My guest this week is Amanda Gilbert, author of the recent book, Kindness Now: A 28-Day Guide to Living with Authenticity, Intention, and Compassion (affiliate link). As Amanda and I discussed, we could all do with a little more kindness right now—for ourselves, for others, for the world. She introduces the traditional Buddhist heart practices known as the brahma-viharas: loving-kindness, compassion, appreciative joy, and equanimity. The practices she offers will help you to be more resilient in the face of common stressors and triggers in everyday life, including anxiety, feelings of depression, imposter syndrome, and social media comparison effects—and can inspire you to make meditation an essential part of your daily life and self-care practice.

Topics we explored in this episode include:

• Why Amanda chose to foreground the concept of kindness
• Why “kindness heals”
• Kindness as part of our true nature
• What it means to say that parts of ourselves are more “true” or “false” than others
• The distinction between “kindness” and “being nice”
• Compassion as kindness when it meets suffering
• Self-love as including an acknowledgment of our limitations
• Meeting ourselves with love and kindness
• Understanding the mind and heart as a unified entity that works for and with us
• The love and belonging we can find simply by being in the present
• Finding peace in not wanting to change or fix anything about our experience
• Finding true contentment and ease in the moment
• Finding refuge in unconditional loving-kindness even in moments of despair
• My Christian upbringing and subsequent assumptions about our relationship with the divine
• “Spiritual materialism” and the temptation to see ourselves as “more spiritual” than others
• The commercialization of mindfulness practices
• How trials often expand our heart
• The reflective compassion practice “Just Like Me”
• Answering the question, “What is my deepest wish?”

Amanda Gilbert is a meditation teacher, lecturer of mindfulness at the University of Southern California, speaker, and author.

She leads meditation for top companies like NBC, Paramount Pictures, W Hotels, Merrill Lynch, Macy’s, and YouTube.

Before dedicating herself to teaching full-time, Amanda was the center director for the Aging, Metabolism, and Emotions Center at the University of California, San Francisco, a world-renowned health psychology laboratory conducting scientific research on the biological and psychological effects of mindfulness, meditation, and stress resilience.

Her formal meditation training has been with UCLA’s Mindful Awareness Research Center, Deepak Chopra, and in the Insight Meditation tradition. She lives in Los Angeles.

Find Amanda online on her website and on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.