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Compassion Behind Bars
A few weeks ago, an unprecedented letter arrived at our office at the Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education at Stanford University. Here is an excerpt: The purpose of the inmate’s letter was to request reading materials pertaining to research on meditation and the brain. His goal upon…
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Brooklynites, Bike Accidents and the Science of Compassion
About 11 years ago I was hit by a car while bicycling through Brooklyn, N.Y. When I returned to consciousness I was lying in an intersection, blood streaming from a damaged hand, head, and knee. A small group of people had materialized out of the seemingly-empty street. They must have…
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Feeling Under the Weather? Go Hang Out with Friends
During my first quarter at Stanford, I got sick a lot. This was very unusual for me and was a little mysterious, since I was practicing all my healthy behaviors — eating well, sleeping well, and exercising daily. I blamed my frequent illness on living with so many people in…
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5 Ways to Do Good and Feel Good — Fast, Free and From Your Desk
Science tells us compassion is good for our health, and we know that helping others makes us feel good, but sometimes it feels like there just aren’t enough hours in the day. There is so much to do, can I possibly find time to contribute? Yes! In minutes, at no…
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The Science of Compassion
It is imperative that each of us try to garner insight into our prejudices. Awareness is the first step toward more compassionate decisions.
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Compassion: Shifting the Balance From Bad to Good Stress
We generally think of stress as a big, bad, disease-causing, killer. Yet mother nature didn’t give us the stress response to kill us. She gave us the stress response to help us stay alive! For example, without this fight-or-flight response, a lion has no chance of catching its meal, and…
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10 (Science-Based) Reasons Why Compassion is Hot
Science suggests that compassion may well be the most important thing in your life. 1. It makes us happy (as happy as getting money)! A brain-imaging study headed by neuroscientist Jordan Grafman from the National Institute of Health showed that the “pleasures centers” in the brain, i.e. the parts of…
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The Science of Choosing Compassion
As I walk down bustling Franklin Street in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, I often pass homeless people who ask me for spare change. Sometimes I let myself feel compassion for these individuals. But other times I don’t want to get emotionally involved, so I look away and keep walking. Maybe…
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Putting Compassion to Work: Google, Gratitude and Getting Canned
In 2009, I taught the Stanford Compassion Cultivation Training Program at Google. My group of Googlers included engineers as well as people from various other technical and non-technical positions. Diverse in temperament and ethnicity, these folks shared a typical Googler profile: They were young, tired, overworked, stressed about deadlines, and…
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Applying Compassion in Organizations
Economic turbulence seems normative in modern America. Our current workplace finds itself struggling on organizational, team and individual levels. The impact of financial insecurity, joblessness, short-term positions, downsizing and changing standards in technology and job skills can have significant financial, psychological, and social costs for organizations and their employees. Recent…
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