“Us” All “Thems”
Finding common ground with every person – especially those you fear or are angry with or who are simply very different from you – builds bridges among us, widens circles, and allows us to live together in peace.
Love the World
Humanity has great power for good and ill. As the earth heats up, as species go extinct and resources decline, it is critically important that a fourth major motivation guide our thoughts, words, and above all, deeds: Love the world.
Grow A Key Inner Strength
What’s your “Vitamin C?” “Vitamin C” is. Daily life is full of opportunities to notice or create experiences of inner strength, a psychological resource. Take it into yourself, making it a part of you.
Back to Basics
By taking care of the basics, everything else usually takes care of itself.
Don’t Rain On The Parade
Are you too quick with doubt, limitations, cost analyses, reasons why not? If you pour cold water over your hopes and dreams, you’ll never know the warmth and light that might spread if you’d let them catch fire.
Give Them What They Want
It’s easy to give someone what they want. It is a matter of what you want to give. It can be stressful when others want things from you. There’s a sweet spot from which you can respond with both compassion and ease.
Accept Them as They Are
In what ways do you wish that people were different? See what it feels like to stop resisting what another person is like while also taking care of your own needs in the relationship. Acceptance is a gift that gives back.
Drop The Case
Enjoy the good feelings and other rewards of dropping your case. Set down the case, like plopping down a heavy suitcase. Enjoy the feelings, the spaciousness of mind, openness of heart, inner freedom, and other rewards of dropping your case.
Try a Softer Tone
There are three elements of tone: 1) Explicit content 2) Emotional subtext 3) Implicit statement about the nature of the relationship.
Know You’re a Good Person
Is it hard to believe you are a good person? Try to take in the good of feeling cared about; recognize goodness in your acts of thought, word, and deed. Enjoy this beautiful goodness, so real and so true.
Turn Anger into a Peaceful Heart
3 things to help guide you to find peace: Stop Things from Building Up, Understand What’s Making You Angry, Find Key Ways to Turn Anger into a Peaceful Heart
Find Your North Star
What’s the light that will guide you out of your own tangled woods – both the woods “out there” in the world and the ones “in here,” in your own mind?
Drop the Load
Are the rewards of new commitments really worth the costs? Sometimes you have to give up the lesser rewards of a new thing for the greater rewards of allowing some new space to clear in your life.
Be Mind Full of Good
With a mind full of good, you’ll have more to offer others, which will grow the good in them, too, perhaps—reaching eventually around the whole world.
Let It Flow
Can you stay mindful and peaceful when your thoughts and life get bumpy? In life there will be gain and loss, praise and blame, and pleasure and pain. If you let them flow, you can ride the waves of life with gratitude and grace, and without drowning.