Wellbeing

Meditation Research

  1. Rick Hanson: Understanding Neuroplasticity.

Happiness

-- Ricky Gervais' After Life

Happiness is amazing. It's so amazing, it doesn't matter if it's yours or not. There's that lovely thing: "A society grows great when old men plant trees, the shade of which they know they will never sit in". Good people do things for other people. That's it. The end.

Do your best in all you do

-- Martin Luther King Jr.

If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as a Michaelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, 'Here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well'.

Cultivating love

-- Brené Brown

We cultivate love when we allow our most vulnerable and powerful selves to be deeply seen and known, and when we honor the spiritual connection that grows from that offering with trust, respect, kindness and affection.

Love is not something we give or get; it is something that we nurture and grow, a connection that can only be cultivated between two people when it exists within each one of them – we can only love others as much as we love ourselves.

Shame, blame, disrespect, betrayal, and the withholding of affection damage the roots from which love grows. Love can only survive these injuries if they are acknowledged, healed and rare.

It's not the critic who counts

-- Theodore RooseveltI

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

Why I deserve compassion

-- Steve Dolphy

I find myself in the position of any human being who has ever lived, is alive today, or will be alive in the future. I have been given the gift of life, one life, and I will spend my whole life trying to understand it, trying to work out what to do with it, trying to find my way through it.

For this I deserve compassion.

I did not ask to be given this life, but it is the one, the only one, I have been given. There is no chance for a refund, a part-exchange, or an upgrade. This is it.

For this I deserve compassion.

I did not choose the family I was born into. I did not make a choice to choose the wisest, most able, richest, most loving parents, living in the most beautiful house, in the most beautiful part of the world. I was given the parents I have got, who gave me the start in life that I had. They did not choose me either, but I am who they got.

For this I, and they, deserve compassion.

I did not choose the body I was born into. My body is the result of two hundred thousand years of human evolution and is an amazing and wondrous machine. But it is still a machine that has weaknesses. When I was born my body was not fully grown and ready to go. I had to spend many years in the early parts of my life with a body that was not yet fully strong and healthy. Yet my body still had to deal with all that Life threw at it.

For this I deserve compassion.

I did not choose the mind I was born with. Evolution created the marvelous and extraordinary thing that is the human mind. But the mind has its limitations. When I was born my mind was not fully developed and fully aware. I had to spend many years in the early parts of my life with a mind that was not yet fully developed. There were so many things I had to learn, remember and understand (believing that all I read, was told, or heard was true) and in this immature state my mind still had to deal with all the problems and difficulties that Life presented.

For this I deserve compassion.

In the middle years of my life when my adult body is at its physical peak it will still have its vulnerabilities and it will still have to deal with all the things that Life brings. In these middle years, when mentally I am at my best, I will still, on a week-to-week, day-to-day, moment-to-moment basis, be taking many decisions and making many choices on the basis of incomplete or imperfect information. Sometimes I will make mistakes. Sometimes I won’t make the best of choices.

For this I deserve compassion.

In the later years of my life when my aging body and mind are in decline, I will not only be facing Life’s challenges, but will also have the task of dealing with what Life serves up to me, with a mind and body that are past their peak. Sometimes there will be things I am no longer able to do well, even do at all, for myself or those I love.

For this I deserve compassion.

And on the last day I am alive, when I look back at the things I have done with my life, my mind will find, amongst the things that I am pleased with or proud of, those choices I wish I had not made, those things I wish I had, or had not done. And when I find myself in that position I should remind myself of those times, however rare, when I made the bravest, most difficult and wisest of choices. Those moments when I said to myself: "I deserve compassion."

Work

-- Satya Mallick.

... everybody starts at zero, but if we learn something new every day it is possible to acquire working knowledge of almost anything in a very short period of time. Knowledge builds on itself; it is governed by the rule of compounding. The key is to learn something new every single day....