Try a different way of using this platform

The Kindness-Loop: what goes around comes around

Near death

A month ago we had our second child. He wasn’t breathing properly, so he spent the first week of his life in intensive care. It was a harrowing experience, reaching its worst point when I was following the ambulance at 2 am to a specialist hospital, or when he seemed to be fitting and the doctors made a crash call for immediate help, or when the lead doctor kept explaining his situation to me using the past tense to refer to him-

But he didn’t die. He survived and he’s good now.

Try a different way

The point is that this platform helped me through that time. I stopped using it in the way I had been — with the aim of writing and publishing at least 3 articles a week and working on growing my readership and I just read other people-

At 3 am in hospital rooms, sometimes beside his incubator, sitting in the car when I needed a break from the hospital — I read all sorts of stuff — about peoples travels, their fictions, their thoughts, their lifestyles — and it struck me as wonderful — no matter the quality of the writing — the intention and the process was life-affirming.

It was like when I first discovered this platform — before it all became about me.

Use your superpower

There are people, right now, thousands of them, tapping away at their keyboards in their rooms trying to express something.

Your superpower on this platform: you can hear them, praise them, and thank them.

Remember when you turned on the app to find lots of notifications with positive comments on your articles? It felt great, right? you can give that feeling easily — sprinkle it around all these thousands of people who are trying, for some reason, to express something.

By being kind, you can help them believe more in what they’re doing.

And being kind you create, for yourself, a positive feedback loop. You can believe more in the kindness of others — in a community in which peoples’ efforts to write their truths is appreciated — a community you would like to read and write in.

The cliché that works

Because what also happened, whilst I was in the hospital, was that I started commenting on people’s work more, and more positively.

So suddenly I was receiving lots of kind replies from grateful people — people started reading my articles and commenting positive things, we had conversations about writing and our experiences with it.

Suddenly the platform became a much more positive place and it helped me through the darker hours.

It’s like the Beatles sang in Abbey Road:

‘the love you take is equal to the love you make’

Share these rewards

A Kindness-Loop is created and this makes the platform a much nicer place to be. The main point is that being kind feels good — it’s not all about me and my notification and reads — I can tell you that the writing you do is amazing and I really appreciate it —

The cycles then return benefits to me-

1. It seems obvious to me know that lots of people do read like this — I believe in the goodwill and patience of the readers here — of an audience whom I want to write for and communicate with. this is different from when I didn’t read much — when I had the impression that no one was really reading and most people were hustling. You rob yourself of an audience if you are not a good reader yourself.

2. Notifications about my writing are submerged in a rising tide of positive communication with people about their writing- this makes the platform feel so much more real and human.

3. You develop relationships and soon have a number of people whose writing you love and who you feel that you know. You might feel that you are part of a community and that will come with advantages — people will read your writing and will share their thoughts, you will find out information about how people write and good ways to improve.

3. Inspiration — the platform is so varied! go outside your niche and look around. There are loads of great writers on this platform, established and not. I’d link here to good articles I’ve read but it would be a much better thing for you to do to just search a topic you’re interested in and try a random read. Or remember a writer you liked a while ago and check out what they are doing recently. Their articles might not be perfect — but you can appreciate and learn from the imperfections as well as the strengths.

4. Do you really want to help people with your writing? Then help them! Lots of writers say they want to help others, they want to provide joy or magic, advice or entertainment. These are noble aspirations. But why not be direct and go to the heart of the matter? People really care about their own articles — and you can powerfully encourage them by being kind — you can help them a lot. Praise is well known for being the best motivator in educational settings — far better than advice — the same here — contribute to peoples’ positive feedback loops — help them.

Up the Voltage

You don’t need self-serving reasons to justify kindness to others, but the kindness cycle is such that what you give does come back to you.

By giving love you become loveable. On this platform as everywhere else.

I’m sure you have a kindness loop going already — you’re probably better than I ever was at this — but like electricity running through a closed circuit you can always up the voltage.

So if you’ve read this, thank you. (You know that) it means a lot. Respond if you want to — for both of us. And then have a look around for other writers and if you like what they’ve done, let them know.