Gissele: [00:00:00] Hello, and welcome to the Love and Compassion Podcast with Gissele. We believe that love and compassion have the power to heal our lives and our world. Don’t forget to like and subscribe for more amazing content. And if you’d like to support the podcast, you can go to buymeacoffee.com/loveandcompassion.
Gissele: Today, we’re talking about kindness, and we have Cindy Rowe with us, who is a speaker, trainer, and kindness ambassador dedicated to transforming workplace culture through the power of kindness and emotional intelligence. As the founder and CEO of Cindy Rowe LLC and the Be Kind Crew, she helps organizations strengthen employee engagement, resiliency, and trust by creating cultures rooted in compassion and connection.
Gissele: Cindy draws from more than 15 years of leadership experience across corporate and entrepreneurial sectors to bridging gap between organizational performance and human wellbeing. She’s also the survival of a traumatic brain injury and [00:01:00] personal loss. Cindy uses her lived experience to illustrate the measurable impact of kindness on wellbeing, retention, and organizational success.
Gissele: She’s also the host of the Kindness Advantage Podcast. Please join me in welcoming Cindy. Hi, Cindy.
Cindy: Hi. Thank you so much for having me
Gissele: Oh, thank you so much for being on the show. I’m so excited to chat with you. I was wondering if you could tell the audience a little bit about how you got started in this work.
Cindy: Yeah. So it was about 12 years ago, and like most people, we have, a hard season of life and I was in a very, very dark spot. This moment in time seemed to drag on and on, and couldn’t figure out how to get out of this darkness. And I was seeing a therapist, I was doing all the things and getting out in nature and trying to meditate.
Cindy: Still haven’t figured that one out yet. But it wasn’t until I reached out to a friend and just [00:02:00] shared with him, I was like, my life sucks and I really don’t know what to do about it.” What people didn’t see, on the outside I was very happy-go-lucky, put on a smiley face, but they didn’t see what was happening behind closed doors.
Cindy: And, my marriage was crumbling and I was working in a very toxic work environment and just, seemed to compound every day. And when I vented to the friend, he suggested I do an act of kindness. And I don’t know about you, but if you ever had a bad day, like that’s not one thing you think about. And I was pretty bitter and I was like, “Why would I do an act of kindness? That seems really stupid.” And he very insistent and he said, when you do something kind for somebody else, it actually takes away from you focusing on your problems.” And I let that sit with me for a little bit. I was very skeptical and I was like, I’ve tried everything, so I might as well give this a try.” [00:03:00] And I did. And it was about three acts of kindness that it took me to feel a slight shift. I started to feel happy, which I hadn’t in a while, I thought, “There’s something to this.” And I was approaching my 40th birthday and I thought, it be great to celebrate such a milestone birthday by doing an act of kindness every day for my birthday month?”
Cindy: And so I set out to do an act of kindness every day f
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