Hi, welcome back to your Daily Mindfulness. In today's session we're going to talk about your relationship to taking care of other people. Now taking care of other people and other beings is a beautiful part of being human and living in a world where we are interconnected. It can be a great way to nurture your heart. Uh, to feel more connection with other people and to just connect to greater meaning in life.

I think we've all had that experience of really doing something selflessly for another person, or again, it could be an animal or a tree. Just doing something, uh, out of a sense of, of service and care and compassion can actually feel profoundly good. What I want to talk about though, is when we can take that to the, the extreme and sometimes obsessively taking care of other people can be a subtle of form bypassing the potentially more painful and difficult work of taking care of yourself. So notice how that lands for you. I'll say that again, and really just let that sink in.

Obsessively taking care of other people can be a subtle form of bypassing the more difficult work of taking care of yourself. Now, this might not feel relevant at this point in your life or for you. Or you may be hearing this and going, Oh boy, is he talking to me right now? And you know, I'm talking to all of us because sometimes the hardest work is, is actually connecting to ourselves and practicing self care and giving ourselves some, some love, some compassion, some forgiveness, some acceptance. And it can feel easier to do that for other people, to take care of other people too, obsessive really take care of other people. But it's one thing to take care of other people because you're, you're genuinely trying to offer something and it's coming from a place of fullness and love and compassion.

It's another thing to be taking care of people because we don't know how to take care of ourselves and we're trying to avoid that. So this is nuanced territory, and I don't want to shame any of us for, for serving other people, even if it is because we're struggling with taking care of ourselves. But it's more of just an invitation to check in with yourself and notice, is this a habit of yours? Is this a pattern? And, and if so, what would it be like to notice in those moments where you quickly, uh, neglect yourself or turn your attention to someone else and stay with yourself? Ask yourself, what do I need right now? What would be a form of self care? And can you stay with the discomfort of really trying to offer that to yourself and then try doing it? And the more we do that, the more we start to change that pattern. And then we get full from the inside out. And, at least with my experience of it, it's as if the cup gets, it starts overflowing.

And then everything that we were offering to other people is just coming from a more organic, full place. So something to think about. Again, no shame in this at all. Uh, I've been there and I think many of us can resonate with, with this pattern at times. So as always, thank you for your practice and let's get settled for our meditation.