Explore What May Be Useful to You
Spread Harmony seeks to make potentially useful resources available for people who wish to explore ideas, perspectives and practices that may contribute to a more harmonious life.
We do not claim that every resource will be useful or appropriate for everyone. We encourage people to explore different perspectives, consider evidence where appropriate, and decide for themselves what may be useful to them.
Explore a Subject
Compassion
Explore compassion as a way of seeking to understand ourselves and others – including their circumstances, experiences and the influences that may have contributed to their understanding and behaviour.
Compassion does not require agreement or approval. It can coexist with difficult truths, accountability and appropriate boundaries.
Gratitude
Explore gratitude as more than occasionally saying thank you – as a way of noticing and appreciating what is present in our lives, including people, experiences, opportunities and circumstances.
Gratitude need not discourage aspiration or growth. We can appreciate what we have while continuing to learn, develop and contribute.
Healthy Living
Explore potentially useful information about some of the everyday conditions that may support physical and mental wellbeing, including nutrition, movement, sleep, stress and recovery, and social connection.
Healthy living should not become a basis for judging ourselves or others. Individual circumstances differ, and people should make health decisions appropriate to their own needs.
Harmony
Harmony is the central idea behind
Spread Harmony. We speak of harmony within ourselves, in relationships, in families and communities, among groups and nations.
Harmony does not require the absence of disagreement. People can differ in beliefs, preferences, cultures, personalities, and ways of life while still respecting one another with dignity and living together constructively in harmony.
Wisdom
Wisdom may be understood as the capacity to bring what we know, what we have learned, what we are capable of doing and the human qualities we have developed into thoughtful action appropriate to a particular situation. In this sense, wisdom is not merely another quality to add. It may help integrate many qualities and abilities and guide how they are expressed through the changing phases, relationships, opportunities and difficulties of life.
Receiving Gracefully
We admire generosity, service, kindness and people who offer their resources to others. Receiving is discussed much less often. At times it can even feel uncomfortable. We may worry about being dependent, becoming indebted, appearing needy, or inconveniencing another person. Yet giving and receiving are not separate human activities. Every genuine act of giving requires someone who is willing and able to receive it. If giving can be generous, perhaps receiving can sometimes be generous too.
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You Are Enough
What we achieve can change our circumstances, abilities and contribution. It does not have to determine our fundamental worth as a human being. You are already a person, and you deserve dignity and respect just for being you. Everyone is different and everyone has a different gift. You need to realize and believe that you are not lacking anything and you are enough.
Freedom Within
Explore compassion as a way of seeking to understand ourselves and others – including their circumstances, experiences and the influences that may have contributed to their understanding and behaviour.
Ego
Ego is widely used but has different meanings in psychology, philosophy, spirituality and everyday conversation. This resource uses a specific everyday meaning. Here, “ego” means an unhealthy elevation or protection of the self — for example, needing to feel superior, more deserving, more important, more correct or more entitled than others, or needing to protect status and image at the expense of truth, justice or the humanity of others.
A healthy sense of self, confidence, self-respect and self-esteem are treated separately and are not called ego here.
Education
Education is often associated with schools, universities, examinations, qualifications and preparation for employment. Education begins before formal schooling and can continue throughout life. We learn from families, teachers, friends, books, work, travel, successes, failures, conversations, observation, reflection, communities and increasingly from digital technologies.
Peace
Peace is one of humanity’s oldest and most widely expressed aspirations. We seek peace within ourselves, in families and relationships, in communities, between groups and across nations.
Peace can be understood as a continuum rather than a single all-or-nothing condition. At one end may be the basic absence of open violence or active fighting. Further along may be stable, neutral coexistence without hostility. At a richer level may be relationships marked by mutual respect, fairness, trust, cooperation, support and harmony.
Love
Love is also central to human life. Love is not one uniform experience. Everyday language itself shows a continuum. At one end, “I love this” may simply mean “I like this very much.” In human relationships, love may describe affection, attraction, attachment, companionship, loyalty, care or deep commitment. At still deeper levels, love may involve sustained concern for another person’s wellbeing without continually calculating what we will receive in return.
Comfort Zone and Risk Taking
Life requires both safety and risk. If we remain within what is familiar almost all the time, we may miss opportunities to learn, love, contribute, create and discover what we are capable of. If we take risks without judgement, however, we may unnecessarily endanger health, relationships, finances, reputation or other people.
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Death and Dying
Death is one of the few certainties of human life, yet it is often difficult to discuss. Fear of death and, perhaps even more commonly, fear of the process of dying can contribute to that silence. People may fear pain, dependence, loss of control, separation, unfinished responsibilities or simply the unknown.
Avoidance is understandable, but silence does not remove mortality. It can leave people and families less prepared when serious illness or dying eventually occurs. Talking thoughtfully about death is not a rejection of life. It can be one way of taking life seriously.
Decision Making
Much of what our life becomes is shaped by the decisions we make. Some are small and quickly forgotten; others influence education, work, health, relationships, finances, family, place of living and the direction of an entire life.
For circumstances partly or fully within our control, our choices strongly influence what we do. For circumstances outside our control, the event itself may not result from our decision, but our decisions about how to face it, respond to it, accept what cannot be changed, learn from it and seek support can substantially influence how it affects our life.
Growth but Towards What?
From childhood onward, growth is generally encouraged. We are expected to learn, become more capable, progress in education and work, improve our health, expand opportunities and develop our potential. Economic growth has helped societies escape subsistence, improve health and education, finance public services and create opportunities that earlier generations did not have.
Yet treating growth as automatically desirable can hide an important question: growth towards what — and at what cost to people, communities, other countries, nature and future generations?
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Stress
Stress is a natural human response to challenge, demand, uncertainty or perceived threat. Another useful way of understanding stress is as a perceived imbalance between the demands being made on us and the resources we believe we have to meet those demands.
It is not automatically harmful. In appropriate amounts it can mobilise attention, energy and action. The greater concern is stress that is excessive, prolonged, repeatedly activated, poorly recovered from, or generated by demands that continually exceed our resources.
Explore Other Resources
Potentially Useful External Resources
Explore organisations and other sources working in areas such as compassion, gratitude, wellbeing, human development, brain health, service, relationships, philosophy and living well.
Their inclusion does not imply that Spread Harmony endorses every view, claim or resource they provide.
Listen & Explore
Podcasts & Conversations
Explore selected podcasts and conversations covering subjects such as human behaviour, happiness, relationships, neuroscience, health, meaning and personal development.
Different hosts and guests offer different perspectives and levels of evidence. They are provided as opportunities for exploration rather than as recommendations that everything presented should be accepted.
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Keep Exploring
Resources are starting points, not destinations.
You may find something useful. You may question something you encounter. You may discover another perspective that is more useful to you.
And if you know of a resource that you believe may be useful to others, you are welcome to suggest it.