The essence of loving kindness is being able to offer happiness.

The essence of loving kindness is being able to offer happiness. You can be the sunshine for another person. You can’t offer happiness until you have it for yourself. So build a home inside by accepting yourself and learning to love and heal yourself. Learn how to practice mindfulness in such a way that you can create moments of happiness and joy for your own nourishment. Then you have something to offer the other person. If you have enough understanding and love, then every moment — whether it’s spent making breakfast, driving the car, watering the garden, or doing anything else in your day — can be a moment of joy.

If our parents didn’t love and understand each other

If our parents didn’t love and understand each other, how are we to know what love looks like? … The most precious inheritance that parents can give their children is their own happiness. Our parents may be able to leave us money, houses, and land, but they may not be happy people. If we have happy parents, we have received the richest inheritance of all.

This is why you check your email many times a day!

Sometimes we feel empty; we feel a vacuum, a great lack of something. We don’t know the cause; it’s very vague, but that feeling of being empty inside is very strong. We expect and hope for something much better so we’ll feel less alone, less empty. The desire to understand ourselves and to understand life is a deep thirst. There’s also the deep thirst to be loved and to love. We are ready to love and be loved. It’s very natural. But because we feel empty, we try to find an object of our love. Sometimes we haven’t had the time to understand ourselves, yet we’ve already found the object of our love. When we realise that all our hopes and expectations of course can’t be fulfilled by that person, we continue to feel empty. You want to find something, but you don’t know what to search for. In everyone there’s a continuous desire and expectation; deep inside, you still expect something better to happen. That is why you check your email many times a day!

Distracting ourselves from our suffering.

Often, we get crushes on others not because we truly love and understand them, but to distract ourselves from our suffering. When we learn to love and understand ourselves and have true compassion for ourselves, then we can truly love and understand another person.

Understanding is love’s other name.

Understanding someone’s suffering is the best gift you can give another person. Understanding is love’s other name. If you don’t understand, you can’t love.

We accept others as they are, and then they have a chance to transform.

If you pour a handful of salt into a cup of water, the water becomes undrinkable. But if you pour the salt into a river, people can continue to draw the water to cook, wash, and drink. The river is immense, and it has the capacity to receive, embrace, and transform. When our hearts are small, our understanding and compassion are limited, and we suffer. We can’t accept or tolerate others and their shortcomings, and we demand that they change. But when our hearts expand, these same things don’t make us suffer anymore. We have a lot of understanding and compassion and can embrace others. We accept others as they are, and then they have a chance to transform.

Our Child Within is contact in progress

Our Child Within is contact in progress that we mistakenly think we have finished The Child Within you are right now is none transient, not fleeting and stable as all the personalities you’re ever been. The one constant in our lives is our child within.

The authentic self is the Child Within made visible.

The authentic self is the Child Within made visible.

The process of meeting our child within requires courage.

The process of meeting our child within requires courage. It requires strength. It requires faith that you will be taken care of after you pull off your bandaid.

When you do this process, it will make you feel lighter. You will have more room in your life for what you really want and need. It will speed up your ability to create the life that you want. And you will experience less anxiety and stress.

It’s a scary process, but well worth doing.

Meeting The Child Within: Don’t hide behind email, texts, phone calls or social media.

Meeting The Child Within: Don’t hide behind email, texts, phone calls or social media. Unless it would bring you danger – have the courage, respect and honour to meet in person with the person or people you need to talk to.

It can be scary to change - but boy oh boy is it worth it to shed our masks and show us our Child hidden Within.

It's scary to change. Change requires courage. And the reality is - you don't need to be fixed, what your child within is looking for is to be revealed. Life is about stepping more and more into who you really are and knowing that life will support who you really are.

It can be scary to change - but boy oh boy is it worth it to shed our masks and show us our Child hidden Within.

It's scary to put our real self our child within out there.

It's scary to put our real self our child within out there.

When we are growing up, generally - we are not rewarded for being our true selves and learn to keep our child within hidden. So we learn how to adapt. We learn about how we "should" be and end up putting on masks to hide our child within.

The strategies we learn to hide at a young age are carried over into adulthood and eventually the strategies we use to hide produce so much pain - that we must change.

Our child within often has a complex disrespect history may be easily triggered or “set off” and is more likely to react very intensely.

Our child within often has a complex disrespect history may be easily triggered or “set off” and is more likely to react very intensely. Our child within will struggle with self-regulation (i.e., knowing how to calm down) and will lack impulse control or the ability to think through consequences before acting. 

As a result, our complexly disrespected child within will behave in ways that appear unpredictable, oppositional, volatile, and extreme. Our child within who feels powerless or who grew up fearing an abusive authority figure may react defensively and aggressively in response to perceived blame or attack, or alternately, may at times be over-controlled, rigid, and unusually compliant with adults. 

If our child within dissociates often, this will also affect our behaviour. We will seem “spacey”, detached, distant, or out of touch with reality. disrespected child within is more likely to engage in high-risk behaviours, self-harm, unsafe sexual practices, and excessive risk-taking such as operating a vehicle at high speeds. We often engage in illegal activities, such as alcohol and substance use, assaulting others, stealing, running away, and/or prostitution, thereby making it more likely that they will enter the justice system.

Our Child Within who has experienced disrespect often have difficulty identifying, expressing, and managing emotions, and have limited voice for feeling states.

Our Child Within who has experienced disrespect often have difficulty identifying, expressing, and managing emotions, and have limited voice for feeling states. We internalise and/or externalise stress reactions and as a result experience significant depression, anxiety, or anger. Our emotional responses become unpredictable or explosive. Our child hidden within may react to a reminder of a traumatic event with trembling, anger, sadness, or avoidance. We who have a complex history, reminders of various traumatic events may be everywhere in our environment. We react often, react powerfully, and have difficulty calming down when upset. Since the triggers are often of an interpersonal nature, even mildly stressful interactions with others may serve as trigger reminders and result in intense emotional responses. Having learned that the world is a dangerous place where even loved ones can’t be trusted to protect you,our child within are vigilant and guarded in our interactions with others and are likely to perceive all situations as stressful or dangerous. While this defensive posture is protective when we are under attack, it becomes problematic in situations that do not warrant such intense reactions. Alternately, many of us also learn to “tune out” (emotional numbing) to threats in their environment, making them vulnerable to re-victimisation.

Difficulty managing emotions is pervasive and occurs in the absence of relationships as well. Having never learned how to calm ourselves down once we are upset, many of us become easily overwhelmed.  We become so frustrated that we give up on even small tasks that present a challenge. We who have experienced early and intense events also have an increased likelihood of being fearful all the time and in many situations. We are more likely to experience depression .