Loving Kindness

So I thoroughly enjoyed this week's exercise, as I do each week. Every time I listen to these exercises, it gives me this overwhelming sense of calmness, but then I go back to what I was doing and feel almost as if it wasn't enough. I guess that is because I am just starting out and I need to learn to put myself into that feeling and keep it there for as long as I can and use those feelings to push out any bad feelings that I may encounter. However, I would definitely recommend this and the other exercises to other people, in fact I have tried to get my husband to do these with me, but he has declined. During the exercise, it asked us to think of someone who is in a time of need right now. I immediately thought my aunt who is having a rough time financially, emotionally, and spiritually. This is the person I would recommend this to most. The concept of the mental workout is to teach the mind to think differently than it would normally think on an average basis. The benefits of a mental workout are being able to have a sound mind and to be able to think of others and show that self centeredness in a negative way is not healthy. Only a few minutes a day of outward thinking of others and their problems is one way of implementing mental workouts. Another way would be to see or feel the stress and hardships of others and take a moment to inflect on those feelings and help to push them out.