Leading by Example

Hi, and welcome to your Daily Mindfulness. Today, I'm going to talk about the importance and the power of leading by example. So when we begin to get a little bit better at meditation, mindfulness, when we start to see the effect that it's having on our body, on our mind and in our life, it's really natural to feel quite excited about that and to want to share that excitement with other people, whether it's our family, our friends, or our work mates. And it's a really wonderful thing, in many ways, to feel so inspired by your practice. But what we generally want to be very careful of is ending up kind of preaching to people about mindfulness, sort of implying that they need it or that they're missing out on something that you've found.

Now, even though there may be a grain of truth there, I think that most of us have quite an aversion to anyone coming at us with a message that you need this, that you need to be changed or fixed or healed, or that your life is incomplete unless you have this. And that's the kind of message that some people get when we come at them like this. So while we may have the best of intentions to help somebody, it's often just an ineffective strategy. So we also want to be conscious of avoiding creating a new identity for ourselves around this idea of being a meditator or a mindful person, because mindfulness is much more about letting go of our identity, letting go of the stories that we might have about who we are as a person, and instead just living with more humility, more compassion, more wisdom, and more presence. Now, when we can do that, we lead by example.

We demonstrate the power of mindfulness through how we listen to people, how we treat them, through the power of our everyday actions. Now, when people see that, you know, that we're, that we're less reactive, that we're more happy that we're more healthy, people naturally start to get curious and ask questions. They're interested in maybe having those results in their lives too. So I encourage you as much as possible to just have this intention of leading by example and having the confidence that when you live your life with more awareness, wisdom, and kindness, you will have a ripple effect that will change the people around you and the world in much more powerful ways than you can even imagine. So as always, thank you for your practice and your presence here with us.

And now let's settle in for today's meditation.