When We Focus On Others, Our World

Teachers Need To Be Comfortable Talking About Feelings. This Is Part Of Teaching Emotional Literacy - A Set Of Skills We Can All Develop, Including The Ability To Read, Understand, And Respond Appropriately To One's Own Emotions And The Emotions Of Others.

Feelings Are Self-justifying, With A Set Of Perceptions And "proofs" All Their Own.

All The Classical Meditation Traditions, In One Way Or Another, Stress Nonattachment To The Self As A Goal Of Practice. Oddly, This Dimension Is Largely Ignored In Scientific Research, Which Tends To Focus On Health And Other Such Benefits. I Suppose The Difference Has To Do With The Contrast In Views Of The Self From The Spiritual And Scientific Perspectives. Scientists Value The Self; Spiritual Traditions Have Another Perspective.

We're Exposed And Carry In Our Bodies Multiple Chemicals, And We Have To Understand How They Interact. Both How They Individually Interact And The Thousands Of Effects They Can Produce When They Interact With The Receptors That Run Our Bodies.

Remember, Empathy Need Not Lead To Sympathetically Giving In To The Other Side’s Demands—knowing How Someone Feels Does Not Mean Agreeing With Them.