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It’s time for another stress buster. Finger counting is a useful technique when you need a little help keeping your focus.

Finger counting is very simple. Place your left hand flat on your lap or on a table in front of you, palm down. Make sure the hand is fully supported, so you can keep it there comfortably for several minutes.

Use the index finger on your right hand to trace the fingers. With the tip of the index finger, touch the outside of the left hand, at the base of your little finger.

Coordinate the tracing with your breath. As you breathe in, trace up the outside of the little finger, reaching to tip of the finger at the end of the inhale. As you exhale, trace down the inside of the finger. As you inhale, trace up the outside of the ring finger, and as you exhale, trace down the inside of the ring finger.

Keep tracing the fingers until you reach the base of the thumb on an exhalation. If you want to keep finger counting, don’t start at the little finger again, just reverse your tracing. As you inhale, trace up to the tip of the thumb.

Yes, it is okay to use your left hand to trace your right hand. Do whatever feels most comfortable and natural to you.

This Week's Peaceful Moment: Duckling at Elk Island National Park, Alberta

 

You can continue to trace as long as you want to, or whenever you want to, you can stop tracing and bring your full attention to just breathing.

If your mind wanders to a thought or feeling, gently bring your attention back to the sensations of tracing your fingers. Return to these sensations as many times as you need to. There’s no need to be concerned or upset if your mind wanders. Just simply return to tracing.

Like the counting technique and the labeling technique, finger counting can help you focus on the breath during meditation. It’s also good for stress relief, because it helps you let go of your thoughts and focus on bodily sensations for awhile. The body is always in the present moment, so dropping out of your head (your thoughts and feelings) into your body helps you let go of worries about the past or the future. Just a few minutes of finger counting can help you get grounded and make you feel calmer. If you can put your hand on your lap under a table, you can also be stealthy and do some finger counting with no one noticing.

Try finger counting now

For a 12-minute guided meditation including the finger counting technique, forward the podcast or the video above to 2:32.

Next Week:

Next week I’m going to address more questions submitted by listeners and students. I’ll cover questions about listening to music while meditating, teaching mindfulness to kids, meditation for those with breathing problems, and more.

If you’d like a reminder email, just go to mindful15.com/subscribe and subscribe to our newsletter. I’ll let you know when new lessons are online and I’ll also send you a free deep relaxation along with a copy of Your Meditation Action Plan, our step-by-step guide to building a healthy meditation habit that lasts a lifetime.

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Twice now I’ve talked about climate change on this podcast. Both times, I focused on how our ability to take action can be impaired by strong negative emotions. I never addressed how mindfulness can guide us toward solutions.

Climate change is arguably the most important issue of our time and it’s not getting the media attention it deserves. I realize through this podcast I have a small opportunity to contribute to an important discussion, so I’d like to discuss how each and every one of us can use mindfulness to make a difference.

Yes, the problem is dire enough and big enough to require government action, because that’s the only way to force people and organizations to make large enough changes fast enough. But, this doesn’t mean we individuals should abdicate responsibility.

Each day, you and I make dozens of decisions that have environmental consequences. Are you aware of them? Does environmental impact figure into your decision making process? Is combating climate change enough of a priority for you that you’ll contribute even at the expense of other factors such as cost or convenience?

Every time you consume goods or services and any time you produce waste, your decisions have environmental impact. If every one of us considered environmental consequences when making choices, the payoff would be significant. For example, Natural Resources Canada tells us that if every Canadian motorist avoided idling for just three minutes per day, CO2 emissions could be reduced by 1.4 million tons annually. This would be the equivalent of saving 630 million litres of fuel and the equivalent of taking 320,000 cars off the road for a full year. Please keep that in mind next time you visit the drive-thru. 

Furthermore, if we all chose an environmentally mindful approach, we would impact the organizations that sell to us, causing them to make more environmentally sound decisions, too.

This Week's Peaceful Moment: Bighorn Sheep in Jasper National Park, Alberta

 

There’s even emerging of research that suggest mindfulness is a mechanism for bringing about the broad cultural shift in values required to combat climate change. Researchers Wamsler and Brink (2018), for example, report “individual mindfulness coincides with higher motivation to take climate adaptation actions or to support them, especially actions that are ‘other-focused’ or support pro-environmental behaviour.”

Environmental mindfulness is just a part of everyday mindfulness practice. To be fully aware of whatever you’re doing in the moment includes being aware of the consequences of your actions. This can become a habit, just a routine way of going about things. Of course, habit is built through regular practice, so let’s do some practice right now. 

Today's practice exercise

Spend five or ten minutes contemplating a recent product purchase. Do it right now.

Ask yourself what motivated you to choose that specific product. Was is price, packaging, convenience, product benefits, endorsements, environmental impact, etc.? Then contemplate the product’s environmental impact. How it was produced? What materials or ingredients were used?

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This episode is a last-minute extension of the Compassion Series. I realized after the episode on extending compassion to difficult people, it might also be helpful to talk about mindfulness practices for dealing with difficult people. So, that’s the plan for today.

I'm using the term "difficult person" as a shortcut here, lumping a bunch of people under one label. A difficult person is one who creates conditions for negative emotions to arise in you. It might be someone you’re angry with, someone who annoys you, someone who upsets you, etc. It’s important to note I’m talking about those who are mildly to moderately difficult. I am not talking about abusive people or those who cause grievous harm. The strategies I’ll share today can apply to those people, too, but they’re not enough on their own. You’ll need more help with such people.

Let’s get back to the “difficult people” label for a moment, though. The danger of calling someone a difficult person is the label may stick, if even in your own mind. If you always think of them as the difficult person, it will bias your perception of them. Certainly some people are more difficult, or difficult more often than others, but most people aren't difficult all the time or in all situations. The label can lead you to limit your compassion for the other person, and that will make it harder to deal with them.

 Another issue with the label is it suggests this person is causing your problems. In reality, it's your reactions to the person that are problematic, and you have to own those. No, I'm not suggesting their behaviour is acceptable or should be discounted. I’m saying that the negative effects of their behaviour can be mitigated by the way you react to them. If you apply mindfulness, you have a better chance of dealing with them in a less negative way that harms you less.

 I’m going to continue using the term difficult people so I can communicate with you clearly, but I suggest you drop it after you listen to this podcast. Don’t start using it to label others.

 This is not the definitive guide to handling difficult people. It’s a collection of practices that might help.

 Begin with a little meditation

If you know ahead of time that you’ll be encountering a difficult person, take some time to meditate first. Even a few minutes of meditation can help you become more grounded and calm. As you end your meditation, you might also like to set an intention for dealing with the difficult person, something like, “I intend to stay calm and not react in anger,” or “I intend to listen to what the person has to say and let go of my frustration.”

Compassion meditation might also be helpful. It could allow you to generate goodwill toward difficult person, making it easier to interact with them. This tends to work only if you’re already practicing compassion meditation regularly, because it takes practice to learn to generate genuine compassion for a difficult person.

If you do use compassion meditation, you might add a step when you come to sending goodwill to the difficult person. Take a few breaths to identify and focus on at least one good or pleasing characteristic of the difficult person. Even if it’s only something small, hold on to it for a little while to help you generate positive feelings.

When you spontaneously encounter a difficult person and have no time to meditate first, the next technique will be more helpful.

 Take a tiny time out

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Today we’re wrapping up our five-part compassion series with some ideas for practicing loving kindness and goodwill on a daily basis. Compassion meditation helps you generate feelings of goodwill, but practicing kindness in daily life is what we’re ultimately reaching for and there’s no need to wait.

My intention is to give you some small ways to practice goodwill and compassion. None of these take much effort or make you go out of your way. Some of these are practices that other people will be aware you’re doing. Others, they won’t even notice. But I find I notice when I do them. They make me feel happier. Let me know if they make you happier, too. Oh, and if you have other ideas, please share in the comments section, or send them to me at [email protected].

Mindful Pauses

Before you react to something someone else has said or done, just pause. Take a mindful breath, or two, or three. Let yourself get calm so you can notice your emotional reactions. When you see them, it’s easier to let them go, and when you release them, you get to make a more deliberate choice in how to react.

Remember Their Intentions

When someone pushes your button, remember that each person comes from good intentions. They may not know how to be kind or nice or considerate, but whatever they’re doing, they’re doing because they want to be happy and well. When you remember that, you will have a better chance of giving them the benefit of the doubt and helping them find effective, non-harmful ways to satisfy their needs.

Send Goodwill to Strangers

As you pass by other people, silently wish them well. You can use phrases from compassion meditation such as “may you be well,” or you can put your wishes in your own words, “I hope you’re happy today,” or “have a peaceful day.” Choose words that feel genuine to you. Another way to practice this is to smile at strangers. You’ll find they tend to smile back. When I do this, I get an instant boost of happiness.

Practice Small Acts of Kindness

Do nice things for others, even if you don’t know them. Hold the door open, help them carry a package, give them a genuine compliment, tell them how happy you are to have their company, buy them a cup of tea. If you want ideas, just search “random acts of kindness,” and you’ll find hundreds of them. On the other hand, you don’t need to go out of your way. Just be mindful of what’s going on around you and grab those little opportunities to help, to share, or to make someone happier.

Peaceful Moment of the Week: Shells on the Beach at Cedar By the Sea, BC.

 

Be Truly Present for Others

When you’re with other people, whether it’s out to dinner with friends, playing with your child, listening to a customer complaint, or arguing with a partner, be there completely. Be mindful and put all your attention on them. Turn off your phone, get rid of other distractions, don’t let anything interrupt you. Giving others your undivided, caring attention is one of the kindest, most compassionate things you can do.

Make the Time

Following on the last idea, be sure that you’re making time to be with those you care about. The people who love you want to be with you. Don’t miss opportunities to share yourself with them. If other activities are getting in your way, apply some mindfulness. Ask yourself, “what is most important to me?” It’s those things that deserve your time.

Be Considerate

Whatever it is you’re doing,

 

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For the past three weeks, we’ve been exploring compassion. We’ve covered how mindfulness fosters compassion, how to make metta meditation easier by starting with someone you love, and how to strengthen your capacity for self-compassion. Today, it’s time to address the toughest part of compassion meditation: generating feelings of loving kindness for people we don’t like. I want to address the value of this practice and to give you another tool that can help.

Having compassion for a difficult person is hard, especially if that person has caused you harm. It can even be tough to send goodwill to people for whom you have neutral feelings, that is people you don’t know.

But, why even bother? What’s the value of this practice?

Let’s apply mindfulness to this question. Difficult people are difficult because they are suffering in some way. They have negative emotions and they don’t have the skills required to manage those emotions effectively.

For example, a person who is manipulating you might be suffering because they perceive their needs aren’t being met. They manipulate, because they don’t have other, more effective ways to get what they want. Another example is the confrontational person who experiences anger without knowing how to manage it, so instead, they dump anger and blame on you.

To be compassionate is to see things from the difficult person’s perspective and to care about their suffering. If you can empathize with them, you can see they’re just people trying to do the best they can. After all, every person wants happiness, love, health, and well-being, even if the way they go about getting those things makes life difficult for you.

If you can empathize, you can begin to understand their position - notice I say “understand,” not “agree with.” If you can care about them, that is feel compassion for them, you might be able to identify ways that you can communicate with them in a more meaningful way and understand them even better.

You might even be able to find ways to help them resolve their problems, or resolve your mutual problems in ways that serves you both. By the way, I’m not suggesting that every solution is some form of happily-ever-after scenario. Sometime the solution is to agree to disagree, or to walk away from one another forever. But imagine reaching such solutions out of empathy and compassion instead of out of anger and misunderstanding.

Peaceful Moment of the Week: Canadian Tiger Swallowtail Butterfly

 

And there’s more. When a difficult person receives compassion and understanding, they might become a less difficult person. Support can sometimes go a long way toward making a person feel happy and secure, and those positive feelings can foster better reactions on the difficult person’s part.

Then there’s the personal benefit of compassion for others. One of the biggest benefits of mindfulness practice is it teaches you  ways to manage your own strong emotions such as the emotions sparked by a difficult person. Face it, you think the person is difficult because they’re negatively affecting you, causing you to generate strong emotional reactions. Learning to show that person empathy and compassion helps you manage your own negative reactions to their behaviour, leaving you happier and healthier, even if you don’t succeed in making them feel better.

How to teach yourself to care more

Compassion meditation helps you generate feelings of loving kindness for others, including people you don’t know, people you don’t like,

 

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If you’ve been practicing compassion meditation with me these last two weeks, you’ll have noticed it includes sending wishes of goodwill toward yourself. Today, in Part 3 of our Compassion Series, I’ll discuss self-compassion in more depth and offer you a meditation specifically designed to foster it.

Recall that compassion meditation is also called metta, goodwill, and loving-kindness meditation. Traditionally, the self compassion component comes at the beginning of the metta meditation, but I’ve found that to be problematic. My experience is many people struggle with extending compassion toward themselves, making this a poor starting place. That’s why last week I had you begin by sending goodwill to a person or animal that you love. Once you’ve generated warm feelings, it’s usually easier to extend them to yourself.

But, why is self-compassion sometimes a struggle?

Writer Patricia Rockman suggests our tendency toward self-loathing has roots in the fact that we value self-sufficiency, autonomy, and personal accomplishments over interdepence and community. We come to believe that we must always be the best, always be accomplishing more, and we must do this all on our own. If we have to ask for help, we’re failures and we’re unworthy of self-respect. But, Rockman says:

The idea that we can do everything ourselves is and should be absurd. I mean, look around you. Do you have shelter and food? Did you build the former and grow the latter? Likely not, and even if you did where did you get the building materials, the seed, and tools? Our interdependence is always staring us in the face but we so easily miss it, focused on our self-importance, negative (“I’m so horrible”) or positive (“I’m so great”).

Source: https://www.mindful.org/self-compassion-new-mindfulness/

Is having compassion for yourself a sign of weakness? Only if you believe that you should be a perfect human being with no faults. And, that’s just not reasonable. You can’t be perfect, any more than other people can.

Peaceful Moment of the Week: Johnson Canyon, Banff National Park, Alberta

 

You deserve as much compassion as anyone else. Furthermore, self-compassion isn’t selfish, because it is almost impossible to extend compassion to others, particularly difficult people, if you can’t apply it to yourself. When you receive compassion, you feel supported and are better able to handle your own emotions. This is a necessary precursor to handling the negative emotions that arise when trying to generate compassion for others (for more on why compassion and negative feelings go together, see last week's episode).

To have compassion for yourself is to hold all of your attributes and characteristics with love and acceptance, even those that aren’t desirable. This doesn’t mean you no longer strive to get better, but improving is easier when you feel supported with loving-kindness. The support you get from yourself is just as valuable as that you get from others. In fact, you could argue it’s more valuable, because you can have it whenever you need it; you don’t need to rely on others.

Regular compassion meditation can help you strengthen self-compassion, and today,

 

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Compassion meditation can be difficult, so today I’m going to share a simple method for making it a little bit easier.

Last week, in Part 1 of our Compassion Series, I made the point that compassion can be fostered with both mindfulness meditation and a special practice called compassion meditation. We wrapped up the episode with a classic guided compassion meditation also known as metta, loving-kindness, and goodwill meditation.

If you tried that meditation, you may have had a difficult time conjuring up feelings of loving-kindness toward yourself and/or toward people you dislike. These are two common sticking points in compassion meditation. But, there’s a method that can help.

Before I explain the method let me assure you that, if you’ve bumped up against these sticking points, there’s nothing wrong with you. Compassion is about caring for others as much as you care for someone you love deeply. That’s not easy. In fact, it’s because compassion is so difficult to muster that we need to do compassion meditation in the first place!

Compassion meditation coaches you to generate feelings of caring and extend them out further and further from yourself. This takes a lot of practice!

During the meditation, when you find you’re unable to conjure up any feelings of goodwill, just stick with it. Just do the practice the best you can and let go of any feelings of inadequacy. Don’t judge yourself. You’re doing this practice to improve compassion, and it’s natural that you won’t be good at it to begin with. It’s also natural to discover that you’re good at it some days and not others. Don’t admonish yourself or feel bad. Just keep practicing.

This Week's Peaceful Moment: Red Headed Duck on Grandin Pond, St. Albert

 

To make practice easier, you might try starting off generating goodwill to someone you already care about unconditionally. You can even start with a pet, or animals that aren’t even a part of your life. It’s easy for me to generate goodwill towards baby polar bears, for example. They’re so cute and innocent, and so at risk.

The idea is to proceed through all the phases of a classic compassion meditation, but to start with things that are easy to love. Once you’ve generated warm, fuzzy feelings you then try to extend them to people you don’t know, people you don’t like, and people and animals everywhere. Yes, the feelings of goodwill may fade as you move through the meditation. That’s okay. Remember, just keep practicing.

Let’s try it now.

Invitation to meditate

For a 10-minute guided compassion meditation that begins with generating thoughts of goodwill towards pets or other animals, forward the podcast or the video above to 2:41.

Next Week:

Next week, in Part 3 of the Compassion Series, we’ll explore self-compassion, a practice that can be incredibly difficult for some people.

If you’d like a reminder email, just go to mindful15.com/subscribe and subscribe to our newsletter. I’ll let you know when new lessons are online and I’ll also send you a free deep relaxation along with a copy of Your Meditation Action Plan, our step-by-step guide to building a healthy meditation habit that lasts a lifetime.

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I hope I don’t need to work very hard to convince you that compassion is a desirable thing. Compassion causes you to treat others with respect and help them when they’re in distress. Compassion makes you feel good, because you have fewer negative reactions to others and you get satisfaction from being able to contribute to their well-being. It also helps you solve problems; when you care about others, you opt to partner with them instead of opposing them, and that typically results in more effective solutions.

But compassion is on the decrease. Researcher Sarah Konrath and her associates (2010) have discovered that self-reported concern over the welfare of other people is now lower than at any other time in the last 30 years. It’s been dropping since the 1990s and is dropping faster now than before.

The Science of Compassion Meditation

Fortunately, studies show compassion can be learned through practices such as compassion meditation (Weng et al., 2013). It’s only recently that scientists have undertaken research on this type of meditation, but findings are encouraging. They’ve discovered compassion meditation leads to increased engagement of brain regions involved in processing emotion (Weng et al., 2013), and found it enhances people’s ability to accurately infer others’ mental states, that is, it improved the accuracy of their empathy towards others (Mascaro et al., 2013).

 Compassion meditation leads people to help more. Those who practice it are more likely to assist someone in pain (Condon et al., 2013), and to show helping behaviour in situations where there’s no reciprocity (Leiberg, et. al, 2011). Those who practice this training react with less negative emotion when they encounter someone in distress (Klimecki et al., 2013), which may be why they’re able to take action to help.

 Compassion meditation also has personal benefits. Those who practice it show increases in positive emotions over time (Fredrickson et al., 2008), and compassion meditation can also strengthen the immune system (Pace et al., 2009).

Peaceful Moment of the Week: Primroses in My Garden

 

How to Boost Compassion

 If you’d like to strengthen compassion, begin with standard mindfulness meditation, which helps you to empathize with other people. Being mindful of what’s happening in the present moment allows you to see others with clarity. It allows you to ditch your assumptions in favor of objectivity. When you can see clearly, you have an easier time understanding the other person’s point of view.

 Mindfulness meditation also teaches you to manage your own emotions. How does this help? Compassion is difficult. To generate compassion, you need to care as much about the other person’s welfare as they do. You have to care about them as much as you’d care about a loved one who is in mortal danger. Just imagine how that feels. That kind of caring is uncomfortable, but it’s the discomfort that motivates action. A regular mindfulness practice can help you learn how to handle the kinds of difficult, negative emotions involved in compassion.

 So, mindfulness practice sets the groundwork. Compassion meditation is the next step. It’s a practice that can help you begin to care more.

 Let me just take a minute to highlight the difference between empathy and compassion. To empathize is to see things from another person’s point of view, to understand their position and their feelings. Compassion is more than that. It involves caring about the other person’s welfare.

 Compassion meditation,

 

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Twice in recents months I’ve come across bloggers who reject mindfulness, because they believe they sometimes need to be angry, anxious, or upset in order to make positive change. Sometimes, they say, anger is a justified emotion, one we need to motivate us.

I am not going to mention the bloggers by name, because my intention is not to call people out or pick a fight. My intention is to explain that these opinions are based on a misunderstanding of what “acceptance” means in the context of mindfulness practice.

And it’s an honest misunderstanding. The dictionary tells us to accept something is to consent to it, agree with it. In mindfulness practice, acceptance has a slightly different connotation. It means to allow, to be aware without judgement, to see things as they truly are. Once you have done that, you are in a better position to make decisions and your decision might include not agreeing, not consenting, or even taking action against.

I was chatting with a friend about these blogs, and he said, “I get what they’re saying. They think that sometimes things are so bad that you need to get angry about about, need to do something about them. You can’t just let them go.”

I asked, “Why do you need to be angry?”

He said, “Anger motivates you.”

I said, “I think anger just makes you feel self-righteous, justified in taking action. You don’t need anger to motivate you.”

Anger feels bad. Who wants to feel angry? Okay, I’ll admit it. I do like being angry sometimes but when I really think about it, I realize I sometimes cling to anger, because it makes me feel like I’m right and others are wrong. Although anger is sometimes justified, though, I don’t think it’s really motivational. It’s healthier to let go of anger and be motivated by concern or compassion.

Anger causes us to distance ourselves from problems and from others involved. When we take action out of anger, we’re likely to take action against other people instead of striving to understand them and include them in the solution. And, sometimes, anger just gets in the way of finding any solution at all.

Last April, one of my graduating students came to me in tears. She said she didn’t know what to do next, where to search for a job, what to do with her life. She felt so anxious and angry about the state of the environment that she thought nothing else in life even mattered. She felt hopeless and paralyzed. Her emotions were so overwhelming she was unable to take any action at all.

Climate change is a serious, urgent problem that requires action from each and every one of us - today. But, we can’t take action if we’re expending all our mental resources on feeling anxious about the outcome. And we can’t take action if we’re busy dwelling on how angry we are at the people who caused the problem or the people who stand in the way of a solution.

What we can do is accept the situation. That is, we can acknowledge that we’re in a seriously bad place and that very bad things will happen if we don’t make change now. We can acknowledge that this realization causes strong negative feelings, feelings that are justified but unhelpful. And, we can accept those feelings and let them go.

Then, we can take positive action. We can expend our energy on actions that will make a difference. And, we can talk to those standing in our way from a place of compassion and understanding. Confronting them with anger will not make them change their ways. Showing them understanding and finding ways to collaborate with them will be much more successful.

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Last week, I addressed a question submitted by one of our listeners, Anitta. I told you that letting go of negative thoughts and memories is not the same as denying them. And, I also suggested that, sometimes in-depth mindful analysis of thoughts and memories can help you make better choices. Today, I want to share some tips for staying mindful as you analyze.

If you listened to the first episode of the Mindful15 Podcast, you’ll know that I teach business analysis at a post-secondary polytechnic in Canada. Well, this is the episode in which my meditation teacher training finally intersects with my training as a business analyst.

An analyst conducts logical, informed investigation to uncover and then solve problems. Mindfulness aids this process, because it helps you see the truth of the situation. It helps you stay aware of the difference between what is really happening and how you’re reacting to what’s happening. And, it keeps you questioning your own conclusions and uncovering your biases and assumptions. All of this leads to more effective analysis and clearer, more accurate conclusions.

So, how do you stay mindful as you’re contemplating problems? I recommend setting aside time for your analysis, time when you can sit in a quiet place and do nothing but contemplate. This helps you stay focused. Begin with a few minutes of meditation to allow your mind to settle.

There is no one formula for conducting an analysis, but here is a set of questions you can step through to guide your efforts:

What happened (or is happening)? Instead of looking for meaning, at this stage, aim for straightforward, unbiased observation of the events that took place. Just the facts.

How did you and others react emotionally?

Were emotional reactions based on misperceptions, biases, or assumptions?

Aside from these reactions, what other consequences arose from what happened?

Are the emotional reactions and other consequences ongoing?

Are you willing to let go of your emotional reactions?

Are you (and others) willing to tolerate the consequences?

Aside from letting go of emotions, do you think action is warranted?

What consequences will these actions have, and are you prepared to accept them? How will the affect other people?

What, if any, action will you take?

Throughout your analysis, you should also ask yourself whether you need more information or input from others to fully understand the situation.

As you contemplate, stay aware of your reactions to what you’re thinking about. This is why I recommend setting aside time for analysis in a quiet place. Mindful analysis requires focus and concentration, so you don’t want to be interrupted or distracted.

Keep asking yourself:

Is this me layering my reactions or assumptions on top of the situation, or is this really what’s happening?

How would things be different if I reacted differently?

Keep focusing on a search for the truth. Periodically, stop to ask yourself:

Is this really true, or do i just think it’s true?

What evidence do I have?

Do I need more information?

 

This Week's Peaceful Moment: Red Squirrel in Elk Island National Park, Alberta, Canada (this image is copyright protected)