Compassion is a powerful force for transforming lives. Not only does it melt bitterness and encourage kindness; research shows compassion can also reduce the type of inflammatory responses to stressful situations that lead to mental and physical diseases.

That’s right–fostering compassion in your daily life can make you both happier and healthier.

Not sure how to feel compassion for certain people in your life? You might find some helpful suggestions here: 10 Ways to Deal with Negative or Difficult People.

TinyBuddha

We’ve all seen friends there. We’ve all been there ourselves: overwhelmed, confused, lost in evaluating a big life dilemma.

What should I do with my life? What job should I take? Should I move or not? Should I stay with the good, secure option or take a riskier road that has the potential to be great?

Sometimes thinking about these questions leads us into a tearing-out-our-hair, overwhelmed, utterly confused state. Intricate pro and con arguments swirl through our heads. We’re swimming, unable to keep up with the multiplicity of factors to weigh and reason through, and fearful because we sense there is no way to rationally predict the best outcome. Thinking gets us more and more stressed, further and further away from a connection to our desires, our truths, to clarity.

There are many ways to get out of this stuckness. One of my favorites is what I call “the bottom line” test.

The Bottom Line Test

Take a few deep breaths. Place your hands on your abdomen, wherever you feel your gut instinct. Connect to that place in your body.

Then ask yourself, “Am I doing what I came here to do?”

“Here,” meaning planet earth. This lifetime.

Am I doing what I came here to do?

Don’t ask your mind. Don’t ask your brain. Ask that center of knowing that sits deeper in you. Trust whatever comes up. Whatever idea, words, images, sensations, no matter how surprising, or seemingly non-sensical.

We all have an accessible inner compass that can answer this question at any stage in our lives.

If you hear, “I don’t know,” you have three options:

continue … Tara Sophia Mohr

The circumstances of your life and the people in it aren’t responsible for your state of mind–you are. You can’t control what happens around you; you can only shape what happens within you.

If you can find peace even when life seems uncertain, challenging, or scary, you’ll have a resource of calm to access through all of life’s highs and lows.

www.tinybuddha.com

Professor Philip Zimbardo conveys how our individual perspectives of time affect our work, health and well-being. Time influences who we are as a person, how we view relationships and how we act in the world.

Sometimes life can seem like a giant race in which we’re all chasing happiness through goals and to-do lists. No sooner than you complete one task, three spring up in it’s place. There’s hardly any time to appreciate the present–not when there’s always more to achieve, create or gain.

While most of us find happiness through commitment to a purpose, there is a middle road between discontentment and complacence. It is possible to maintain forward momentum and still notice, appreciate and enjoy what you have with a sense of peace and stillness.

Much of what you’re chasing is already available in the moment, exactly as it is.

You don’t have to spend your hours, like currency that will get you something you want. At any time, you can simply enjoy where you are. Make that time today, whether it’s a minute, an hour, or an afternoon. Take a break from striving and make time to want what you have.

www.tinybuddha.com

Judgment is ugly — it hurts people. On the one hand you go on hurting them, and wounding them, and on the other hand you want their love, their respect.It is impossible. You love them, respect them, and perhaps your love and respect may help them to change many of their weaknesses, many of their failures — because love will give them new energy, a new meaning, a new strength. OSHO

“There is no such thing as a weird human being. It’s just that some require more understanding than others. “
-Tom Robbins