Hello it's Eve here. Welcome to Radio Headspace and to Tuesday. So have you ever been in

a bath mood or been upset about something? And then you've seen somebody laugh and it

really helps you to come out of the mood that you were in. You feel a genuine sense of happiness

at witnessing someone else's joy. In the traditional teachings this is known as Moudita or Sympathetic

or Empathetic Joy. It's something that's been a huge help to me and I wanted to share it with you.

Over the weekend I'd been feeling a little bit low and tired and it was affecting my mood. I

decided the best thing for me to do was to take our dog Pedro out for a walk. Pedro's favorite thing to

do in life is play ball. He's a little weiner dog or a sausage dog as they're known in the UK.

So it's pretty entertaining to see this little long body and tiny legs chase after a ball. His ears

flapping in the wind. So when we went on our walk for the first few minutes I was really caught up in

a flurry of thoughts and I was barely noticing his happy little face and wagging tail. Until I overheard

someone say, oh my goodness your dog looks so happy and at that moment I looked down at him and he

was just beaming. Seeing how happy he was made me being with joy as well and for the rest of the

walk I was in a totally different mood. I paid attention to my surrounding. I said hi when somebody

greeted us as we walked past and I noticed that other people were laughing and enjoying themselves.

We're all interconnected and share our experience as humans. When we see suffering our natural

response is to want to do something about it. So if we can apply that same logic and share in the

joy of others we dramatically increase our ability to feel a sense of happiness. This is an attitude

quality that can be cultivated and practiced. A simple way to do this in your daily life is when

you see someone laughing or doing something that makes them look happy or content. You can say to

yourself silently, I am happy that you are happy and you can even do this with folks that you don't

know. Something to be aware of and I think is important to call out is that it can be quite easy

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