“Anything that is worth doing is worth doing poorly!”

I’ve tried to be more aware of what others around me are doing that enriches my life, and to hone my skills in expressing this appreciation.

The ability to hear our own feelings and needs and empathize with them can free us from depression.

pain engendered by damaging cultural conditioning is such an integral part of our lives that we can no longer distinguish its presence. It takes tremendous energy and awareness to recognize this destructive learning and to transform it into thoughts and behaviors that are of value and of service to life.

What do I want this person’s reasons to be for doing what I’m asking? We seldom address the latter question, but when we do, we soon realize that punishment and reward interfere with people’s ability to do things motivated by the reasons we’d like them to have.

(For application of this kind of force in social and political conflicts, see Robert Irwin’s book, Building a Peace System.) The assumption behind the protective use

List the judgments that float most frequently in your head by using the cue, “I don’t like people who are … ” Collect all such negative judgments in your head and then ask yourself, “When I make that judgment of a person, what am I needing and not getting?” In this way, you train yourself to frame your thinking in terms of unmet needs rather than

When we settle our attention on other people’s feelings and needs, we experience our common humanity. When I hear that he’s scared and wants to protect himself, I recognize how I also have a need to protect myself and I too know what it’s like to be scared. When my consciousness is focused on another human being’s feelings and needs, I see the

tried to empathize with him, to hear his pain. Why? Because I wanted to see the beauty in him, and I wanted for him to fully apprehend what I had experienced when he made his remark.