something lovely except me
• The sender took a dislike to me
• I’m too strange and unlikeable
• I’m not good enough
• They couldn’t be bothered with making an effort for me

What might have actually happened

• The sender was too ill to send one, or couldn’t get to a postbox
• They forgot to send a card or letter in time
• They couldn’t log into their account, or couldn’t look up the address
• The card or letter is in the post but it has been delayed
• You made a mistake when you filled in your address with signing-up, so the card or letter couldn’t get through to you
• The sender didn’t include the right postage, or was unable to print or buy a stamp
• The sender felt too anxious or depressed to take part, or changed their mind at the last minute
• The person did their best to send something nice, but didn’t have the knowledge or skills to make something ‘spectacular’
• Only people who received particularly lovely things posted about them on social media (lots of other people received things that were only ‘so-so’)
• The sender was overwhelmed with work or caring responsibilities and couldn’t find time to do it
• They had a family emergency

It’s interesting to notice the thoughts that come up if you’re feeling disappointed about not receiving a card or letter. Our computer system matches up all participants randomly, so it’s not possible that there could be any kind of personal reason why you didn’t get one. Whatever the reason for not getting something (or getting something that didn’t meet your expectations), it can’t be a reflection on you personally. In principle any of the lovely cards or letters might have been sent to you.

Psychologists have a term for the automatic negative thoughts that can come up when we’re dealing with difficult things: ‘the voice of the inner critic’. There’s no need to feel bad about having these thoughts — but it can be helpful to notice and acknowledge them. It can be useful in many parts of our lives to recognise when your “inner critic” is taking over and dominating the way you feel, and we can learn to quieten this voice and gently reason with it.

Exercise: Notice any thoughts you have had about not getting a card (or getting a card that didn’t meet your expectations), and any judgements you made about yourself. Might there be other ways of interpreting what happened?

Book recommendation: “Playing Big” by Tara Mohr, that has some wonderful practical tools for learning to identify your “inner critic”, work with it, and stop it from controlling your life. Find some short extracts here.

Ted talk recommendation: “How changing your story can change your life”, a talk by Lori Gottlieb, psychotherapist and advice columnist, shows how to break free from the stories we tell ourselves by rewriting the narrative from a different point of view.

Being kind to ourselves

By taking part in #KindnessByPost, you showed that you could be kind to other people. It has been a source of fascination to psychologists, philosophers, authors and social scientists that human beings tend to find it much easier to be kind to others, than to be kind to ourselves. What is the reason for this? Why does being kind to ourselves sometimes feel a little silly? Why would we feel that kindness has to come from someone or something other than ourselves in order to ‘count’? Many have also reflected that compassion towards ourselves is the bedrock of our ability to truly be kind to others.

Research has shown that being kind to ourselves can have significant mental health benefits, and be a powerful habit to get into. Taking the conscious, deliberate set of practicing kindness towards ourselves is a transformative life skill. But it can be tricky and takes practice!

Exercise: Think back to the card or letter you sent, or look up other #KindnessByPost cards and letters for inspiration. What message did you most want to receive yourself? What words would you most like to hear? Find a quiet, unhurried time and make yourself your own letter or card. Read it to yourself aloud.

Book recommendation: “The Compassionate Mind”, by Paul Gilbert explores how our minds have evolved to respond quickly to threats, and how this creates a bias in our thinking. Showing the benefits of soothing ourselves with compassion, he offers a series of exercises to boost our capacity for compassion towards ourselves and others. A number of related resources are available on The Compassion Mind website here.

What kindness is there already?

When you signed up to #KindnessByPost, you invited some kindness to come into your life. You made yourself open to a gift from someone you didn’t know. Perhaps that kindness didn’t arrive as we expected it, but sometimes we are offered other gifts in our lives which can fortify and soothe us — even if they aren’t what we originally had in mind. These might be gifts that are there already, but which we haven’t fully noticed and appreciated. Or there might be gifts that arrive, big, small and sometimes unexpectedly, through our everyday lives.

Appreciating these gifts is what psychologists call ‘gratitude’. This has been shown to have a range of benefits, from boosting our self-esteem and helping us build relationships, to helping us sleep better. Like self-compassion, noticing the gifts in our lives is a habit that takes practice.

Exercise: Start a gratitude journal, where each day you write down three good things in your life that you are grateful for. You could follow #3GoodThings on Twitter to find a community of people who are doing the same.

What can we take from this?

“Vulnerability is not winning or losing; it’s having the courage to show up and be seen when we have no control over the outcome. Vulnerability is not weakness; it’s our greatest measure of courage.” — Brene Brown

Ted talk recommendation: Brene Brown’s ted talk on vulnerability has been watched over 47 million times worldwide. In it she talks about the link between vulnerability, courage and authenticity and how embracing our vulnerability can actually make us stronger.

Book recommendation: Social Psychologist Amy Cuddy’s book “Presence: Bringing Your Boldest Self to Your Biggest Challenges” talks about the science of ‘faking it until you make it’ and how tweaking our behaviour, mindset and even our posture can enable us to approach challenges with greater ease, presence and personal power.

When deciding to take part in KindnessByPost you took a huge leap of faith. You stepped into the unknown. You signed up to send kindness to a stranger, with no certainty about the outcome or what you’d receive in return. Real courage comes from our ability to be vulnerable. Every time we step out of our comfort zone, however big or small, we trigger a process of transformation. Just by signing up to take part in, you embarked on a journey of self-realisation, strength and growth; not just for yourself but for our collective mental health.

The author Vaclav Havel once said: “Hope is not a feeling of certainty that everything ends well. Hope is the certainty that something has meaning, regardless of how it turns out”. Sending a letter or card to someone you don’t know is a small gesture; but a gesture is defined as a small movement that has meaning. Making this small gesture, and reflecting on any disappointment we feel, is something that can give us meaning too.

The core message of this initiative is that we are all worthy of love and belonging. It’s a message that you sent, by sending a message of kindness in the post to a stranger. It’s a small gesture, but together, the participants of this project represent a movement for connection and hope.

That’s something to be proud of.

Thank you for being part of #KindnessByPost.