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Gabriel comments on Open thread for December 9 - 16, 2013 - Less Wrong
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Any good advice on how to become kinder? This can really be classified as two related goals, 1) How can I get more enjoyment out of alleviating others suffering and giving others happiness? 2) How can I reliably do 1 without negative emotions getting in my way (ex. staying calm and making small nudges to persuade people rather than getting angry and trying to change people's worldview rapidly)?
I recommend trying loving-kindness meditation.
Could you elaborate? I'm relatively familiar with and practice mindfulness meditation, but I've never heard of loving-kindness meditation.
This here Wikipedia page is a good summary.
It mostly boils down to simply concentrating on feeling nice towards everyone. There is some technical advice on how to turn the vague goal of 'feeling nice' to more concrete mental actions (through visualization, repeating specific phrases, focusing on positive qualities of people) and how to structure the practice by having a progression of people towards which you generate warm fuzzy feelings, of increasing level of difficulty (like starting with yourself and eventually moving on to someone you consider an enemy). Most of this can be found in the Wiki article or easily googled.
See here for an introduction.