The first time I tried loving-kindness meditation, I quit halfway through. The instructions said to wish myself well — may I be happy, may I be healthy, may I be safe, may I live with ease — and I could not say the words without immediately hearing the sarcastic voice in my head respond: sure, that’ll fix it. I closed the app and decided metta was not for people like me.
That was years ago. I kept coming back to it — not because I had figured out how to silence the sarcasm, but because I eventually realized the sarcasm was the entire point. Loving-kindness meditation is precisely for the part of you that cannot wish yourself well. If you could already do that easily, you would not need the practice.
This guide is for everyone in the same starting position. What metta actually is, the traditional phrases, modifications for self-criticism and hard-to-love people, a complete 15-minute practice you can do today, and the common ways the practice goes wrong on the first attempt.
What Metta (Loving-Kindness) Meditation Is
Metta is a Pali word usually translated as “loving-kindness,” “benevolence,” or “friendliness.” In the Buddhist tradition where it originates, metta is the first of the four “divine abodes” or brahmaviharas — qualities of mind that, deliberately cultivated, change how a practitioner moves through the world.
The practice itself is simple. You direct a series of well-wishing phrases — traditionally something like may you be happy, may you be healthy, may you be safe, may you live with ease — toward a sequence of beings: yourself first, then a beloved person, then a neutral person, then someone difficult, then all beings. The phrases are repeated. The attention is on the felt sense of warmth they generate, not on whether you “mean” them.
That last point matters. Metta is not a sincerity test. It is a training. You are not trying to achieve immediate genuine love for everyone you list. You are training the muscle that makes such a thing possible at all. Most beginners assume the practice has failed because they do not feel a flood of warm feelings. Most experienced practitioners know that the warmth comes after the practice, not during it, and not on the first try.
The Traditional Phrases (and Why They Are Built That Way)
The four classical phrases vary slightly across traditions, but the most common Western version is:
- May you be happy.
- May you be healthy.
- May you be safe.
- May you live with ease.
Each phrase points at something distinct. Happy covers emotional flourishing. Healthy covers the body. Safe covers the absence of harm — physical and psychological. Live with ease covers freedom from the small frictions that exhaust people daily. Together, they sketch the conditions for a life going well, without specifying any particular outcome.
The phrases are deliberately abstract. Concrete wishes (may you get the promotion, may your relationship work out) tend to provoke immediate counter-thoughts (but what if). Abstract wishes are harder to argue with internally, which is why they bypass resistance more easily.
Modifications for People Who Find the Standard Phrases Hard
If the traditional phrases produce sarcasm or shutdown, that is signal, not failure. The fix is to soften the phrases until your inner voice can actually say them.
If “may I be happy” feels too big: try may I find one moment of ease today, or may I be okay, or may I be a little gentler with myself. Smaller is better. The point is to find a phrase you do not flinch at.
If “may I be safe” feels presumptuous: try may I do what I can to take care of myself. This redirects from outcome to effort, which is easier to mean.
If self-directed phrases feel impossible: start with the second category, a beloved person — a child, a friend, a pet. Many people can wish a beloved being well easily. After a few weeks of starting there, the warmth begins to leak backward toward the self. This is a known and reliable progression.
If a hard-to-love person triggers anger rather than well-wishing: wish them freedom from the suffering that drives the behavior, not happiness. This is honest. You may not want them happy. You can probably want them less hurt, since their hurt is what makes them difficult.
Free Meditation Guide
Get our 20-page beginner's guide with 5 techniques
and a 7-day meditation challenge.
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
A 15-Minute Loving-Kindness Practice
Sit comfortably. Eyes closed. Three settling breaths. Choose your phrases — either the traditional set above or your softened version. Have one beloved person, one neutral acquaintance, and one difficult person in mind before you start.
Minutes 1-3: Yourself
Repeat the phrases silently to yourself. May I be happy. May I be healthy. May I be safe. May I live with ease. Or your softened version. Continue for three minutes. Notice resistance, sarcasm, doubt — then return to the phrases. Do not argue with the inner voice. Just keep saying the phrases beside it.
Minutes 4-6: Someone You Love
Bring to mind someone you love easily — a child, a parent, a close friend, a pet. See their face. Direct the same phrases toward them. May you be happy. May you be healthy. May you be safe. May you live with ease. The warmth here is usually easier to access. Notice it. Let it stay.
Minutes 7-9: A Neutral Person
Choose someone you neither love nor dislike — a coworker you barely talk to, a barista, a neighbor whose name you do not know. Direct the phrases toward them. This is often the most surprising part of the practice. Most people are surprised to discover they can generate well-wishing for a stranger when they slow down and try.
Minutes 10-12: A Difficult Person
Bring to mind someone who has hurt you, frustrated you, or who you find hard to like. Start small — not your worst enemy on the first try, but someone moderately difficult. Direct the phrases toward them, modified if needed. May you be free from suffering. May you find peace.
If you cannot do this without anger rising, that is information. Notice the anger. Return to yourself for the rest of this segment, with the phrase may I be free from this anger. The practice is not “love your enemies on demand.” It is honest engagement with the part of you that cannot.
Minutes 13-15: All Beings
Expand the well-wishing to everyone — your family, your city, your country, the whole planet. May all beings be happy. May all beings be healthy. May all beings be safe. May all beings live with ease. The phrases here are large and abstract, which is appropriate; you cannot meaningfully picture all beings, so the phrases work as a kind of wide net cast outward.
Take three closing breaths. Open your eyes. Sit for a moment before standing.
Common Mistakes
Treating it as performance. Metta is not graded. You are not trying to feel a particular feeling on cue. The practice is the repetition of the phrases with attention. The feelings come (when they come) as a side effect.
Giving up after one session. The first metta session is often the worst — full of resistance, self-mockery, and the strong sense that nothing is happening. Most reliable benefits show up between week 3 and week 6 of regular practice.
Skipping the difficult person. The fourth segment is the hardest and the most useful. Skipping it makes metta a self-soothing exercise rather than a transformative one. Even if you have to scale back the difficulty, do not omit this segment.
Avoiding metta when you most need it. Loving-kindness practice is most useful exactly when it feels most impossible — after a hard interaction, during a depressive stretch, when self-criticism is loudest. The instinct in those moments is to skip it. The data (and the tradition) suggest that those are the times to lean in.
How Metta Connects to Other Practices
Loving-kindness pairs unusually well with other meditation forms. It is often used as a “warm-up” before silent mindfulness meditation, since the metta phrases prime a softer attention. It is also a useful follow-up to meditation for anxiety sessions, particularly when self-criticism is part of what is driving the anxiety.
Beyond meditation specifically, metta lives within a larger Buddhist framework of cultivated mental qualities. For the broader context, our guide to Buddhist principles for daily living walks through how metta sits among the other brahmaviharas (compassion, sympathetic joy, equanimity).
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I have to use the traditional phrases?
No. The phrases are scaffolding. Find a version that you can actually say without flinching. Many practitioners eventually adapt the phrases to their own voice — may I be at peace with where I am, may I be kind to myself today. The form of the phrase matters less than its honesty for you.
How is loving-kindness different from self-compassion?
Self-compassion (as developed by Kristin Neff) is largely metta directed at the self — but with an explicit framing around suffering. Self-compassion practices typically use phrases like this is a moment of suffering, suffering is part of life, may I be kind to myself. Metta is broader: it includes the self, but extends well beyond. The two practices reinforce each other.
Is loving-kindness meditation Buddhist?
Originally yes — metta is a foundational practice across Theravada, Mahayana, and Vajrayana Buddhist traditions. In the last 30 years, it has been adapted into secular contexts (mindfulness-based programs, therapy, workplace wellness) without significant loss of effectiveness. You can practice metta within a religious framework or entirely outside one.
What if I can’t think of anyone “neutral”?
Anyone who provokes neither warmth nor irritation works — the person who delivers your packages, the cashier at the grocery store, a stranger you walked past this morning. The neutrality of the figure is the point; it lets you discover that you can extend well-wishing without prior emotional investment.
Can I do metta about myself only?
Yes, and for some practitioners with strong self-criticism, that is where the work needs to happen first. A daily 5-minute metta-for-self practice for several weeks is often the foundation that makes the longer four-stage practice possible.
Closing
The thing nobody tells you about loving-kindness meditation is that it is for the people who need it most — and the people who need it most are usually the ones who initially recoil from it. The recoil is the practice meeting its target. If sitting down and saying may I be happy produces immediate inner sarcasm, you have found exactly the place where metta does its work.
Try fifteen minutes today. Use the phrases that you can actually say. Notice what happens — including the sarcasm. Come back tomorrow. The warmth comes later, after the muscle has been worked enough times to know what it is doing.