Courage

We need courage to stand in our experience, whatever that is, even if it's not pleasant at the time. We also need courage to try different ways of responding to it. Courage isn't something we have, it's something we do. Everyone can do it. It's simply a choice, and the more we build our courage habit, the easier it is to engage it.

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Curiosity

We need curiosity to look closely at what we're going through, the pleasant, the unpleasant, and the in-between. We must want to see how our experience is constructed, what leads to it, what it's made up of, what our patterns are. 

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Compassion

We need to practice empathy and good will towards ourselves. We need to be willing to dismantle the machinery of 'judging mind', and put effort in to nourishing and fueling our physical and emotional reserves. As the Buddha said, there is no-one more worthy of kindness than ourselves.

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Clarity

We can't change the way we experience the world if we can't see the way we experience the world. We can't see it if we don't slow down and calm down. Like a pond in the dirt that's all stirred up and muddy, if our mind's are constantly overloaded and bombarded with stimulation, we'll never see how they work. Building a mindfulness practice is an essential ingredient for growth.