The first exercise is called the induction exercise (Leary et al, 2007). In this exercise, you recall a failure, a rejection, a loss, or something that caused a negative emotional response. You then simply imagine a friend having had that same experience and ask yourself how you would communicate with them around it. The exercise enables you to step out of yourself for a moment and to gain a different, more compassionate perspective on an event in your life that caused you some level of upset.

Rather than describing it further, let’s try it for ourselves.