Steve Carell wants young people to foster a “simple” soft skill — something “we need more of in the world,” he said in a commencement speech at Northwestern University on June 15: being kind and respectful to others.
Kindness can go a long way in life, the actor and comedian said. It can open doors to new opportunities, allow you to foster deeper connections with your colleagues and help you weather the fear and uncertainty that can come with starting a new chapter in life, he said.
“It’s difficult for me to process just how much you’ve all experienced in your young lives,” Carell, 62, told the school’s graduating class. “I feel your anxiety and your fears about the world around you and it’s heartbreaking to me. Remember the little things, like being kind and that you’re not alone.”
“Take care of one another,” he added. “Remember to laugh when you have the opportunity and to cry when necessary.”
Carell has a longstanding public reputation as one of the nicer actors in Hollywood. “His niceness manifests itself mostly in the fact that he never complains. You could screw up a handful of takes outside in 104-degree smog-choked Panorama City heat, and Steve Carell’s final words before collapsing of heat stroke would be a friendly and hopeful, ‘Hey, you think you have that shot yet?'” former co-star Mindy Kaling wrote in her 2011 book, “Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?
The relationships Carell cultivated with his fellow actors led to job offers and increased responsibility behind the scenes: Will Ferrell and Judd Apatow reportedly both enjoyed working with Carell so much on the movie “Anchorman” that Ferrell offered him a role in “Talladega Nights,” and Apatow cast him and made him a co-writer in “The 40-Year-Old Virgin.”
Outside of Hollywood, some other bosses do specifically look for kindness in their workers. Suzy Welch, a three-time New York Times bestselling author and New York University management professor, says she values employees who can give feedback by combining candor with empathy and kindness.
Acts of kindness like volunteering, donating money and helping strangers more often can lead to healthier, more fulfilling lives, some happiness experts say. “These things are very strongly correlated with improving one’s own life satisfaction, one’s own well-being,” Jan-Emmanuel De Neve, director of the Wellbeing Research Centre at the University of Oxford, told CNBC Make It on May 29.
Kindness is a “dynamic and a virtuous cycle in the sense that, if you’re being virtuous and helping others and being kind to others, that obviously helps the receiving party, but it also helps you,” De Neve said.
On the other hand, being jealous or envious of others is a direct “enemy of kindness,” and can lead to competition, insecurity, reduced empathy for others, Carell warned.
“Envy comes from ignorance and lack of belief in your own gifts,” he said. “Turn your jealousy into admiration and use it to fuel your ambition in a positive way.”
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