Kill ‘Em With Kindness (A Hunting Story with My Daughter)

If at all Possible, Remember to Kill ‘Em with Kindness

What's going on you guys? Today we're going to talk a little bit about a tool that you can use inside of your relationships when you come across some type of conflict or when somebody's maybe wronged you and you don't want to lose your values, but you also still want to be effective.

This skill comes off of the heels of an experience that I just had a couple of weeks ago with my daughter that I'd like to share. I took my daughter deer hunting for the first time ever. She wanted to go hunting. We went deer hunting. She's 12 years old. She's old enough to have a tag. We went out and we went hunting for a full week.

While we were hunting, we found a lot of deer but we didn't find any bucks and you can only shoot the bucks when you're hunting. Close to the last day of the hunt, we finally found a buck deer up on the mountainside, a little ways away. My daughter was so excited, she was almost like jumping. She was so excited, you could see her heart pounding through her, like the veins in her neck. She would have this little flash in her eyes. So excited, but we were a little bit too far away.

So, we hiked up a little bit further. We got to within range where she could actually, maybe, have a chance to be successful with this hunt—and then the deer went behind a tree and laid down. We couldn't see it so she didn't have a chance to finish completing the hunt.

While we were sitting there, we were all excited. We were talking. We knew we had a chance. There was about an hour and a half left of daylight and some other hunters came down the mountain close to us. They didn't see the deer, but they saw us because we were in the bright hunting orange that you wear when you go hunting. So, when they saw us, they turned around and looked up, and then they saw the deer. Then those hunters set up directly above us, about a hundred yards away, and waited for the deer to stand up. And when he stepped out, those hunters shot this deer that we've been hunting all day long.

On the inside, I was just fuming mad. I was so angry, but here I am with my daughter. I'm trying to teach her how to have a good experience in the outdoors. I'm trying to teach her to live a moral kind of code of life. She's just witnessed this deer that she's been hunting get taken from her by some other hunters.

Now what the hunters did wasn't necessarily illegal, but it was definitely what you would consider not good etiquette inside the hunting world. They basically set up right in front of somebody else who had already been there, and then they took that opportunity for my daughter.

So, my daughter sees this deer die. It rolls to the bottom of the hill. We're pretty close to it and I said, “Do you want to go see it? Since we hunted it, you might as well see the finished product.” And she said, “Yeah, Dad.”

So, we walked around to where the deer was at and the hunters were there. What I wanted to do was to just lay into those hunters and tell them how unethical it was and how mad I was at them. Instead, thanks to my daughter being there, I walked up and I said congratulations. We're excited for you.

I did let them know that we'd been hunting that deer all day. They kind of apologized for it, even though they weren't really that sad about it. My daughter sort of got teared up and I thought it's because she had just seen an animal die, but as we were walking away after talking to them, she told me, “Dad, I feel like I got cheated.”

I said, “You did. You did Paisley. What those guys did was not the right thing to do, but we can be kind to people. We can still let them know what we were doing and they knew they were in the wrong. We kindly let them know that we were offended by that and that it was your first year hunting. But we also said we're excited for you and both can be true at the same time.”

I think what we walked away with was, it actually ended up working out better for all of us because now my daughter has even more passion and more desire to be in the outdoors and to go hunting again. Those guys had some success. They also got some level of correction, but it came in a very kind and a very compassionate way. I walk away having taught my daughter a lesson and having kept my own morals without losing my gourd over something going wrong.

So, in your relationships right now, you may have particular relationships where there's a sticking point—where someone keeps doing something that annoys you or that bothers you. The tendency for us is to want to just fight fire with fire. We either want to just completely disappear or we want to actually go and have conflict with somebody, because it kind of feels good to have conflict. I'm not opposed to that sometimes, because it just kind of feels good to stand up for yourself.

But to be effective in relationships, we can sometimes pause. Use a skill called the half smile skill where we just kind of touch the tip of your tongue to the roof of your mouth and put a little bit of a smile on your face. Soften those muscles in your face and then think about how are you going to be effective at two things—conveying the message that you need to convey, while still keeping your morals and values. If you're willing to take a split second and make sure that you're willing to keep your own morals and values, it'll allow you to treat people as people, even if you don't feel like they deserve it in the moment. You can walk away with your head held high.

Challenge for you. If you've got a situation in your life right now that needs to be addressed because somebody's doing something that doesn't work for you, tap into your values. Go to them. Speak your values, but do it in a kind way with a smile on your face.

You guys have a great day.

Thank you so much for being here with me. If you found this to be valuable for you, please hit the like and subscribe button. If you're facing particular struggles that you need help with or roadblocks that you're running into, please submit a question. I'd be happy to answer it for you.