Mindful Expat Episode 14: Self-Compassion, the Two Arrows, & Learning to Surf

What you’ll hear in this episode:

• How you can create a pause between your initial experience of an emotion and your reaction to it, and how doing so will allow you to cultivate more self-compassion and feel less out of control in your life.
• About the differences between pain and suffering — and how our responses to our own internal experiences determine the extent to which we suffer.
• The Buddhist metaphor of the two arrows, which illustrates this difference between pain and suffering.
• How all of this might apply to the experience of struggling with adaptation to a new country/culture. Read More


The Legend of the Two Wolves

wolfThere’s an old Cherokee legend about two wolves that goes like this:

An old man was talking to his grandson about life.

He told the young boy, “A battle is going on inside of me. It is a terrible fight between two wolves. One wolf represents all that is bad — fear, anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego. The other wolf represents all that is good — joy, peace, love, hope, sharing, serenity, humility, kindness, friendship, empathy, generosity, truth, and compassion.”

The old man then turned to the boy and said, “The same fight is going on inside of you, and inside of every person on this great earth.”

The boy thought about this for a moment. Then he turned to his grandfather and asked, “But which wolf will win?”

And the old man replied, “The one you feed.”

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