How Can I Not Take Things Personally?

Q: Dear Todd, what if a person treats everyone else well with kindness and compassion with the exclusion of oneself, that is, that person only feels hatred towards me? How can one not take it personally then? I'd like to think it's a projection of how they feel about themselves but it's apparent they're okay and happy when with others just not me. And it's not because of something I…

Is Responding with Kindness a Strength or Weakness?

Q: Dear Todd, shouldn't we respond with our true feelings to people who hurt us and not with love and kindness?TODD ANSWERS: Someone recently asked me this question about how to respond to people who hurt us. I get it, believe me. Our first (unconscious) instinctual reaction is to respond with anger. But this would be a reaction that lacks wisdom, patience, perspective, and most importantly, efficacy. It is just…

How to Love Yourself Before you Love Others

Every single thing we experience outside of us is a projection of our own mind. If we lived in a tribe on an island with no connection to the modern world, we may think airplanes flying overhead were shiny birds. We can only experience the world based on our understanding, our mental state, and our emotional state.If we are hard on ourselves, we expect other people to be hard on…