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It Starts With Us

Personalized support for learning how to integrate mindfulness into your life. Delivered fresh everyday by our world renowned experts. Choose meditation duration:

Hi, and welcome to your Daily Mindfulness. Today I'm going to talk about self-awareness and self-care. So there's an old story about this. There was once a pair of acrobats, a woman and a man. These acrobats performed each day in the streets in order to earn their key.

So they trying a clever new act which involved the man balancing a tall bamboo pole on his head while the woman climbed slowly to the top of the bamboo pole and then balanced there while the man walked slowly down the street. Both performers, to pull this trick off, had to maintain complete focus and balance in order to prevent any injury from happening and to complete this performance. So one day the man suggested, "Listen, when we're trying to do this trick, I'll watch you and you watch me. And that way we can help each other maintain balance and concentration. We'll prevent an accident." But the woman was wise and well-trained, and she answered, "My friend, I think it would be much better for each of us to watch ourself, to watch our own balance and concentration because to look after oneself means to look after both of us, that way we'll create a beautiful performance that will wow the crowd." So this story illustrates the age old truth that taking good care of yourself first really is the most important thing that you can do to take care of the other people in your life and really make a larger contribution to the world.

Because when you learn how to nourish your own mind, body, and spirit through practices like mindfulness, you naturally begin to treat those around you with more compassion, more patience, more kindness, more generosity. You just have more to give. Hatred, reactivity, greed, and fear gradually soften and subside a little and love and peace and wisdom emerge a little bit more when we self-care. So each time you practice mindfulness, you're both looking after yourself and everybody else and as you become more and more an Island of sanity and peace in a frantic world. But in daily life too, today and this week, see if you can remember self-care as a practice of also being more self-aware.

So as always thank you for your practice and your presence here with us. And now let's settle in for today's meditation.

Melli O'Brien

4.7

It Starts With Us

Personalized support for learning how to integrate mindfulness into your life. Delivered fresh everyday by our world renowned experts. Choose meditation duration:

Duration

Your default time is based on your progress and is changed automatically as you practice.

Hi, and welcome to your Daily Mindfulness. Today I'm going to talk about self-awareness and self-care. So there's an old story about this. There was once a pair of acrobats, a woman and a man. These acrobats performed each day in the streets in order to earn their key.

So they trying a clever new act which involved the man balancing a tall bamboo pole on his head while the woman climbed slowly to the top of the bamboo pole and then balanced there while the man walked slowly down the street. Both performers, to pull this trick off, had to maintain complete focus and balance in order to prevent any injury from happening and to complete this performance. So one day the man suggested, "Listen, when we're trying to do this trick, I'll watch you and you watch me. And that way we can help each other maintain balance and concentration. We'll prevent an accident." But the woman was wise and well-trained, and she answered, "My friend, I think it would be much better for each of us to watch ourself, to watch our own balance and concentration because to look after oneself means to look after both of us, that way we'll create a beautiful performance that will wow the crowd." So this story illustrates the age old truth that taking good care of yourself first really is the most important thing that you can do to take care of the other people in your life and really make a larger contribution to the world.

Because when you learn how to nourish your own mind, body, and spirit through practices like mindfulness, you naturally begin to treat those around you with more compassion, more patience, more kindness, more generosity. You just have more to give. Hatred, reactivity, greed, and fear gradually soften and subside a little and love and peace and wisdom emerge a little bit more when we self-care. So each time you practice mindfulness, you're both looking after yourself and everybody else and as you become more and more an Island of sanity and peace in a frantic world. But in daily life too, today and this week, see if you can remember self-care as a practice of also being more self-aware.

So as always thank you for your practice and your presence here with us. And now let's settle in for today's meditation.

Melli O'Brien

Melli O'Brien

4.7

Duration

Melli O'Brien

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