Try this thought exercise for an instant dose of compassion

✨ Tip: Take a moment for Pema Chödrön’s “just like me” practice.

Maybe you’ve been feeling a little detached lately. Hey, a year and a half in a pandemic will do that to a person. There’s a simple exercise that can help you feel more more grounded, more connected. It comes from Pema Chödrön’s Welcoming the Unwelcome: Wholehearted Living in a Brokenhearted World.

Chödrön, an author and Buddhist teacher, writes: “There’s a practice I like called ‘Just like me.’ You go to a public place and sit there and look around. Traffic jams are very good for this. You zero in on one person and say to yourself things such as ‘Just like me, this person doesn’t want to feel uncomfortable. Just like me, this person loses it sometimes. Just like me, this person doesn’t want to be disliked. Just like me, this person wants to have friends and intimacy.’”

Of course, you’ll never really know what these strangers are thinking or feeling, but the exercise can help you remember that we’re all more similar than we think. It can be hard to acknowledge this, we know. But when you do, your everyday interactions begin to change, becoming more expansive and more lovely.

😊 More from Forge on building connection:

That Numbness You’re Feeling is Compassion Fatigue
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Empathy Is the New Mindfulness
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The Extraordinary Power of Prolonged Eye Gazing
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