Ways of Increasing the Force of Kindness in Your Life

  • Reflect on someone in your life who has reached out to you in kindness – how do you regard him or her?
  • Think about your degree of confidence in yourself. What factors have helped enhance it or decrease it?
  • Reflect on why kindness might be considered a force instead of a weakness.
  • Make the effort to thank someone each day. Notice what is created between you and the other person in that way.
  • Reflect on who you admire in life, and why.

Way to Offer Lovingkindness to Others

  • Pay full attention and really look at and listen to someone you usually ignore or find annoying.

Ways to Bring Kindness to All

  • Before a meal, take a moment and reflect on those far-flung people involved in your enjoying that meal – the people who grew it, the people who transported it, stored it, and prepared it.
  • Stay open to surprise. Roles and relationships are constantly changing. Reflect on how we go up and we go down all of the time.

To practice: To increase kindness in your life, choose one of these suggestions for reflection or action today.

Sharon Salzberg in The Force of Kindness