We are compassionate with ourselves when we are able to embrace all parts of ourselves and recognize the needs and values expressed by each part.

Praise and reward create a system of extrinsic motivations for behavior. Children (and adults) end up taking action in order to receive the praise or rewards.

If you have an image of someone cutting off a relationship, it's the cutting off that will lead to your suffering. If you see the action as their need being expressed, then the message is within them, not you. Any interpretation you put onto another person's message (such as passive-aggressive, withholding, etc.), you will pay for because of how you took it.

Most of us live in a Jackal world where we take turns using the other person as a waste basket for our words.

When we are angry, killing people is too superficial.

The Chinese philosopher Chuang-Tzu stated that true empathy requires listening with the whole being: The hearing that is only in the ears is one thing. The hearing of the understanding is another. But the hearing of the spirit is not limited to any one faculty, to the ear, or to the mind. Hence it demands the emptiness of all the faculties. And when the faculties are empty, then the whole being listens. There is then a direct grasp of what is right there before you that can never be heard with the ear or understood with the mind.

Use the words "I feel because I" to remind us that what we feel it isn't because of what the other person did, but because of a choice I've made.