The Kindness Matters Podcast
So. Much. Division. Let's talk about how to change that. Re-engage as neighbors, friends, co-workers and family. Let's set out to change the world. Strike that. Change A World. One person at a time, make someone's life a little better and then do it again tomorrow and the day after that, through kindness.
Kindness is a Super-Power that each of us has within us. It is so powerful it has the potential to change not only your life but those around you, too. Let's talk about kindness.
The Kindness Matters Podcast
Rediscovering Joy: Christine Kutnick on Kindness, Connection, and Community
Ever wondered how a life-changing moment can redefine your career and purpose? Christine Kutnick, a certified joy coach and veteran of the nonprofit world, joins us to share her remarkable shift from the corporate sphere to a life centered around joy, harmony, and peace. Her transformative journey began with an unexpected fall in Switzerland, igniting a passion for fostering inclusion and community support. Through her work with organizations like the American Diabetes Association, Christine has been a beacon of change, helping communities thrive and individuals embrace happiness.
Travel and kindness? They go hand in hand! Together, we explore how these experiences can deepen our understanding of cultures and build meaningful connections. Drawing inspiration from Lisa Metwally's adventures as a former café owner and Delta flight attendant, we discuss the "secret bullet" that kindness represents in tackling societal challenges, from boosting public health to strengthening community bonds. Christine brings her expertise to the table, highlighting how kindness is a key ingredient in a fulfilling life, especially essential in these post-pandemic times where human connection and gratitude are needed like never before.
And who doesn't love a good neighborhood story? Christine shares how small acts of kindness transformed her move into a new community, creating bonds through shared groceries and mutual support. Her joy coaching business, Mudita, embodies the essence of finding joy in others' happiness by aligning personal values and fostering spirituality. If you're interested in Christine's Kindness Bingo, or her Kindness Challenge Newsletter, you can find it here.
#joy #community #kindness
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Well, hello there and welcome. You are listening to the Kindness Matters podcast and I am your host, mike Rathbun. What is this podcast all about? It's about kindness. It's a pushback against everything negative that we see in the news and on social media today, and it's a way to highlight people, organizations that are simply striving to make their little corner of the world a little better place. If you want to join in on the conversation, feel free, Go ahead and follow us on all of your social media feeds. We're on Facebook, instagram, tiktok. We're even on LinkedIn under Mike Rathbun. Check us out. We're even on LinkedIn under Mike Rathbun. Check us out and, in the meantime, so sit back, relax, enjoy and we'll get into the Kindness Matters podcast. Hello and welcome to the show, everybody. I am so excited for you to be here. Thank you so much for taking the time to listen, and if anything you hear in this podcast moves, you, inspires you, make sure to share it with your friends and family. My guest today you guys, this is so cool. My guest today is Christine Kutnick, and she spent over 25 years making an impact in the nonprofit sector. She raised millions of dollars for amazing organizations and in 2021, christine and her husband made the bold decision to leave their 9-to-5 routines behind and embark on a journey to explore the world.
Speaker 1:However, because there's always a however right lore of the world. However, because there's always a however right. However, a life-changing fall in Switzerland, where she broke her ankle in not one, not two, but three places, became a pivotal moment of reflection and transformation for her. She was ready to get off the hamster wheel. In her 20s, christine drafted her personal mission to be a catalyst for joy, harmony and peace. Encouraged by friends who recognized her unique strengths, she stepped confidently into her next chapter. Today, christine is a certified joy coach guiding her joyriders and see, this is an audio podcast, so nobody will see that Joy Riders to embrace change, cultivate inner peace and rediscover happiness. Endearingly called their Joyologist by her friends, christine inspires others to create lives filled with purpose and full of joy. Welcome, christine, to the show.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much. I'm excited to talk about kindness with you, my favorite, one of my favorite topics.
Speaker 1:Is it really Mine too, it was. You have done so much, I just I can't. So. How many years did you? It was 25 years. You were in. See, you don't look over 25 anyway. I mean, what did?
Speaker 2:you start when you were 10?. I don't feel it at all. You know, my children remind me of my age.
Speaker 1:but other than that, they have a tendency to do that, don't they? My oldest turned 36 in December. I'm like what 36? That would mean never mind.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly Exactly. You know, I worked for many of those years just doing so many great things and I don't regret being the age I am, because I just know that I have been able to do so many good things, I've got so many people I've got to meet and so many lessons I've gotten to learn over time.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes. So what kind of nonprofits did you work for?
Speaker 2:So I'll start my very first job. I worked for Neiman Marcus.
Speaker 2:I did PR for Neiman Marcus, that's not a nonprofit yeah, that's not a nonprofit at all and my husband and I moved to Corpus Christi, where he was from, and there was no Neiman's there. So I had to figure out how I could use the skills that I learned at Neiman's and do something different. And the one thing I knew, as I knew how to plan events. So, you know, I started working in the nonprofit sector. So, you know, I started working in the nonprofit sector and I quickly learned that you could just go to almost any nonprofit and and you could fall in love with their mission. And so that is why I had to come up with what my personal mission is, so that it could help me choose the organizations that I wanted to work with. I say all that to say that every mission, every organization I worked for, was aligned with my own personal mission, as you mentioned to be a change agent for joy, harmony and peace.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:My first position I was with American Diabetes. I did American Diabetes and help people who are kids especially, find happiness and find content with what they were going through Not even content, but, you know, find a place to thrive. We used to do camps for them. And then I had an opportunity to be executive director for an organization that's now defunct. It's called National Conference for Community and Justice, and our mission was to fight bias, bigotry and racism and teach respect and understanding among all races, religions and cultures, and that's where the harmony came in.
Speaker 2:You know I was about creating harmony and so at that, at that point, I really leaned into the harmony piece and inclusion. So did a variety of different things, helped found a nonprofit that came out of the Junior League of Austin and we became our own nonprofit and that helped Hispanic women especially get into higher education. Our mission was to increase the representation of Hispanics in higher education. I worked for University of Texas in their business school. In my last position I had an opportunity to work for Blue Cross, blue Shield of Texas and was the COO of their foundation, and I was helping people who didn't have access to health care, especially children, get their essential care, such as immunizations so that they could thrive and be able to grow and make it happen.
Speaker 1:They're like yeah, there's some really timely things in there we won't go into that, no, but I mean it's such a wealth of experience and that's freaking amazing, but that's time consuming, right? I mean that's not really. Those types of jobs are not really nine to five. That's not really those types of jobs are not really nine to five. We talked about you quitting your nine to fives and I noticed on your website you say nine to five ish, exactly, exactly, especially when we were in Corpus Christi.
Speaker 2:Everywhere we went I saw donors, and so I our local grocery store is HEB shout out to HEB, and so every time I was HEB I would run into a donor, and so I always had to talk about what we were doing. You know so I was always on. I remember at a young age younger age than I am now when my son was you know less than he was still in preschool and my daughter was just born, I would literally come home from work, put some food on the table quickly, whatever I could come up with quick, and then go back on the computer and back at work. So you know, nonprofit sector is not a job that you can just leave at the end of the day, especially when you're executive director or in a senior leadership. It's there's.
Speaker 2:You know, we came from a place of scarcity in that space, and so it was very draining, and that's why, after 25 years of being on that hamster wheel of every every January or every August one, whenever that fiscal year started, we were back at zero, and so we had to recreate, come up with something new, and you know in the years that you did really good in fundraising. They're like awesome, that's amazing. Now you're going to increase that by 20%.
Speaker 1:Do it again.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So it wasn't like, okay, we're gonna increase our number of, like, what we were budgeted for, but it's like, no, but the number you did, we're going to increase that. So yeah, so it was just kind of a hamster wheel and pressure.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and a lot of things, that at the end of the day, I just felt like I didn't want people to feel like I did. And so the burnout is real in the nonprofit sector and the expectations are strong and we're, all you know, most nonprofit people. We come from a place of wanting to give, wanting to be kind, wanting to improve our world, and it becomes such a part of who you are that it's hard to leave it behind. So that's one of the reasons why I wanted to coach, because I wanted to help people know you are not your mission, you're not your organization. Not your mission, you're not your organization.
Speaker 2:Every time I went to any event I went to a fundraiser, the first thing I did was I ran over to who the donors are and checked out the donor wall. If I went to a play, I went to the donor wall Like, okay, who do I know, who do I need to get to know I can never be present and just being with my family, just being with my friends, because I always had that fundraiser hat on and you know, after a while it does take a toll on you.
Speaker 1:Sure, but now you broke with all that and you said I'm just going to focus on making people happy and fulfill their own dreams. Teach them how to do that.
Speaker 2:Yes, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:It's amazing what three weeks laid up in bed will do for you. Three months, three months, oh my.
Speaker 2:God Three months.
Speaker 1:I cannot imagine sitting in bed for three months. I am not a go-getter, but that's too much.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I was stubborn because I had friends. I had friends even before we left when we would announce this is what we're doing. We're both quitting our jobs, we're going to go travel and you know, so many people would say to me I have a dream and and I'm so envious because I'm not making it happen and you know, I the curiosity in me that I've always had. I was like well, what, what is it that's holding you back from wanting to reach your dream? And they were could never say the answer and it just broke my heart because I'm like you can make it happen, you can make the choices to make it happen.
Speaker 2:It's not like my husband and I were living an extravagant lifestyle. My husband was a state employee, I was in the nonprofit sector, and so we figured out how to do it. We knew what resources we needed. We figured out how to do it.
Speaker 2:So, between hearing that, the fact that people are like I have a dream and I don't know how to make it happen and you need to coach people on how to do it and seeing that there was a change in, I want to say guard in the nonprofit sector, but a lot of younger people are like I don't know if I want to go into that space and being one of the execs, because they saw us never getting off our computers working responding to emails at two o'clock in the morning, except I don't know that I really want to do that to emails at two o'clock in the morning, except I don't know that I really want to do that. And so you know, that's what I listened to my friends and like this is what you're good at. You're good at being curious, you're good at being opened and listening to people and without judgment, and you're good at just being present. For someone like, coaching is the answer. So that's how I fell into the coaching world.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and you are all of those things I can. I can. I can empathize with some of your friends, though, because my brother and his wife, they left on the 18th of December, they flew to Paris and they did one of those, those Desain River cruises, viking cruise.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And then they came home like the day after Christmas I'm like Christmas in Paris, oh my gosh and he'd send me pictures of food, which was really mean, I might add.
Speaker 2:The thing I hear so much is people want to travel, people want to explore, explore, people are curious about other cultures. You know, it's not just about just saying I've been there, but it's actually learning about people, um and being, you know, filling that curiosity bucket oh, absolutely I.
Speaker 1:I have a good friend, I've had her on the show, lisa Metwally, and she used to own a cafe in St Paul, minnesota. It was called the Q Kindness Cafe. It was kind of a natural, it was inevitable she was going to be on the show. But her other job, her day job, is flight attendant for Delta and so she gets to travel to all these amazing places. She just got back with her husband from Egypt and I'm just like now I mean part of that. Probably it's easier to travel when you can get a pass right when you work for the airline.
Speaker 2:But yeah, that's what people are doing. They're figuring out how to make it happen. And that's the key is understanding really what you want. Stop focusing on what you don't want and figure out what you want and then get creative to make it happen right so many of us are like I don't want to be poor, I don't want to work a 9 to 5 well.
Speaker 2:But when you say, what do you want to work, they can't answer that question. I don't want to be poor, I. I don't want to work a nine to five, well. But when you say, well, what do you want to work, they can't answer that question.
Speaker 1:I don't know.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And that's where the fun gets in. You know, that's what I love, cause I'm like let's get creative, let's, let's think outside the box to work for uh, for airlines, and they work for their travel, I mean that's what they work for yeah, I know my dad.
Speaker 1:My dad worked for northwest airlines not around anymore, delta swallowed up in the early 2000s. But as kids we had so many more opportunities. A lot of our other friends did right, took a trip up to New York one year and then drove from New York to Washington DC and then back. It's like who does that? I think we're 15. I was 15. My brother was 13 at the time. It was a great trip.
Speaker 2:What great memories you made.
Speaker 1:I know Fantastic. So let's go back to kindness for a second, though. You said something when we were talking and the phrase stuck with me, but I can't remember the context. And you said kindness is a secret bullet.
Speaker 2:Yes, I think kindness is a secret bullet to so many issues that are happening in our country right now.
Speaker 2:You know I've done a lot of research on it. One of my volunteer activities is I volunteer with a group called Actions and Happiness. They're based out of the UK and when I started looking at like where to volunteer my time, kindness kind of resonated on the top of the list One, because it's in part of, you know, my vision. You know, to be happy, to have joy, to have harmony and have inner peace. You got to be kind to people. So the things I found out in the research I have done is that kindness actually lowers our risk for cardiovascular issues. People who are kind have less cardiovascular issues. Nice People who are kind can lower their A1Cs.
Speaker 2:Research has shown people who are demonstrating kindness are building trust with their neighbors, things that we are not. We don't have as much anymore. We have high risk of heart attacks right now. Diabetes in Texas especially is at sky high. Um, and there's a, there's a lack of trust in our, in our communities and you know somebody actually just trying to remember who it was I've heard it now twice Um, people saying that trust is going to be the new currency.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And you have to be, you have to show kindness, to build trust yes and so I really believe that it is our new silver bullet to helping heal a lot of things that are just not working right now in society for sure, yeah, and, and there's a lot of them, um.
Speaker 1:But you know, the more I look around, the more I'm seeing kindness, and I think you really do have to look for it, right, I do. I mean, it's not just going to come up and slap you in the face someday and go, hey, I'm kindness, I'm out here, maybe it will, I don't know.
Speaker 2:And people don't want to talk about the things they do that are kind, as I'm sure you hear all the time.
Speaker 1:You know. But okay, that kind of goes both ways, because you do see those people who all they want to do is talk about and they're not genuine, right? You see, like the Mr Beasts of the world, and it's like I'm sure he's doing those kind of things, but is he doing it for the right reason? And that may be a whole other show, and it's like I, I'm sure he's doing those kind things, but is he doing it for the right reason? And that may be a whole other show go ahead.
Speaker 2:Well, I was gonna say is that, um, you know, in in my coaching, I talk about the fact that there's the joy recipe and kindness is embedded at each one of those. You know, I say in the joy recipe, you have to be, you have to be grateful. Well, that means that you have to be kind, right, you have to be able to look for those special things that happen in your world and so kindness shows up. Second thing that we, you know, we talk about in the joy recipe is we have to be connected with people and that means being kind, right, that means having that connection because we are meant to belong, and kindness is one of those ways to be able to connect with people.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, and that whole thing kind of took um, kind of took a hit during the pandemic right, Because we just weren't getting together and some people came out of that really, really wanting to get back into that and missing that. And people I'm not going to say who, because it might be me was like you know, I'm pretty good sitting here just talking to somebody like this. Um, I I started going to, I tried to start to go to a toastmasters event and I went once and I'm like it's too people-y here and you know I still go out, but like the Minnesota State Fair happens towards the end of August here, I absolutely had no desire to go stand around with about 5,000 other people crushed in. You know that did not. But yes, and I know you don't have to do that kind of big thing, but connection is absolutely paramount.
Speaker 2:You only need one other person to connect with somebody, right.
Speaker 2:Right, you mentioned how COVID changed connections. My neighborhood we had recently moved to a new neighborhood. My last child graduated, so we decided to pick up on life and try something different and it was so cool how our neighborhood leaned in to kindness, leaned in to kindness. We were all pretty new here. We all kind of felt disconnected, and I mean to the point where someone's like, okay, I'm braving going to the grocery store, we're walking distance to our grocery store, and so we were like, okay, who needs what?
Speaker 2:And so whoever was braving, their way to the grocery store that day would pick up stuff for everybody. Nice, we have a couple of restaurants in our neighborhood and they're the people who you know. They're distributors or whatever that people they got their produce from. Since they were not selling to the restaurants, they would sell their boxes of food you know, of vegetables um by through their truck and you could purchase a big, a big um box of food.
Speaker 1:That's a great idea.
Speaker 2:So literally what you know we, one of us would do is like hey, just bought a box, this is what I have. Um, you know, I have 15 turnips, you know parsnip, uh, you know five heads of lettuce. My family's not going to eat all that, and so we would literally just give it away and it kind of. And then someone was like oh, I'm going next week to get it, you know. So it kind of just felt that community.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Helped us trust each other.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And so you know there's other ways, there are many ways people handle.
Speaker 1:So many ways to connect.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and so yeah, and that's the key is just to figure out what can you do. That's kind to help you connect.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Because we, like I said, we were born to connect. We are born to belong.
Speaker 1:You know, we are social animals.
Speaker 2:Yeah, if you believe in the story of Adam Eve there were two people, not one, not one, you know. Think of Noah. You know, when Noah boarded, he knew that the animals needed to have their person, so he boarded two of every animal.
Speaker 1:Exactly, not one yeah, two, yeah yeah, absolutely, that's fantastic. So talk to me about your joyriders now. Yeah, those are your clients, right?
Speaker 2:Those are my clients. So, yes, so I always say that I have the luxury of getting to experience joy through my clients. My firm's called Mudita, which means the joy you receive from others' joy it's a Sanskrit word and I get to. They invite me to be a part of this journey for them to find joy in their life, and so I always picture myself. I'm like they're driving the car and I'm literally in the passenger seat Hopefully it's a convertible, because my hands, I want to go, I want to go high and I'm just joining the joy ride with them by just partnering with them and creating that space. And you know, we, we get clear on what they are wanting to do. We, we create small action plans, are that are they can see that they can turn that reality in. You know, just like my, the people who are like, oh, I have a dream, but I don't know how to do it. Well, we create an action plan so they can say, oh, well, huh, let's take care of that for you.
Speaker 2:That's not so far-fetched after all. We address our limiting beliefs, all the little messages in our heads that are like, yeah, this can't happen, and we celebrate the small momentums so that it lets us move forward. And along the way, we're incorporating the joy recipe, the other parts of it values, alignment. We talk about self-care, once again connections, and the joy recipe it's gratitude, it's values alignment, it's connections, it's self-care and then some kind of spirituality. What is the purpose of us being here? Whatever that is.
Speaker 1:Right, right. That's so fun, that's awesome. You have the best life and you teach people how to have their own best life and, in the process, be kind. I love that you got a wife from the nonprofit area, but then you went to work. You volunteered for a nonprofit.
Speaker 2:Definitely.
Speaker 1:yeah, you can take the nonprofit out of the girl, but you can't take the girl out of the nonprofit, right no?
Speaker 2:No, you know it's important to be part of helping our world be better. And you know we can't depend on businesses to do everything. We can't depend on the government to do everything. It's you know it's a tripod.
Speaker 1:It is.
Speaker 2:We have to have all three sectors in our society, and so I love that I get to do all three of them.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely. Wait a minute, Where's the government part?
Speaker 2:Well, my husband was a government employee. Okay, check that box. I feel like I served my time with that.
Speaker 1:Oh, Christine, it was so nice to have you on. Thank you so much for giving me a half hour to chat with you. It was the most easy conversation I think I've ever had.
Speaker 2:Well, it was so much fun getting to know you. Thank you so much for being part of a movement that is inspiring people to be kind, to think outside the box. Just one simple thing to do. I have a kindness bingo that I throw out once a year. I'm happy to include that where it's. You know it challenges you. What can you do kind every day? Can you make it a blackout over the course of a month to do simple things, simple things kind.
Speaker 1:You know what We've been talking about? Your business, and I guess I forgot to ask what is the name of your coaching business.
Speaker 2:Say thank you, it's Mudita.
Speaker 1:Mudita.
Speaker 2:Yeah, mudita, m-u-d-i-t-a Coaching Got it. The meaning of Mudita is the joy you receive from others' joy, and that's the best kind of joy.
Speaker 1:Oh, that was the Sanskrit work you were talking about.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's the best kind of joy and I think that has to do with you can feel mudita when you are connected with people, absolutely. You can feel mudita when you are showing kindness to people and seeing the reactions when you do something little like buying them a coffee in line, opening the door right when people are like, oh, I am being seen.
Speaker 1:That's simple kind acts and ask how you're doing and then really listen for the answer exactly and you feel it.
Speaker 2:You feel it back. You know kindness. Kindness is ways you know. Another statistic about kindness is that our blood pressure lowers when we're performing acts of kindness to each other.
Speaker 1:Yep, absolutely, that's so great.
Speaker 2:As somebody who just their blood pressure, just you know, got raised for some reason, I'm like I'm going to do more, more acts of kindness and try to get lower my blood pressure.
Speaker 1:I'll get that blood pressure down. Well, I will have a link to your, to your website, in the show notes. It was so awesome to talk to you. I really appreciate your time.
Speaker 2:Lovely meeting you. Thank you so much and keep up the amazing work.
Speaker 1:Thank you.
Speaker 2:Thank you, take care.
Speaker 1:I want to thank each and every one of you for taking time to listen to this episode with my guest, christine Kutnick. I really hope you're able to take something positive from the time you spent with us. Maybe you'll be inspired, maybe you'll be motivated, maybe you'll be moved. If you experienced any of those positive feelings, please consider sharing this podcast with your friends and family. Also, please feel free to follow us on our socials like Facebook, instagram, linkedin and TikTok. And you know what? If you're feeling really moved, maybe give us a review on whatever podcast platform that you listen to us on. That would be amazing and I would be so, so grateful.
Speaker 1:This podcast is part of the Mayday Media Network. If you have an idea for a podcast and need some production assistance, or have a podcast and are looking for a supportive network to join, check out maydaymedediaNetworkcom and check out the many different types of shows, like Afrocentric Spoil, my Movie Generation Mixtape In a Pickle Radio Show, wake Up and Dream with D Anthony Palin and Stacks Opaques. Also the Time Pals podcast. There are so many different podcasts there. I'm sure there will be one for you that you will enjoy and you just need to go and take a look at them all. In the meantime, we will be back again next week with a new episode and we would be honored if you would join us. You've been listening to the Kindness Matters podcast. I am your host, mike. Mike Raffin. Have a fantastic week.
