“ … people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel”.

- Maya Angelou

This powerful quote from the late Maya Angelou really touches on how emotions, not words, nor acts .. give the true meaning to our experience.

How any experience, positive or negative, translates into felt sensations in the body and is what our brain registers and learns from. While it’s interesting to explore how this process links back to our evolutionary fight-flight response (we had to really feel the threat in the body in order to take action), it’s equally important to see this in light of how we interact with one another.

This is why paying mindful attention to an experience (such as a conversation with a colleague or an interaction with a stranger) is incomplete if not accompanied with an attitude of kindness or compassion.

The same way we practice stabilising our attention in meditation, we can also intentionally practice being more compassionate towards others (and ourselves).

Strengthening our ‘compassion muscle’ in meditation allows us to adopt a kinder attitude in our interactions in daily life. With this comes the recognition that we are all interconnected and share our common humanity - with all our needs, likes and dislikes.

From a neurophysiological perspective, the practice helps release the happy hormone ‘Oxytocin’ and is also generally good for our health, as it activates our parasympathetic nervous system (relaxation and recovery) and boosts the immune system.

Summary:

It pays off to practice being kind.