Emiliana Simon-Thomas is a neuroscientist, holds a PhD in how fear affects our thinking and is the science director of Greater Good Science Center in Berkeley, California. When we meet, she is about to distribute 6 million dollars for research projects solely on the theme of gratitude.
Gratitude is one of the core themes of the research center, focusing on positive emotions regarded as likely to lead to a meaningful life. Others are empathy, forgiveness and mindfulness. For Emiliana, her main interest is to increase the understanding of how compassion arises.
Would you like some working company, even though you’re not employed, and even though you can’t afford a freelance office? Would you like to support others who want to create a more sustainable world, and get the same support yourself? Read my story about the new Swedish concept Hoffice (also published in Svenska Dagbladet Näringsliv):
He can provide seatings for ten, eleven people – if some would mind working in the sofa or an armchair. They can use his kitchen and fast Wi-Fi. And he has a quiet room for phone calls – “though of course it will be our bedroom”, as Amrit Daniel Forss clarifies in his Facebook invitation to arrange Hoffice in the apartment at Reimersholme in Stockholm, Sweden.
Over the years, Tara Brach met so many people expressing a feeling of unworthiness that she created her own method for self-compassion – radical acceptance. Today she is one of the West’s most famous meditation teacher. Thousands of people every day are down-loading her guided pod-meditations from the website.
“Although we intellectually can understand how hard we judge ourselves, we’re not aware of how deeply it impacts everything of us. Everything”
