Tiny Buddha

Tag: care

  • 70 Ways to Make Others Feel Special

    70 Ways to Make Others Feel Special

    Finger Art

    “Be the person that makes others feel special. Be known for your kindness and grace.” ~Unknown

    There is someone in my life that has an extraordinary talent for making people feel special. I would call him out by name, but he’s a fairly private person, so we’ll just call him “E.”

    It’s not that E makes people feel that they are somehow greater than others. He recognizes what’s special about everyone he encounters, and through his attention, kindness, and generosity, brings out the best in them.

    He doesn’t do this through grand gestures, and not with expectations of receiving anything specific in return.

    He does it because he enjoys making people feel good, and because he sees the good in them, he knows that they deserve it.

    In a world where it’s easy to focus on ourselves—our goals, our desires, and our plans—there’s something inspiring and, well, downright special about anyone who makes it a priority to truly see and acknowledge the people around them.

    I haven’t always done this well. Sometimes I’ve been too self-involved to shift my focus outside myself.

    But with help from some special people who’ve seen the best in me, I now know that every day—no, every moment—I have a new opportunity to do the same for someone else. And you do too. 

    How do you make someone feel special? 

    Pay Attention

    1. Stop what you’re doing and look directly into their eyes when they’re talking.

    2. Make a note of their likes and preferences so you can recommend joint activities you know they’ll enjoy.

    3. Recognize when they’re feeling down on themselves and say, “I think you’re awesome, and I hope you know it!”

    4. Compliment them on their appearance, especially if it’s something others might not recognize (like a small weight loss).

    5. Praise them for a job well done—especially if it’s a tiny victory that others might not think to acknowledge.

    6. Let them know what you find interesting, rare, or admirable about them.

    7. Take an interest in their hobbies and passions, and give them a chance to light up in sharing why they enjoy them.

    8. Compliment them on their skills as a parent or their thoughtfulness as a son, daughter, brother, or sister.

    9. Start a conversation with, “It’s really amazing how you…”

    10. Say, “I want you to know you make a difference in my life. Thank you for being you.”

    See Potential

    11. Tell them you believe they can achieve their dream—and why.

    12. If they don’t have a clear dream, recognize and acknowledge their skills and talents.

    13. Ask them questions to help them uncover how they can leverage their strengths to make a difference in the world.

    14. Encourage them to go for something they want but are scared to pursue.

    15. Comfort them after a failure or misstep and let them know it isn’t representative of who they are or what they’re capable of.

    16. Ask them to teach you how to do something to reinforce that this is something they excel at.

    17. Offer to teach them something you know they’ve wanted to try, and let them know why you think they’d be good at this.

    18. Give them something to help them get started on their dream—like a journal for an aspiring writer, or a design book for someone interested in fashion.

    19. Tell them you want to be the first one to buy their product or service when they inevitably start making a living off their passion.

    20. Give them a hand-made card and write inside what you see in them.

    Give Generously

    21. Give your time—to listen, to support, or to just enjoy each other’s company.

    22. Give them a job referral and say, “You’re the first person I thought of when I saw this—no one could do this job as well as you!”

    23. Give an introduction to someone they’d enjoy knowing—and introduce them with a compliment (i.e.: This is my good friend Avery, who’s a fantastic chef and one of the funniest people I know).

    24. Give them the benefit of the doubt. Instead of assuming they’ve done something thoughtful or insensitive, remember their goodness, and let them know.

    25. Give them your approval—nod your head when they’re talking and commend their thoughts and ideas.

    26. Give them space to work through thoughts and ideas out loud, even if you’re tempted to bring the conversation back to yourself.

    27. Give them credit for something they were right about.

    28. Give them the opportunity to shine in front of others when you’re tempted to dominate the conversation.

    29. Give compassion when you’re tempted to judge, and let them know what you admire about the challenges they’ve overcome.

    30. Give them your honest opinion and say, “I value you too much to tell you anything but the truth.”

    Be Affectionate

    31. Give them a hug when they’re feeling down, and hold it just a little longer than usual.

    32. Give them a playful nudge when joking around to show you’re tight like that.

    33. Literally pat them on the back when offering praise.

    34. Squeeze their hand when they’re anxious.

    35. Cuddle up to you partner instead of maintaining distance on the couch.

    36. Offer to give a massage to someone you know would be comfortable receiving it.

    37. Actually kiss someone on the cheek instead of giving an air kiss.

    38. Hold hands with your partner when walking outside (or, if you have friends who enjoy holding hands, go for it!)

    39. Sit comfortably close together to show you’re not avoiding physical connection at all costs.

    30. If you know they don’t enjoy too much affection, give them a handshake when greeting them to show you understand and respect their preferences.

    Share Yourself

    41. Share your fears with them to let them know you’re not afraid to be vulnerable with them.

    42. Share your feelings with them and let them know you value their guidance and support.

    43. Share your honest opinions instead of censoring yourself to show them you’re comfortable enough to be authentic with them.

    44. Share your dreams with them and let them know you appreciate their advice and encouragement.

    45. Share your resources with them—especially if they’re scarce—to show they’re worth the sacrifice.

    46. Share something you cooked for them to show them they’re worth the effort.

    47. Share your spirituality with them, and invite them to join you in practicing yoga or going to church.

    48. Share a secret with them to show them your trust.

    49. Share something that will become an inside joke between just the two of you.

    50. Share something you value with them to show them you value them more.

    Do Together

    51. Invite them to join you in doing something important, like picking out something for your partner’s birthday.

    52. Ask if you can help with something important they’re planning to do.

    53. Plan a surprise event for them, either to celebrate a tiny victory or just because you care.

    54. Invite them to something that will be a bonding experience, like a spa day or a sporting event.

    55. Buy an extra ticket to something you know they’d enjoy, and offer it to them.

    56. Ask them to join you in doing something regularly, like joining a bowling league, and let them know why it would be way more fun with them there.

    57. Include them in a group event to show you consider them part of the gang.

    58. Ask for their input in planning a group event to let them know you value their thoughts and ideas.

    59. Devote a weekend day or night (or both) to spending time together instead of squeezing them in for a quick lunch.

    60. When you’ve been busy, say, “I haven’t had much time lately, but I miss you! When can we get together and catch up?”

    Be Together

    61. Invite them to sit around with you, just to relax and enjoy each other’s company.

    62. Ask them if they’d like to enjoy the outdoors with you, whether that means lying in the beach in the summer, or drinking hot chocolate near a snow-covered window in the winter.

    63. Ask them if they want company when they feel drained after a long week, to show you don’t need a formal plan to be there for and with them.

    64. Offer to come over, while they’re home, so you can be an extra set of eyes to watch their kids.

    65. Sit in comfortable silence instead of needing to fill the air to show you’re comfortable enough to do this.

    66. Offer to stay with them when they’re sick, just in case they need anything.

    67. Invite them to join you in a technology free day—one without any distractions from simply being, together.

    68. Ask them to share their favorite way to relax on a day off, and then ask if they want to do this together.

    69. Invite them to join you in meditating. (If you don’t meditate, invite them to try it with you, at home or in a group environment.)

    70.

    I left the last one intentionally blank for you to fill in. What do you do to make others feel special, and what makes you feel special when others do it for you?

    Finger art image via Shutterstock

  • Give Yourself Loving Care

    Give Yourself Loving Care

    Give-Yourself-Loving-Care

  • Would You Help a Freezing Child?

    Would You Help a Freezing Child?

    Do you believe people care and look out for others? These people certainly did. They unknowingly participated in a social experiment to see who would stop to help a freezing child. If you’re anything like me, this will warm your heart.

  • Give Yourself Loving Care

    Give Yourself Loving Care

    Give Yourself Loving Care

    Source: NotSalmon.com

  • How to Share Your Feelings and Be Heard

    How to Share Your Feelings and Be Heard

    Conversation

    “The most precious gift we can offer anyone is our attention. When mindfulness embraces those we love, they will bloom like flowers.” ~Thich Nhat Hanh

    Not so long ago, a dear friend of mine approached me wishing to be heard for some overwhelming grief and anger she was carrying.

    I gave her my full ear and attention, but as I listened to her, I noticed a worry begin to stir inside me—a worry surfacing around a great deal of violent intent I heard in her words. Could she really want to hurt someone I believed she loved?

    After another twenty minutes of listening, I decided to authentically voice my worry to her until I felt fully heard around it, and together that evening we came to a place of deeper understanding and care.

    You may be thinking, “Wow! Your friend sure took it well despite being so angry. You must have been pretty careful in how you worded it, though.”

    But what if I told you that I managed to voice my truth without stimulating further anger or a sense of disconnect in her precisely because I did not try to be careful about what I said?

    Most of us, in first learning greater compassion and becoming aware of our needs and inherent worth, are not unlikely to come off sometimes as careless in how we express ourselves to others. We’re finally finding our voice, after all, and in standing up for our precious needs, such “carelessness” is no too high a price to pay for it.

    Our desire for authenticity at this stage outweighs our tact, you might say.

    As we become more adept to compassion over time, however, our awareness extends and reinforces the importance of other people’s needs, as well as our own. And thus, another phenomenon occurs: We transition from being careless to being careful compassionate speakers.

    But therein lies a tragedy.

    For while we may have genuine intentions to recognize others’ needs and feelings—knowing that our feelings and needs are not the only ones in the room—exercising careful consideration of our words in that respect can easily pose a whole new barrier to our ability to authentically communicate with others.

    We can end up, as they say, throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

    How does this happen? How do we regain the fuller authenticity we finally became able to express without seeming careless to otherswith our words?

    Well, first, it happens for the simple reason that withholding the honesty of our experience from others in a careful way too often tends to stem from a fear of the consequences (that might either befall us or bring further pain to someone else) in voicing ourselves.

    So what other resort do we have?

    What I’m recommending here is neither the obnoxiousness of careless honesty, nor the caution of careful consideration at the expense of sharing our whole truth, but the mindful awareness of everyone’s needs and the potential effect of our words—a mindfulness that incorporates the best parts of the former two.

    Returning to the case of my friend, I took my time to be sure that there was a deep sense of connection between the two of us, and a ground of empathy around her pain for me to stand on, before I expressed my concern around her intentions—holding nothing back.

    But before even expressing that concern, I conveyed to her what makes the crucial practical difference in what I’m talking about: the depth of my care for her, and the worry I felt in how she could potentially receive my words in a way other than as caring.

    You see, through mindful awareness, all needs—both yours and mine—can be given full consideration while one of us expresses their two-fold truth.

    It’s two-fold because we’re not only sharing the truth of our pain or problem, but also the care that we feel for the other person around how hearing our concern could land in them. When I told the friend my concern, I honestly expressed the worry rather than making the decision to speak honestly or not based on the worry.

    Let me give you four basic steps for compassionately sharing that, for me, allow for the fullness of our painful truth while also speaking to the fullness of our care:

    1. Be sure you’ve self-empathized before sharing.

    Sharing either our pain or our care without being in a place of empathic understanding could indeed result in “careless” self-expression. Sometimes such clarity doesn’t come easily, but if you can practice waiting for it before committing to expressing yourself, you’re way ahead of the gang.

    2. Be sure as well that you’ve empathized and connected with the other person.

    This is as much for our sake as theirs. If I listen to someone but then choose to share my truth while still holding a grudge or judgment against them, then it may be the case that I don’t actually care that much how it lands in them at this time. It could save you loads of unintended ordeals to realize this now than later.

    That said, I also highly recommend not empathizing with someone for the purpose of getting heard for your truth. “Empathy with an agenda” isn’t really empathy, nor does it effectively open us up to a space of acceptance and true listening around what’s happening for either of us.

    3. Share the truth of your care.

    By letting someone know you have something important to share and that you really care how it will be received, you give yourself an amazing opportunity for vulnerability to open between you. It will also quickly tell you whether the other person is even in a place to hear you or not.

    Knowing that allows you the choice and power to decide to maybe empathize with them more before sharing, or to process together what could be making it difficult for them to really hear you.

    4. Share the truth of your pain or problem, fully and authentically.

    Having conveyed your care to someone, you now have the opportunity to deepen into even greater vulnerability—and deeper sharing of your experience—thanks to the more open understanding facilitated by the depth of the care you expressed.

    To be sure, none of this guarantees that your truth won’t be difficult to hear.

    However, you do stand a far greater chance of being heard and held. I myself discovered that sharing in this way offers an amazing gift to those I love, as my willingness to be vulnerable also expresses to them the extent of my trust in them to receive it, whether either of us handle the dialogue gracefully or not.

    Compassion-based speaking and listening, done skillfully over time, has cultivated greater intimacy and deeper care with those dearest to me. At the end of the day, the degree of love and intimacy between you can only stand to be increased with the ability to authentically share your experiences with mindful awareness and care.

    So rather than be careful, why not be “care-full”? Let mindfully aware communication be your guide, and watch the natural love and connection grow!

    Photo by Garry Knight

  • 5 Ways to Validate Yourself: Be Part of Your Support System

    5 Ways to Validate Yourself: Be Part of Your Support System

    “You have been criticizing yourself for years, and it hasn’t worked. Try approving of yourself and see what happens.” ~Louise L. Hay

    We all have techniques we depend on to lift our spirits when we’re feeling down about ourselves or our lives.

    A while back I realized something about the ones I’d found most effective when struggling to forgive or accept myself: Many of them involved seeking validation from other people.

    Some of my most effective mood-boosters included:

    • Reading emails from readers who’d benefitted from my writing
    • Calling loved ones and reminding myself of how much they valued me
    • Sharing my experiences and recognizing, through the resultant conversations, that I wasn’t alone with my feelings and struggles

    These are all perfectly valid approaches to feeling better, but they all hinge on praise and external support.

    Getting help from others is only one part of the equation. We also need to be able to validate, support, and help ourselves.

    With this in mind, I’ve come up with a few ideas to create a little more balance in my support system, making myself a more central part of it.

    If you’re also looking to increase your capacity for self-soothing so you can depend less on validation from others, you may find these ideas helpful:  (more…)

  • Go Ahead and Care—It Won’t Break You

    Go Ahead and Care—It Won’t Break You

    “What you do have control over is how you react to what happens in your life.” ~Oprah

    How vulnerable it is to care deeply.

    Because, oh God—the white-hot shame of caring, and having your caring exposed when it doesn’t happen despite your best efforts?

    Humbling.

    The thing I wanted most since I was a little girl was to be a published writer. Published, as in bound book in hand, “by Kate Swoboda” on the cover. 

    As a child, I spent hours writing books—real books, from beginning to end, sometimes illustrating them with pictures.

    I majored in English with a writing concentration in college. I went to graduate school for writing. I continued to write full-length books.

    Finally, when I was 24 years old, I thought I had my chance.

    I had entered my novel to a fiction contest and received an honorable mention. At the awards dinner, the judge told me that I had almost won the first-place award.

    The best-selling author who financially backed the contest said, “I want to read your manuscript.” Another writer at the dinner—a legit writer who has had her books turned into movies—said, “I’ll put you in touch with my agent.”

    I don’t think I drove home. I think I flew home, light as air, high on the possibilities.

    The writer gave me the information, and I overnighted my manuscript, a complete novel, to that agent. Then I spent the next month—every day—thinking about this agent calling, and how this was it, the big break.

    Three months later, I finally got a polite rejection email. I was crushed.

    “I Don’t Care”

    I often wonder if there’s some mechanism that modern-day society is missing when it comes to disappointment.

    Were generations prior better equipped to handle disappointment because they lived in a time when they didn’t get constant, recurring instant gratification? Is that what it takes to learn how to deal with disappointment better?

    (more…)

  • 3 Ways to Trust Your Body and Trust Yourself

    3 Ways to Trust Your Body and Trust Yourself

    “Your body is precious. It is our vehicle for awakening. Treat it with care.” ~Buddha

    I trust that the body knows everything. It does. Absolutely.

    Did you ever just get a feeling—maybe something in your body that tells you something is wrong or just not right? Or maybe it gives you hints of unfailing happiness, joy, and earth shattering love?

    If we would stop giving so much power to the mind, the ego, and just sat still and tapped into our body’s wisdom, we’d experience a healing power so great that it could prevent or reverse illness, disease, hate, self-loathing, and perfectionism.

    I’ve learned to listen closely to my lovely friend, my body. In the past I judged her, forced away any pain she tried to show me, and even shunned self-love. I used to beat her up with negativity, judgment, and ridicule.

    I wish I could take back all that abuse. My body didn’t deserve all the mean words, hurtful thoughts, and even constant manipulation with unhealthy diets and exercise.

    You see, I had an eating disorder.

    It’s hard to talk about, but I’ve learned that it is just a part of me—it’s in my cells, and my body remembers.

    I respect this and am able to let go and speak of my experience. This has taken a long time, however, but each time I bring up the truth, my body gives me a gentle squeeze and trust is deepened.

    I’m not sure how my issues with food started, but I would bet it happened sometime in childhood.

    When I was eight years old, someone I loved dearly told me that I was fat. I remember I was wearing my yellow cowgirl dance outfit (as I had a recital that day) when it happened. I was crushed.

    I stopped eating.

    I can remember writing down each item of food in a journal. I only allowed five things a day, such as one piece of toast or one stick of bubblegum.

    Of course I was growing and I was constantly starving, therefore, I’d inevitably take a trip to McDonalds at the end of the day. I would feel defeated, then resentful of my body, telling her to listen and not eat so much. This went on for years. (more…)

  • What It Means to Really Take Care of Yourself

    What It Means to Really Take Care of Yourself

    “Be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars. In the noisy confusion of life, keep peace in your soul.” ~Max Ehrmann

    Last year I realized that I lived twenty-eight years without knowing what it really means to love and take care of myself.

    In 2010, I took some wonderful, worldly trips—Costa Rica, Bangkok, Taipei—trekking and exploring.

    My husband and I bought a second home. I fully engaged myself in the improvements and the creativity of decorating a fresh canvas.

    I ran several races, including a half-marathon, and finished well. I joined a swanky health and fitness club where I could take trendy aerobic classes. I was “taking good care of myself.”

    Life was good. I worked hard, I played hard. The end. That was the story I projected.

    But it was hardly that simple or fabulous.

    There was a whole lot of turbulence in my life that I was trying to fix externally. (more…)