Spread Kindness. Begin now.

Wouldn't it be nice to live in a world where kindness is the norm? A world where everyone treats each other with care and compassion. And why isn't that already the case?

Kindness has to begin with our own mental space. We cannot give others what we do not have. How many thoughts do we have each day, each hour, each minute that is based on self-criticism? When we don't get the results we expect, do we say to ourselves, "What can I try differently next time" or do we say, "What a mess up, when am I going to get this right!"

The older one gets the deeper self-criticism gets ingrained. In my previous post I was referring to Yoga's terminology of 'samskaras' which are imprints on the mind due to past conditioning. Self-criticism is also a samskara - we either learnt it by copying our carers or we were directly criticised and not treated with kindness on a regular basis.

If you know this is true for you and you wish to replace criticism with kindness, begin now. Here is a simple hack from Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, to help make the switch.

When we find ourselves absorbed in stressful thoughts/circumstances,

'Practise cultivating the opposite' - the practise called 'prati-paksha-bhavana', which can be loosely translated as the 'attitude of affirming the opposite'.

To put it into practise, notice your self-critical/ negative thought and purposely affirm to yourself the opposite without letting your logic interfere. So "he doesn't respect me" becomes "he honours me", "I am doing a terrible job" becomes "I am getting better at this", "this isn't turning out to be a good day" becomes "this is a great day full of opportunities to grow". The idea with this practise is, not to wait until you can see it to believe it, but to believe it and therefore allow it into your reality.

When we operate in an ongoing state of loving kindness towards ourselves, we become a vessel of the kindness towards all those around us...

Put this practise to test and let me know how you go.

Love,

Prabha