Hi, welcome back to your Daily Mindfulness. In today's session, we're going to talk about the relationship between your happiness and your relationships. So one of the pushbacks on meditation for those who are less familiar with meditation is that it appears to be a self centered practice. You're sitting alone, putting all of your attention on yourself. Why aren't you thinking about world issues and taking action in the world? There seems to be a disconnect between this inner work and perhaps what many people would argue, where it really counts in the world.

But I want to highlight that when you are doing the work of becoming deeply fulfilled, and let's just say that meditation is a selfish practice, you're, you're developing your own inner well of wellbeing, fulfillment, inner safety. When you've done that you are now much better able to relate to other people and your community from a place of compassion, spaciousness, and love, and energy, and less from a place of defensiveness, fear, projection, subconscious manipulation. When you need someone to be a certain way in order for you to feel fulfilled, well, we get caught up in manipulating the external circumstances so that we get that feeling. When we have that deeper within us, we have a little bit more space for someone to be as they are without it impacting us as much. It doesn't mean that we condone what they're doing and their actions.

But it doesn't mean that we're going to subconsciously manipulate and control in order to feel okay about ourselves. And that's really important when it comes to being in a healthy relationship and also being in a healthy community. So, this isn't too hard to understand because you could think about it also in the context of your own life. And when you're feeling fulfilled and happy, after a long day and you come home, chances are you feel a little bit more patient you're a little less edgy. You have more bandwidth, more energy for the people you care about.

Other days where you don't feel fulfilled, where you feel pretty stressed or strange, you come home, you're going to be a little more impatient. You're going to be a little more edgy. You might say things like, I just need to take time for myself, or I don't want to talk about this right now. We're not necessarily at our best self. So there is a relationship between your inner fulfillment and how you show up for the people around you and your community and our planet.

So if at any point you get stuck in this idea that meditation is more of a self-absorbed practice, I'm taking all this time to just focus on myself, remember it is yourself that you are bringing to the rest of the world, to your relationships, to your family, to your community, to our planet. And if you are not taking care of that, you're not going to be able to show up fully and effectively. So thank you for your practice. And let's settle in for today's meditation.