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When we see someone else suffering, and we connect to them through that suffering, realizing they are a human being just like we are, most of us find it very easy to offer kindness to that person.

This is compassion.

And there is abundant evidence in hard-nosed research that shows compassion is effective in stress reduction as well as overall emotional, physical, and mental well being.

But compassion, like our empathic resonance and like our mind itself, is a cyclical, reciprocal process.

This cycle becomes broken when we refuse to offer compassion to ourselves or to \\u2018certain\\u2019 others in our lives.

By practicing mindfulness, we develop the ability to notice the suffering of all people, connect with them in this suffering, knowing all people face challenges and all people act in order to relieve their own suffering.

And we develop the ability to instinctively offer everyone, including ourselves, kindness.

When we do this, we give ourselves the opportunity to be happy.