Donna Cameron Encourages Sammamish Rotary to Choose Kindness

At our July 9 lunch meeting, the Rotary Club of Sammamish welcomed author Donna Cameron for a timely conversation about kindness, its benefits, and the choices that help us practice it in everyday life.

Donna is the author of A Year of Living Kindly: Choices That Will Change Your Life and the World Around You. Her work began as a personal commitment to explore what it would mean to live more kindly for one year. That project eventually became a book and, as she told our members, a lifelong practice.

One of Donna’s central messages was that both kindness and incivility can spread from person to person. When we experience or witness kindness, we are more likely to carry it into our next interaction. That gives each of us a choice about what we contribute to our workplaces, families, roads, neighborhoods, and online conversations.

Donna also acknowledged that kindness is not always easy. Fear, busyness, distraction, judgment, and the habit of keeping score can all get in the way. Kindness requires awareness and practice, especially when our patience is tested.

She offered several practical ways to strengthen that practice. We can pause before reacting, assume good intent, replace quick judgments with curiosity, pay closer attention to the people around us, and learn to accept kindness graciously when someone extends it to us.

Her reminder to pause connected naturally with Rotary’s Four-Way Test. A pause gives us a chance to consider whether our response is truthful, fair, beneficial, and likely to build goodwill.

Donna summed up kindness with two words: “Extend yourself.” Kindness is more than being pleasant. It asks us to make a genuine connection, accept some vulnerability, and consider what another person may need.

We are grateful to Donna for joining us and reminding us that small acts matter. Holding a door, allowing another driver to merge, offering encouragement, listening patiently, or giving someone the benefit of the doubt can create ripples far beyond a single interaction.

Learn more about Donna and her book: A year of Living Kindly 

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