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.

If it weren't for desire, the formless would not have come into form and engage creatively.

Our kids go to school and they come out feeling not intelligent, not desirable, not attractive or appealing to others.

Feeling compassion for ourselves in no way releases us from responsibility for our actions. Rather, it releases us from the self-hatred that prevents us from responding to our life with clarity and balance.

Stopping the endless pursuit of getting somewhere else is the perhaps most beautiful offering we can make to our spirit.

When someone says to us, as Thich Nhat Hanh suggests, "Darling, I care about your suffering," a deep healing begins.

Along with judging myself harshly, I'd also always seen the truth of goodness in me.