EMB #535: Compassion, Kindness and Understanding

I want to talk about kindness, I just think it's a topic that could be talked about a bit more often and could be more addressed. A lot of people are stressed out and have challenges dealing with emotions. And that's what's most important to practice: caring, empathy, love, kindness. But that's also the hardest to do. And here's the thing, it's like when it's the holidays, right? So at Christmas, you have family stress. You have finances, presents, sometimes traveling, and that is the most stressful time of year. And exercise is the number one way to reduce stress, but it's also the least amount of time people work out. It's kind of funny, but then we have summer as well. Most people, or a good number of people don't really work out in the summer because they are camping and traveling and spending time with family. So I was just comparing the two like we need to exercise to reduce stress right at the holidays.

It's the same thing right now as a good majority of our population is stressed out for whatever reason. It's an interesting paradigm and how that works because it's like they conflict. And I relate most things to food and exercise because that's what we do. But I mean, it's the same thing at the grocery store, right during the holidays when you should be eating healthier and cleaner because our stress is so high. That's when we go and we buy the pies and pastries and refined sugar, right? 

So we have to kind of flip that around. We have to make better choices. And I think when it comes to understanding anger and frustration, like with friends or family members, it's something that most of us don't practice. It's not something you learn in school, it's not something that you could read books and learn about, but it's not something that we openly work on in practice, and I think that we'd be much better off if we did. But it's really that understanding of trying to put yourself in someone else's shoes, which is challenging, of course, but try to see the situation from someone else's perspective. Usually we have so much tunnel vision. It's all about me. It's like ego. Ego and superego, I think.