Practicing loving kindness and compassion is a key part of any spiritual path. As we grow spiritually, we learn to respect and revere those around us, and we gain the ability to understand their challenges and respond lovingly to them, in a way that transcends our individual personalities.
While this is a good goal, it can be difficult to maintain a strong sense of compassion as you move through your daily life, and face stresses, triggers, and other challenges.
In this post I’ll outline 6 tips that will help you to practice loving kindness in your everyday life, no matter what.
Let’s get started…
7 Tips for Practicing Loving Kindness
1. Begin a Daily Meditation Routine
Firstly, if you haven’t already, I strongly recommend that you start a daily meditation routine. Meditation will go a long way towards helping you to become more loving and compassionate, because it helps you to focus your energy on your inner strength, rather than external stresses.
When you meditate, you reset your energy and find a state of peace and joy within yourself. As you meditate consistently, the feeling of this space strengthens. This means that you become less stressed by events around you, and more likely to maintain your sense of peace and composure as you move through the modern world.
2. Set Your Intention, Every Day
When you take time out of your day to meditate, you can also use that time to set an intention for how you want to feel and act throughout the day. This is best done in the morning, as it gives you the opportunity to take control of the day, before you become wrapped up in it.
in fact, setting daily intentions is one of the simplest and most effective ways to begin living an inspired life. It helps you gain control of your energy, so you can consciously begin to move more compassionately through the world.
3. Use Affirmations
Another technique for practicing loving kindness is to use a series of short affirmations, or mantras, which you keep coming back to throughout the day.
There is no 1 magic word or phrase you should use. Instead, simply choose any thought that makes you feel peaceful and inspired, and then extends that sense of peace to others.
Don’t be surprised if you realize that wishing others peace and well-being actually raises your energy immediately, and makes you embody a greater feeling of love within yourself as well.
Learn more about How To Use Positive Affirmations to Change Your Life.
4. Step Back into Awareness
Once you’ve started your day with a positive outlook, thanks to your meditation and intention practice, the next challenge is to remain in that centered state, no matter what.
My favorite technique for maintaing my positive energy is to take frequent breaks to step back and observe my thoughts. By stepping back into the seat of awareness, you can recognize whether or not you are still in alignment with your natural joy, bliss, love, and light, and, if not, you can take a moment to yourself to center and remember your intention.
Stepping back doesn’t have to take long. You can do it with a short breath exercise, in as little as 30 seconds. Click here to learn how to step back.
5. Imagine Different Perspectives
A key aspect of learning how to practice loving kindness and compassion is to learn how to imagine yourself from different perspectives, and to place yourself in another’s shoes, so to speak.
Many times, anger and frustration arise because we don’t fully understand what the other person is going through. We forget that, if we had experienced exactly the same thoughts, events, and emotions as the other person, you too would be likely to act in exactly the same way.
The next time you feel frustrated with someone, try imagining yourself in their shoes. Imagine what series of events led up to their action, and observe – from as neutral a perspective as possible – why they acted as they did, and why that made you so angry.
Taking this time for reflection and visualization can go a long way towards helping you increase compassion towards them.
6. Embody Peace in Every Circumstance
Another tip is to try to remember that you are always in control of your thoughts and energy. No matter what happens, you have the ability to choose peace. When you make this choice within yourself first, you begin to express it outwardly towards other.
Choosing to remain peaceful is a great practice for loving kindness because often it is most difficult to remain compassionate when we feel triggered by external circumstances. When things poke at us and grab our attention in a negative way, we get pulled off center and can more easily act out of alignment with our true nature.
Remembering to become peace in every moment, and every circumstance, pulls you away from the negative trigger in your environment and re-centers you on a path of compassion and loving kindness.
Learn more about Finding Peace Within in this video.
7. Develop an Arsenal of Loving Kindness Exercises
Lastly, the best way you can get better at practicing loving kindness and compassion is simply to keep practicing it. This means you need to have a number of different exercises and techniques that you use on a regular basis in order to master your own thoughts and energy, and to express the love and compassion you want to feel.
I have a ton of exercises listed freely on this site, you might want to check out the following pages for more information and techniques:
