September 11
|
Today's
quotation:
Being gentle means forgiving yourself when you
mess up. We should learn from our mistakes, but we
shouldn't beat
the tar out of ourselves over them. The
past is just that,
past. Learn what went wrong and why. Make amends
if you need to. Then drop it and move on.
Sean Covey
|
Today's
Meditation:
There's
no one more deserving of our compassion and gentleness
than ourselves. There's no one more deserving of our
forgiveness and kindness than ourselves. Usually, though, there's
no one who receives less of any of these things than
ourselves.
It's
hard sometimes to be kind to ourselves when we have
artificially high expectations of ourselves. Somehow
we are more willing to forgive others for their mistakes
than we are to forgive ourselves, and this tendency often
has pretty drastic effects on ourselves.
One
rule of thumb that I use is pretty simple: what
would I say to someone else who just made the same mistake
that I did? And what would I say to someone who was
even more vulnerable due to a particular emotional or
mental state? And then I treat myself with the same
kindness and compassion I would show this other
person. Being hard on myself serves absolutely no
purpose other than to keep me trapped in the past due
to a lack of forgiveness, and I don't want to ruin
tomorrow because I'm so caught up with what I did
yesterday.
I
want to learn in life, and I want that learning to help me
to become a stronger, more compassionate person
tomorrow. If I'm so busy being mad at myself for
yesterday's mistake, though, how can I be more
loving and compassionate with others? The way I
treat others definitely is affected by the way I treat
myself.
|
Questions to
consider:
On what occasions do you tend to beat yourself up?
Why are so many people so hard on themselves?
Can someone who's hard on themselves be gentle and
caring with others? |
For further
thought:
Often,
we are harder on ourselves than others are. If we cannot
forgive ourselves, how can we forgive other people? Everyone's lesson is to forgive ourselves for our mistakes, even those things we
feel ashamed
about, and learn to accept ourselves for who we are, knowing that we can always gently work on making improvements. For
me,
the true experience of inner peace began only once I was able to forgive those around me, my parents, and myself.
Patrick
Wanis
|
more
thoughts and ideas on self-love
|
|
|
|
|
quotations
- contents
-
welcome
page
-
obstacles
our
current e-zine
-
the
people behind the words
-
articles
and excerpts
Daily
Meditations, Year One - Year
Two - Year Three - Year Four
Sign up
for your free daily spiritual or general quotation ~ ~ Sign
up for your free daily meditation
|
tm |
|
All contents © Living Life
Fully, all rights reserved. |
|
|
|
|
|
We
have some
inspiring and motivational books that may interest you. Our main way of supporting this site is
through the sale of books, either physical copies
or digital copies for your Amazon Kindle (including the
online reader). All of the money that we earn
through them comes back to the site
in one way or another. Just click on the picture
to the left to visit our page of books, both fiction and
non-fiction! |
|
|
|