I left my suitcase on a train recently. Believe it or not, I was meditating as the train approached the station. The only thing I wasn’t mindful of was that my case was on the rack above me. š I only realised this when I arrived at my hotel about half an hour later. I […]
empathy
Empathy Matters
Empathy is the ability to understand and relate to other people and animals. Empathy is being able to see the world or a situation from someone elseās perspective and also appreciate how they might feel. Empathy can even be in walking in someone elseās shoes, so to speak. It is the precursor to compassion and […]
Nature’s Catch 22
Iāve written a lot about the āside effectsā of kindness. Thereās five of them: Kindness makes you happier, itās good for the heart, it slows ageing, it improves relationships, and itās contagious. Thereās talk sometimes where people say there is no truly altruistic act, that if you benefit from kindness then youāre being somewhat selfish […]
Can kindness boost the immune system?
In other blogs, Iāve written how kindness is the opposite of stress in terms of its physiological effects. At first, one might imagine that peace is the opposite of stress, but peace is more the absence of stress than its opposite. In a number of different ways, kindness produces opposite effects from those that stress […]
The right thing to do
I was in Chicago for a couple of days recently. Among many things, one thing thatĀ stood out for me was the number of homeless people who were not asking for money. One was just a young girl, whoĀ couldn’t have been more than 18. Some of theirĀ cardboard signs said things like, “Please. I’m not looking for […]
The 7 Day Kindness Challenge
Iād like to challenge you to complete a 7-Day Kindness Challenge. Hereās some ground rules: 1) You must do something different every day. You can do the same thing on two different days if you want, but it only counts the first time. 2) You have to push yourself out of your comfort zone […]
Born to be kind
āMy religion is Kindnessā HH The Dalai Lama Youāve probably heard of āThe Selfish Geneā. Many have mistakenly taken this to mean than humans are naturally selfish. Thatās not what the term āselfish geneā refers to. Selfish gene really refers to the process of evolution where genes are copied and passed onto the next generation. […]
The power of a hug
A hug is wonderful when you feel sad, stressed, tired and even when you feel good. I love what the Free Hugs people do when they stand in a city centre holding a āFree Hugsā sign. Their hugs produce human connection, vulnerability, smiles, laughter, positive emotion, and even sometimes tears, especially if itās the first […]
A matter of perspective
Iāve always thought of myself as having a positive attitude. Not all the time, of course. I think we all have our good and bad days, the latter making positive thinking quite a bit harder, those days when if someone says āThink positiveā, well, Iāll leave it to your imagination. But in many instances, whether […]
An experiment in interconnectedness
You know that I write mostly on subjects like the mind-body connection, self-love, my dog Oscar who passed away last year, as well as kindness and compassion and the science of how they affect our health. But also, from time-to-time, I write on more āout thereā topics, like synchronicities, the nature of consciousness, and interconnectedness, […]