Sally Francis

I’ve discovered that practicing Loving Kindness is the most efficient response to nearly every challenging situation, not a nicey-nicey way for avoiding the stickiness or discomfort, but a clearly, measurably superior practice for getting the best out of any episode. Here are some examples:

1. Someone lets you down or behaves ‘wrongly’ towards you: the kind approach both takes steps to protect oneself, (which is being kind to one’s own fragilities and removes exposure to stressful stimuli) and at the same time reframes ‘what they just did’ with a level of compassion and understanding which might include mitigating circumstances, perhaps even their ignorance, and reduces the judgments and self-righteousness which historically amplify the stress and conflict. You see? Efficient. And it doesn’t remove holding ourselves and others accountable, it merely changes the tone with which we state our boundaries. This way of communicating responsibly, kindly, will elicit much less…