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Explore this practice to extend compassion to yourself, those around you, and the larger world.

In this compassion practice, there's no aim to force anything to happen. You cannot will yourself into particular feelings toward yourself or anyone else. Rather, the practice is simply to remind yourself that you deserve happiness and ease-no more and no less than anyone else-and that the same goes for your child, your family, your friends, your neighbors, and everyone else in the world. Everyone is driven by an inner desire to avoid suffering and find a measure of peace.

The practice is simply to remind yourself that you deserve happiness and ease-no more and no less than anyone else

As this practice becomes comfortable for you, you can use it to combat everyday stress. If you feel unmoored, lost, or pulled in different directions, take a moment to wish yourself peace, just as you'd comfort a friend.

A Practice to Foster Resilience

1. Find a comfortable stable position, either seated or lying down, and observe the next several breaths. Notice how you're feeling right now, while letting go of any sense of striving or effort to feel otherwise. You cannot force yourself to feel relaxed, non-judgemental, or anything else in particular. Let yourself feel whatever it is you feel right now.

2. Picture your child. Imagine what you most wish for him or her. This unbounded affection, deeper than any surface emotion, has traditionally been encompassed within four phrases: May you be happy. May you be healthy. May you feel safe. May you live your life with ease.

3. Use these phrases or any that capture your deepest wishes, and silently repeat them at a comfortable pace, timed to your breathing.

4. Continue repeating these wishes for your child, reminding yourself of your deepest intentions: "May you be happy. May you be healthy. May you feel safe. May you live your life with ease."

5. After several minutes, move on to yourself. Your inner critic, your voice of self judgment, may resist. Yet in spite of all your seeming mistakes, you have the same rights as anyone: "May I be happy. May I be healthy. May I feel safe. May I live my life with ease." Without any sort of demand, offer yourself the some wishes for well-being you extended to your child.

6. After several minutes, imagine a close friend or someone unconditionally supportive, a person for whom you have almost entirely positive feelings. This person also desires happiness, whether going through a stretch of relative ease or more acutely in need of your emotional support. If no one comes to mind, that's fine and quite common; just continue with the practice for yourself.

7. After a few minutes have passed, move on to a neutral person, a stranger, someone you see around but don't really know-maybe someone at a local store or gas station, or who works nearby. Extend the some wishes to this neutral person without judging whatever you actually feel or aiming to push yourself. You're simply paying attention in this way.

8. Now think of a difficult person-not the most difficult, but someone you've disagreed with in a smaller way. Your perspectives differ and you must firmly take care of yourself, yet this difficult person's actions are also driven by a wish for happiness. If this person found relief from his own suffering, it's likely that his behavior would change. If it's easier, include yourself: "May we both be happy. May we both be healthy. May we both feel safe. May we both live our lives with ease."

9. Next, picture your entire family for a while: "May all of us be happy. May all of us be healthy. May all of us feel safe. May we all live our lives with ease."

10. Finally, if you like, extend the same wishes to everyone in this world. In an unforced way, send this compassionate wish for well-being to anyone you imagine, anywhere.

Reprinted with permission: New Harbinger Publications, Inc. Copyright © 2015 by Mark Bertin, from Mindful Parenting for ADHD

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A Loving-Kindness Meditation to Cultivate Resilience - Mindful

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Explore this practice to extend compassion to yourself, those around you, and the larger world. In this compassion practice, there's no aim to force anything to happen. You cannot will yourself into particular feelings toward yourself or anyone else.

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When I talk to people about self-compassion, their first reaction is often one of concern or disbelief. They think that being kind to themselves will make them weak or complacent; they believe that self-criticism keeps them accountable or improves their performance; and they worry that letting go of the habit of self-criticism will somehow render them less capable. What they don't know is that the opposite is true: beating themselves up and holding themselves accountable to unattainable standards are actually very likely to undermine their performance.

Recent research indicates that self-criticism predicts depression, avoidance behaviors (such as trying to avoid failure), loss of self-esteem, negative perfectionism (maladaptive perfectionism, the unhelpful perfectionism that doesn't drive us toward better performance but, rather, toward shame and anxiety), procrastination, and rumination. Ultimately, self-criticism compromises your goals and undermines your pursuits, whether they are academic, health related, personal, or professional.

Ultimately, self-criticism compromises your goals and undermines your pursuits, whether they are academic, health related, personal, or professional.

Self-compassion engenders resilience; it empowers you to be nimble and flexible, and gives you the ability to identify problems, accept negative feedback from others, and change habits that no longer serve you. (In Silicon Valley parlance, it enables you to "pivot.") This type of openness to change and resilience to setbacks helps you grow, learn, form good habits, and, ultimately, be more successful.

Four ways to practice self-care at work

Practicing self-compassion is as important as applying compassion to others. When feeling self-compassion becomes challenging, try the following approaches:

1. Use lunch as an act of self-care. When you eat, take a moment to notice this nourishment you're giving yourself. You have the power to choose to eat something that makes you feel good. Bonus: research shows that when you make a healthy food choice, noticing the positive feelings this gives you serves to reinforce the behavior, making you more likely to choose healthy foods the next time.

2. Remember that, just like you, we all feel like frauds. When you find yourself in self-deprecation mode, calling yourself names, telling yourself that you can't do something well enough, and generally being a bully to yourself, remember that most people suffer from this "imposter syndrome," the feeling that we are just pretending, that we don't really belong, that we will be found out, that our true inadequacy will become obvious to the people around us, who are, for some reason, being tricked for the time being. The fact is that everyone you work with, no matter how self-assured they seem, experiences self-doubt. This is the human condition. And these are just thoughts, so you don't have to believe them.

3. Be a friend to yourself. As corny as that may sound, it's a trick my business school students have found incredibly useful. When you notice you're being hard on yourself over a problem, imagine a dear friend coming to you with the same problem. How would you respond? How would you offer support? What would you say? How would you regard your friend? Now try giving these responses to yourself.

4. Ask for help. Many of us are caught up in the idea that we need to "be a professional," which we equate as being stoic, handling things on our own. In this mind-set, we don't think to ask for kindness or validation. In fact, we would likely refuse to accept it. Over time, though, this "I've got this" attitude begins to wear thin, and we realize we can't do our jobs alone. Experiment with giving someone else the chance to support you. If this is a completely foreign idea to you, then I suggest you do it even more. People like to help! Think of how you feel when you get to help others. Helping people makes us feel good about ourselves and connected to others. So, instead of defaulting to "No, thanks" or "It's okay, I'm fine" when someone offers you something, try saying yes. It took until I had my third child to be willing to allow a friend to put together a meal delivery list, because I was unwilling to ask for help. It was a breakthrough experience for me, and when I went back to work, I found that I was better able to ask for help when I felt overwhelmed by things, such as constructing the lab notebooks for my class. In that case, an administrative assistant happily stepped in and enjoyed the process.
HOW WE WORK" by Leah Weiss. Reprinted here with permission from Harper Wave, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers

This brief animation from Ted-Ed connects self-doubt with high performance and explains three ways you can combat it. Read More

An in-the-moment exercise for confronting the nagging voice in your head. Read More

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Four Self-Care Habits to Practice at Work - Mindful

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We are our own worst critic - and it could be holding us back in the workplace. Here are four ways to stop being so hard on ourselves and use simple moments during the day to wind down when we feel overwhelmed.

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Time Required

7 minutes daily

How to Do It

This practice draws on a guided meditation created by Eve Ekman Ph.D., LCSW, senior fellow at the Greater Good Science Center.

We recommend listening to the audio of this guided meditation in the player below. We have included a script of the practice to help you follow it yourself or teach it to others.
Body Position
For this practice, it's especially important that we find a comfortable position. This may be easiest lying down or seated.

To help us focus and gain some initial stability, let's bring our attention and awareness to the breath at the belly. Inhale, noticing sensations of breath. Exhale, noticing sensations of breath, as the belly rises and falls.

[30 seconds of silence]
Receiving Loving-Kindness
We'll now shift into this practice of joy, by bringing to mind someone who we really believe has our best interests in their heart. Someone who has extended kindness and support to us. This could be someone we know now or someone from the past. A friend, family member, teacher, colleague.

Choose just one person and bring them to mind as though they were seated right in front of you. Smiling at you.

Imagine them truly wishing for you to be happy, fulfilled. For you to have a life that is flourishing. Imagine them beaming this towards you in their smile, in their eyes. And with your next breaths, inhale and draw in that intention of goodness.

In meditation and visualization practices, we have an opportunity to generate positive emotional states right here and now that we might experience in the world were this person really next to us. Simply through our mind and imagination, it's as though we can call upon this valuable resource right here, right now. So for a couple more breaths, really take in this wish of well, happiness, joy from this person who cherishes us.

[15 seconds of silence]
Sending Loving-Kindness to Loved Ones
Now letting go of the image of this person, notice if in the body there is any emotional residue. Feelings of warmth or goodness. Ways we can identify what it's like to receive this wish of happiness. Then relax into these sensations and feelings for just a couple breaths.

[15 seconds of silence]

With this feeling of support and happiness, we can now extend this boost of joy to others. Bring to mind someone in your life who could really use an extra boost-a friend, family member, or colleague. And, again, bring them to mind vividly as though they were right in front of you.

And without too many stories, or thoughts, or ideas-just call upon this experience of wishing this person to be truly happy, fulfilled, joyful. As you inhale, draw in this intention. And as you exhale, wish this person happiness, fulfillment, flourishing.

Twice more-inhale, drawing in this intention. And then exhale, sending out.

[15 seconds of silence]

Release the image of this person. And once again, just notice the sensations in your own body associated with wishing someone else well, generating and extending joy.

Let's bring this practice to a close with three long inhales and three long exhales.

Why You Should Try It

Practicing kindness is one of the most direct routes to happiness: Research suggests that kind people tend to be more satisfied with their relationships and with their lives in general. We all have a natural capacity for kindness, but sometimes we don't take steps to nurture and express this capacity as much as we could.

Loving-kindness meditation (sometimes called "metta" meditation) is a great way to cultivate our propensity for kindness. It involves mentally sending goodwill, kindness, and warmth towards others by silently repeating a series of mantras.

Why It Works

Loving-kindness meditation increases happiness in part by making people feel more connected to others-to loved ones, acquaintances, and even strangers. Research suggests that when people practice loving-kindness meditation regularly, they start automatically reacting more positively to others-and their social interactions and close relationships become more satisfying. Loving-kindness meditation can also reduce people's focus on themselves-which can, in turn, lower symptoms of anxiety and depression.

Evidence That It Works

Fredrickson, B. L., Cohn, M. A., Coffey, K. A., Pek, J., & Finkel, S. M. (2008). Open hearts build lives: Positive emotions, induced through loving-kindness meditation, build consequential personal resources. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 95, 1045-1062.

People who practiced Loving-Kindness Meditation daily for seven weeks reported a steady increase in their daily experience of positive emotions, such as joy, gratitude, contentment, hope, and love. They also reported greater life satisfaction and lower depressive symptoms following the intervention, compared to when they started. People who were on a waitlist to learn the practice didn't report these benefits.
Who Has Tried The Practice?
Participants in the above study were mostly white, held bachelor's degrees, and had a median annual income of over $85,000. Additional research has engaged members of other groups:

Israeli adults who attended seven 90-minute weekly classes on Loving-Kindness Meditation and were asked to practice daily "showed significant reductions in self‐criticism and depressive symptoms as well as significant increases in self‐compassion and positive emotions" compared to those on a waitlist.

For university freshmen in China, 30 minutes of Loving-Kindness Meditation three times a week for four weeks enhanced positive emotions, decreased negative emotions, and improved interpersonal interactions.

Singaporean individuals with clinically significant symptoms of borderline personality disorder showed reduced negative emotions and feelings of rejection after 10 minutes of Loving-Kindness Meditation.

Japanese individuals increased in self-compassion and decreased in negative thoughts and emotions after a seven-week program that included Loving-Kindness Meditation, Mindful Breathing, and self-compassion exercises.

University students in South Korea experienced reductions in self-criticism and psychological distress, along with improvements in self-reassurance and mental health, after participating in a six-week program that included Loving-Kindness Meditation, Body Scan, and Mindful Breathing.

Female trauma survivors of interpersonal violence (41% non-white) in an American substance abuse treatment and housing program experienced significant reductions in mental health symptoms across a six-week meditation program that included two weeks of Loving-Kindness Meditation for an hour every day.

Arabic- and Bangla-speaking migrants in Australia experienced reductions in depression, anxiety, and stress after a bilingual group mindfulness program that included Loving-Kindness Meditation, Body Scan, and Mindful Breathing.

Loving-Kindness Meditation is one of the practices included in Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR). Developed by Jon Kabat-Zinn and based on Buddhist teachings, MBSR is a six- to 10-week program that teaches various mindfulness techniques through weekly sessions and homework assignments. Research suggests that MBSR benefits the mental health of various groups, including the following:

People in different cultures and countries, such as bilingual Latin-American families, university students in China, disadvantaged families in Hong Kong, low-income cyclo drivers in Vietnam, males with generalized anxiety disorder in Iran, Indigenous people in the Republic of Congo, and Aboriginal Australians.

Women around the world, including pregnant women in China, rural women in India who experienced still-birth, at-risk women in Iran, Muslim women college students in the United Arab Emirates, American survivors of intimate partner violence, and socioeconomically disadvantaged Black women with post-traumatic stress disorder.

People with certain diseases, such as New Zealanders with rheumatoid arthritis, male patients with heart disease in India, patients with diabetes in South Korea, cancer patients in Canada, breast cancer survivors in China, and HIV-positive individuals in Toronto, San Francisco, Iran, and South Africa.

More research is needed to explore whether, and how, the impact of this practice extends to other groups and cultures.

Keep in Mind

A 2015 study found that MBSR "improved depressive symptoms regardless of affiliation with a religion, sense of spiritually, ... sex, or age." However, other studies suggest that MBSR may not benefit everyone equally:

References

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Kabat-Zinn, J., & Hanh, T. N. (2009). Full catastrophe living: Using the wisdom of your body and mind to face stress, pain, and illness. Delta.

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Loving-kindness meditation invites us to cultivate warm feelings of love and kindness toward increasingly distant people, and ultimately all living creatures. How concerned are you about your community, your fellow citizens, and all of mankind? Take the Connection to Humanity quiz to find out.

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Loving-Kindness Meditation (Greater Good in Action)

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Strengthen feelings of kindness and connection toward others.

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The Space Between Self-Esteem and Self Compassion: Kristin Neff at TEDxCentennialParkWomen

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Discover the power of self-compassion with Kristin Neff. Join our community and explore the benefits of practicing self-compassion together.

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Man gives free hugs to riot police & protesters in Charlotte (RAW)

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STRAIGHT OUTTA COMPTON - HUG THA POLICE - FREE HUGS

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r/aww - Little boy lends a helping hand to bunny statue. Heart warming!

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r/aww: Things that make you go AWW! Like puppies, bunnies, babies, and so on... A place for really cute pictures and videos!