Here are eight tips from a Buddhist psychotherapist to care for the mind and cultivate well-being:
1. Notice your inner landscape: Cultivate self-awareness by paying attention to what’s happening internally. This can be through mindfulness or reflection.
2. Hold your experiences with kindness: Practice holding your experiences, including emotions, with receptive kindness. Try not to change or control them, but rather observe and tolerate them.
3. Use self-compassion: Recognize that you cannot hold the fullness of what you go through alone, and that self-compassion can help lessen the risk of getting flooded by shame or self-attack.
4. Widen your definition of happiness: Happiness is a multidimensional part of the human experience, including appreciation, delight, peace, and contentment. Notice small things that fill you with gratitude, and appreciate good experiences when they happen.
5. See your interdependence: Recognize that you are not isolated, but rather embedded relationally. Understand how your interactions affect your brain chemistry and body responses, and strive to be on board with reality.
6. Find support and inspiration in others: Surround yourself with a community that provides support, encouragement, and reassurance. Counterbalance frightening news reports with inspiring and hopeful information.
7. Care for your gifts: Remember your basic goodness, compassion, and beauty baked into your mind. Appeal to these qualities patiently and unravel them in yourself and the world around you.
8. Hold the fuller truth: Recognize that selective attention towards the negative can be distorting, making you miss parts of your experience and yourself. Work to recognize and nurture your capacity for courage, care, and compassion, and acknowledge the suffering while also acknowledging your endowedness with all the needed ingredients for reliable well-being and happiness.
Source: https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/between-cultures/202407/caring-for-the-mind-insights-from-buddhist-psychology