This as-told-to essay was submitted to The Growing Home by Lila R. and edited lightly for clarity and flow.
I used to feel awkward when people said I had a beautiful soul. I would laugh, look down at my coffee and change the subject. The compliment felt too big for me. I was a regular woman buying oat milk at Trader Joe’s in Chicago, texting my friend Nina back too late and trying to make rent work when life got expensive. I did not wake up one day and decide I wanted to become the kind of person people described that way.
What I did want was simpler. I wanted my relationships to feel safe. I wanted people I loved to breathe easier around me. I wanted to stop leaving conversations with that sour feeling that I had performed well but failed to really connect. If you have ever felt that too, you probably know how strange it is. You can be charming, efficient, even helpful and still leave very little warmth behind.
I remember one rainy evening in Andersonville when a friend sat across from me at a small coffee shop and said, “You know why people trust you? They feel calmer after talking to you.” That stayed with me longer than any flashy compliment. Calm is intimate. Calm means your presence gives someone room to be fully human.
It took me a long time to realize that what people call a beautiful soul often comes down to small relational habits. These habits look quiet from the outside. They rarely get applause. They show up in how you listen, how you thank people, how you carry your own pain and how you treat someone after they can do nothing for you.
So this is the truth as I have lived it. My life changed through ordinary choices. I learned them in city apartments, on long walks by Lake Michigan, in checkout lines at Target, in hard talks with family and in the kind of friendships that survive grief and distance. You do not need a grand reinvention to grow a presence people experience as warm, grounded and deeply good. You need practice, honesty and the courage to become softer in a loud world.
1. I learned to listen before I tried to be heard
I remember when I thought being a good conversationalist meant being interesting. I had stories ready. I had opinions polished. At dinners in Wicker Park or during work lunches downtown, I would listen just enough to find my opening. I sounded engaged and yet people rarely opened up to me in a deep way.
Then my friend David went through a breakup and asked if I could meet him at a diner near Lincoln Square. I sat down ready with advice. He looked wrecked, stirred his coffee for a full minute and said, “Can you just let me talk for a second?” That sentence hit me harder than he knew. I realized I had been treating conversation like a relay race when some moments ask for a quiet bench.
From there, I started paying attention to active listening. Real listening has a body language to it. You slow down. You stop loading your next point into the chamber. You let silence stay in the room long enough for truth to arrive. When you do that, people often say more than they expected to say.
Stanford psychologist Jamil Zaki puts it beautifully through the idea to listen first. He says, “If you want somebody else to listen to you, one of the best things that you can do is to listen to them first.” I felt that in my bones when I read it. Listening creates a bridge. It lowers defenses. It tells the other person, without saying it outright, that their inner world matters here.
Years ago, I would leave conversations wondering whether I had impressed someone. Now I leave asking whether they felt seen. That shift changed my friendships, my dating life and even my relationship with my mother. You can hear the difference in a room. One kind of presence takes up space. The other kind of presence makes space.
If you want to practice this, start small. Ask one more follow-up question than usual. Wait two beats before answering. Let someone finish their thought all the way to the bottom. Being deeply heard is one of the rarest forms of care many people receive all week.
2. I asked more questions than I answered
There was a time when I believed warmth came from saying the right thing. I wanted to offer insight, comfort, or a clever line that tied everything together. But the thing is, people rarely need you to become the hero of their moment. They need room to hear themselves.
I learned this in Austin during a visit with my cousin Marissa. We sat outside a neighborhood bakery while she talked about whether to leave a job that looked perfect on paper and felt hollow in real life. My old self would have jumped in with a five-point plan. Instead, I asked, “When do you feel most like yourself?” She went quiet, then started crying. That question opened more than any advice could have.
Questions have a gentle power. They invite reflection without control. They help people feel respected because you are trusting that they carry some wisdom already. A good question says, I am with you while you find your footing. That is one reason curiosity feels like love when it is sincere.
I admit I still enjoy giving advice. I am a big sister and that instinct lives in my bones. But I have learned to lead with questions that soften the ground first. What feels hardest right now? What are you afraid will happen? What would relief look like? Those questions help people name what is real and naming something is often the first step toward healing.
If you try this in your own life, you may notice something surprising. People remember how you asked, not only what you said. They remember the pause, the patience and the feeling that they did not have to perform. Quiet wisdom often sounds less like a speech and more like a thoughtful question asked at the right time.
3. I stopped treating softness like weakness
I grew up admiring toughness. In my family, you kept going. You got practical. You did what had to be done. There was love in that style, but there was also a fear of tenderness. Softness seemed risky, especially in the parts of life where people disappoint you.
My view changed after a hard stretch in Seattle when I was juggling freelance work, a family health scare and a breakup that flattened me more than I expected. I kept trying to power through. Then one morning, while sitting in my parked car outside a Safeway, I started crying before I could even turn off the engine. That was my body telling me the strong face had run out.
Softness gave me a different kind of strength. It helped me tell the truth sooner. It helped me say, “I am hurt,” before resentment turned thick and bitter. It helped me comfort a friend without trying to fix her. And it helped me stop confusing emotional distance with maturity.
Researcher Kristin Neff has written about self-compassion in a way that made me feel seen. She says, “Self-compassion refers to the ability to be kind and understanding toward oneself when faced with personal inadequacies or difficult situations.” That line matters because softness starts inside. When you speak to yourself with contempt, it eventually leaks into your relationships. When you practice inner gentleness, you become safer for other people too.
My friend Elena once told me I had become easier to be around after that season. At first I laughed. Then I understood what she meant. I had stopped performing invincibility. I could hold my own feelings without shame, which made me less defensive and more open. Softness with a backbone is one of the strongest energies a person can carry.
4. I thanked people while the moment was still alive
I used to save gratitude for later. I assumed people already knew how much they mattered to me. I thought there would be time for the thoughtful text, the handwritten note, or the long overdue thank-you over brunch. Life teaches you quickly that later is a fragile plan.
One winter, a former manager named Sarah left our company. She had defended me in a meeting months earlier and that moment changed my confidence more than she probably realized. I almost let her leave with a generic goodbye. Instead, I wrote her a real note and slipped it onto her desk before I caught the Brown Line home. She emailed me that night and said she cried reading it on the train.
That moment sent me down a rabbit hole of research on gratitude. In an NIH piece on gratitude practice, Dr. Judith T. Moskowitz says, “By practicing these skills, it will help you cope better with whatever you have to cope with.” I love that because gratitude does more than improve manners. It trains your attention. You begin to notice support while life is still unfolding.
Behavioral scientists Amit Kumar and Nicholas Epley also found something I wish more of us understood. In research summarized through the value of gratitude letters, Kumar said, “It suggests that thoughts about how competently people can express their gratitude may be a barrier to expressing gratitude more often in everyday life.” That landed for me immediately. Many of us stay silent because we want our words to come out perfectly.
But boy, was I wrong to wait for perfect phrasing. Most people do not need a polished speech. They need sincerity while the memory is still warm. They need to hear, “You helped me,” “I remember that kindness,” or “You mattered during a hard season.” Expressed appreciation strengthens both the giver and the receiver.
So now I try to say it in the moment. I thank the barista who remembered my order at Blue Bottle when I was having a rough week. I text friends after dinner and tell them I got home feeling lighter. I write the note, send the message, make the call. Gratitude grows strongest when it is alive and moving.
5. I got gentler with myself in hard seasons
I used to believe self-criticism kept me sharp. If I pushed myself hard enough, I thought I would become better, kinder, more disciplined, more successful. What actually happened was much messier. I became tired, touchy and harder to please. You cannot create a peaceful presence from a mind that is constantly under attack.
I remember when my father was recovering from surgery and I was trying to be useful to everyone. I missed deadlines. I forgot birthdays. I snapped at a friend in a way that did not sound like me. Then I went home and made myself the villain of the entire month. That habit was old and it never once made me wiser.
Self-kindness gives you room to recover faster. It helps you take responsibility without drowning in shame. When you can say, “I am struggling and I still deserve care,” you move through pain with more honesty. That honesty makes you easier to trust because other people feel less judged around you.
Kristin Neff’s words stayed with me for exactly this reason. Kindness toward yourself changes the emotional climate of your whole life. It becomes easier to apologize. It becomes easier to ask for help. And it becomes easier to offer grace to the people around you when they are clumsy, tired, or scared.
If you are in a hard season, try speaking to yourself the way you would speak to someone you love at a kitchen table after midnight. Keep the tone warm. Keep the truth clear. Self-respect under stress has a quiet beauty to it because it creates steadiness and steadiness travels into every relationship you have.
6. I let small kindness become part of my routine
For a long time, I imagined kindness as something dramatic. I pictured grand gestures, big sacrifices, or cinematic moments where you change someone’s day in one sweep. Real life taught me a more useful lesson. Kindness works best when it becomes ordinary.
My neighborhood helped teach me that. In Chicago, I watched a man hold the door for a mother with a stroller at the post office. I watched an older woman at Jewel-Osco talk gently to a cashier who looked exhausted. I watched my neighbor Luis shovel a strip of sidewalk that was not his because he knew people would walk there before sunrise. None of this was flashy. All of it made the block feel more human.
Small kindness changes the emotional weather around you. It lowers friction. It gives other people a chance to unclench. When I began treating kindness as a daily practice, I became more attentive. I noticed when someone looked left out at a birthday dinner. I noticed when a server seemed overwhelmed. I noticed who always checked in on others and who rarely got checked on in return.
Years ago, I kept a private challenge for one month. Every day I would do one simple thing with no announcement attached. I left encouraging notes, returned shopping carts that were not mine, sent voice memos instead of dry texts and brought soup to a sick friend in Logan Square. That month changed me because everyday kindness trained my attention away from myself.
You do not need more charisma to leave a warm impression on people. You need follow-through. Hold the elevator. Remember the detail. Refill the water glass. Check on the quiet person in the room. Repeated kindness becomes part of your character and people can feel that long before they have words for it.
7. I cared about how people felt after they left me
One of the most important questions I ask myself now is simple. How do people feel after spending time with me? Do they feel smaller, rushed and slightly off balance? Or do they feel clearer, steadier and more like themselves?
I did not always ask that. In my twenties, I focused on whether I had been liked. That kept my attention on performance. I wanted to seem smart, fun and memorable. Those are normal desires and yet they can pull you away from the deeper work of relational care.
My friend once told me after a rough dinner party, “Everyone looked drained when they left and nobody could explain why.” I knew exactly what she meant. Some gatherings are full of subtle interruptions, one-upmanship, gossip, or emotional carelessness. There may be no big blow-up, but the room still leaves a residue.
An NIH article on social bonds helped me name what I had felt for years. Dr. Valerie Maholmes says, “We can’t underestimate the power of a relationship in helping to promote well-being.” That line matters because your presence can support well-being in tiny ways. A warm response, a respectful disagreement, a soft place for someone’s nerves to land, these things count.
I started changing how I moved through conversations. I stopped teasing people in ways that drew laughs but left a sting. I became more careful with sarcasm. I paid attention to who had spoken and who had been talked over. I also learned that emotional safety is built through tone as much as words.
If you carry this question into your own life, it can change everything. After the call, after the date, after the family dinner, ask yourself what energy you left behind. Relational warmth has a very practical shape. It helps people leave with dignity intact.
8. I stopped needing credit for every good thing I did
I will be honest, this one took the longest. I liked being seen as helpful. I liked being appreciated for remembering birthdays, organizing plans, or showing up in a crisis. Some of that came from generosity. Some of it came from ego. Untangling those threads was humbling.
There was a time when I would feel quietly irritated if I helped and nobody mentioned it. I did not always say anything, but I felt the heat of it. Then I started asking myself a harder question. Did I want to do good, or did I want to be seen doing good? The answer was uncomfortable and it helped me grow up.
When you loosen your grip on credit, your kindness gets lighter. You stop keeping score. You stop building little private cases in your mind about all the ways you showed up. You begin to act from values instead of applause. That shift brings a kind of peace I did not expect.
I remember dropping off groceries for a neighbor in my building during a brutal February cold snap. She thanked me quickly and rushed inside because her toddler was melting down. Ten years earlier, I might have felt overlooked. That day I just walked home through the slush, pulled my scarf tighter and felt calm. The good had already happened. It did not need a spotlight.
You can still enjoy appreciation. I certainly do. We are human and being thanked feels good. But quiet integrity grows when your actions match your values even in the absence of recognition. In my experience, that is one of the deepest traits people are reaching for when they call someone’s soul beautiful. They are feeling the peace of a person who no longer needs every kind act reflected back at them.