Content Summary
Social, Emotional, and Ethical Learning
Center for Contemplative Science and Compassion-based Ethics
© Emory University
1. Attending to Our Body and Sensations – Notice and describe sensations in the body, especially those related to stress and well-being.
2. Attending to Emotions and Feelings - Attend to and identify one’s emotions in type and intensity as they arise.
3. Map of the Mind - Categorize emotions in relation to emotion models including the continuum from beneficial to potentially harmful.
1. Understanding Emotions in Context – Recognize emotions as they arise and understand how they arise within a context, including underlying needs, perceptions, and attitudes.
2. Self-Acceptance – Accept oneself and one’s emotions by understanding their context, allowing for a relaxation of self-judgment.
1. Balancing the Body - Regulate the body and nervous system, especially when activated, stressed or lacking in energy, to optimize well-being.
2. Cognitive and Impulse Control - Sustain attention on an object, task, or experience, avoiding distraction.
3. Navigating Emotions - Respond constructively to impulses and emotions and cultivate the behaviors and attitudes that facilitate one’s long-term well-being.
1. Attending to Our Social Reality – Recognize our inherently social nature and attend to the presence of others and the roles they play in our lives.
2. Attending to Our Shared Reality with Others - Appreciate what we share with others on a fundamental level, such as wanting happiness and to avoid suffering, having emotions and body states, and other common experiences.
3. Appreciating Diversity and Difference – Appreciate that part of our shared reality is the diversity, uniqueness and difference of individuals and groups, learning to respect those differences and the way they add to our collective life.
1. Understanding others’ feelings and emotions in context – Understand other’s feelings in context and understand that, like oneself, others have feelings caused by needs.
2. Appreciating and Cultivating Kindness and Compassion – Value the benefits of kindness and compassion and cultivate them as a disposition.
3. Appreciating and Cultivating Other Ethical Dispositions – Value and cultivate ethical dispositions and prosocial emotions, such as forgiveness, patience, contentment, generosity, and humility.
1. Empathic Listening - Listen attentively for the purpose of understanding others and their needs more deeply.
2. Skillful Communication – Communicate compassionately in a way that empowers self and others.
3. Helping Others – Offer help to others according to their needs and proportionate to one’s ability.
4. Conflict Transformation - Respond constructively to conflict and facilitate collaboration, reconciliation and peaceful relations.
1. Understanding interdependent systems – Understand interdependence and the properties of systems, such as through exploring chains of cause and effect.
2. Individuals within a Systems Context – Recognize how oneself and others exist within a systems context and affect and are affected by that context.
1. Appreciating the Fundamental Equality of All – Extend the realization of fundamental equality and common humanity to those outside one’s immediate community and ultimately to the world, recognizing those things that we all share in common as human beings, such as our aspiration for happiness and well-being and to avoid suffering.
2. Appreciating How Systems Affect Well-Being – Recognize how systems can promote or compromise well-being on cultural and structural levels, such as by promoting positive values or perpetuating problematic beliefs and inequities.
1. Exploring One’s Potential for Effecting Positive Change in Community and World – Recognize one’s own potential to effect positive change based on one’s abilities and opportunity, individually or collaboratively.
2. Engaging in Communal and Global Solutions – Explore and reflect on creative and collaborative solutions to issues affecting one’s community or the world.