By regarding ourselves with kindness, we begin to dissolve the identity of an isolated, deficient self. This creates the grounds for including others in an unconditionally loving heart.

If you can, do a gratitude practice: Each day write down three things you're grateful for. There are different ways to do this. You can have a gratitude buddy, someone with whom, at the end of the day, you exchange messages listing these three things you are grateful for. Also, you can journal it or reflect on it silently.

The emotion of fear often works overtime. Even when there is no immediate threat, our body may remain tight and on guard, our mind narrowed to focus on what might go wrong. When this happens, fear is no longer functioning to secure our survival. We are caught in the trance of fear and our moment-to-moment experience becomes bound in reactivity. We spend our time and energy defending our life rather than living it fully.

Buddhist practices offer a way of saying, 'Hey, come back over here, reconnect.' The only way that you'll actually wake up and have some freedom is if you have the capacity and courage to stay with the vulnerability and the discomfort.

Where desire ends up causing suffering is when it fixates.

I would say both Western psychology and Eastern paths would recognize that we get caught up in feeling like a separate self and an unworthy self.

When we put down ideas of what life should be like, we are free to wholeheartedly say yes to our life as it is.