This is the third post in the series on Your Precious Life. Here’s Part One and Part Two. In it we’ll find the new strength you can uncover through Being For Yourself.

Let’s begin with another practice, similar to the one we did in the last post. But this time we’ll focus inward, and bring that same compassion and support into ourselves.

Settle into your seat. Bring to mind a sense of yourself as a child, especially focused on your neat qualities . . . your vulnerability . . . your lovableness.

Bring to mind compassion for that child you were . . . just like you would have compassion for any child.

Then see if you bring that same compassion to yourself today . . . just like you could have compassion for any child grown into an adult.

Compassion for the human difficulties you have faced, and face today . . . compassion for the physical illnesses and pains . . . compassion for the hard circumstances, including genuine bad luck, that you have had to overcome . . . compassion for the ways other have truly mistreated you or might mistreat you in the future. . . compassion for simply being human and thus subject to unavoidable suffering.

Take a moment to settle into that feeling of compassion for yourself . . . letting it fill you . . . breathing compassion in and out . . . . compassion breathing . . . compassion breathing you.

Now bring to mind a sense of caring or kindness – I’ll call that lovingkindness from now on – for that child you were . . . just like you would have lovingkindness for any child.

Then see if you bring that same lovingkindness to yourself today . . . just like you could have lovingkindness for any child grown into an adult. Lovingkindness for the human difficulties you have faced, and face today . . .

Lovingkindness for the physical illnesses and pains . . . Lovingkindness for the hard circumstances, including genuine bad luck that you have had to overcome . . .

Lovingkindness for the ways other have truly mistreated you or might mistreat you in the future . . . Lovingkindness for simply being human and thus subject to unavoidable suffering.

Take a moment to settle into that feeling of lovingkindness for yourself . . . letting it fill you . . . breathing lovingkindness in and out . . . . lovingkindness breathing . . . lovingkindness breathing you.

Now bring to mind a sense of being for that child you were . . . a sense of good will toward that child you were, a sense of advocacy or protection for that child you were . . . just like you would be for, be on the side of any child.

Then see if you can bring that same stance of being for, of being on the side of, of caring about the happiness of . . . yourself today.

Being for yourself in the face of those same difficulties the child faced.

Take a moment to settle into that feeling of being for yourself . . . letting it fill you . . . Having a sense of strength, power, determination, commitment . . . breathing that feeling in and out . . . being for yourself breathing . . . being for yourself breathing you.

Please consider:

•  How have you been for yourself?

•  In what ways have you helped yourself have a good life?

•  How have you stood up for yourself?

•  How have you acted like your inner experience of living matters?

And also consider:

•  How have you not been for yourself?

•  In what ways have you not helped yourself have a good life?

•  How have you sold yourself short, not had faith in yourself?

•  How have you numbed to or discounted your experience of living?

•  How have you been excessively critical or mean to yourself?

How would your life change if you approached it from a place of being for yourself?