Internalizing Values Through Intentional Practice

The Dalai Lama recently spoke to an audience about the need for everyone to have that key value of wisdom, compassion. His advice for those who wanted to develop compassion was to put themselves in challenging situations and then, despite the natural reluctance to do so, behave compassionately. By making the effort to engage in value-based action — again, and again, and again — we eventually internalize the value. Expressing the value in action gradually takes less and less effort until it becomes part of our outlook, part of our natural way of being, part of who we are.