Podcast Episode 113
Deep Kindness: Practices for a Compassionate World

with our guest: Houston Kraft

Houston Kraft is the author of Deep Kindness: A Revolutionary Guide for the Way We Think, Talk, and Act in Kindness. He has spent the last decade visiting more than 600 schools and events worldwide to speak about empathy, compassion, and kindness. Houston is the Founder of CharacterStrong, an organization that teaches leadership through the lens of compassion. Together with his team at CharacterStrong, Houston has created curriculums and training that serve more than 2,500 schools across 50 states, nine countries, and over a million students.

Houston joins me today to explore the skills we need to develop to create a more compassionate world. He discusses the factors that hinder us from being kind and how we can overcome them. He highlights the importance of bringing empathy into acts of kindness and shares his “To Be List.” He also defines what deep kindness is, differentiates it from what he calls “confetti kindness,” explains why the distinction matters, and discusses how we can develop deep kindness for others and ourselves.


“The practice of deep kindness is a disciplined pursuit. It must become part of our rituals, routines, and habits.” – Houston Kraft

Show Notes

This week on The School for Good Living Podcast:

  • Building human connection through physical touch
  • Why deep kindness is an urgent priority in the world
  • Harvard’s Making Caring Common Project and what the rhetoric-reality gap is
  • Weakness of the will and its relationship with our lack of kindness in the world
  • The difference between “confetti kindness” and “deep kindness”
  • The challenges of deep kindness and how we can cultivate it more
  • The pitfalls of doing acts of kindness without empathy
  • The three major things that prevent us from being kind
  • The power of emotional regulation and transforming anger
  • How emotional intelligence and skills shape human behavior
  • Houston’s “To Be” List and the qualities that make deep kindness unconditional
  • How shame and fear of embarrassment prevent us from connection and kindness
  • How we can be more kind to ourselves
  • How Houston conceptualized Deep Kindness and the approach he took to complete it

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