Nasty or Nice: How kind are we to ourselves or others?

The Students started off today with a safe place meditation. They were asked to think of a place they could go to in their minds when life got hard and full of worries. This place would be full of positives and feel completely safe for them with no demands.

For some this place was their house, for others this was with friends at school. 

For a large majority the place was outside of Hong Kong, at a holiday destination, or a grandparents house. It was often in their country of origin, and often in a quiet countryside location, a field, a forest or a garden.

The following discussion centered around being kind and unkind to self and others. A mention of siblings allowed the children to easily understand how frustration with one thing led them to take out their frustration on another person, often a younger brother or sister. So a difficult maths task would lead them to shout at their parents and/ or siblings, blaming them for their difficulty. We discussed useful alternative actions when you were angry or frustrated. The students generated the following:

• Punch or shout at a pillow
• Bounce on their bed.
• Do something nice for someone.
• Do something active. (run, trampoline etc.)
• Do something creative.
• write in a  frustration journal, or write a letter that they rip up.

We also discussed how burying your feelings with candy didn't help in the long run as it just suppressed the emotions rather than acknowledging and dealing with them.

What was really positive, was that the students talked at great lengths about all the kind things they had done for themselves and others over the past week. We discussed how people who perform spontaneous acts of kindness are often more happy and successful in life.

So this week the students are going to take special notice of when they are kind or unkind to themselves or others. You can really help them by noticing and commenting when you observe kindness or unkindness, but try to err on the side of positive noticing!

Next week is the final week of the course and we will look at the Secret of Happiness!