Hi, and welcome to your Daily Mindfulness. Today, I'm going to talk about keeping your heart open. So to explore what this might mean for you let's first explore how we close our hearts. So for most of us, the majority of irritations, anger, hurt and disappointments typically arise in relation to others. Sometimes we can work through those situations, talk things out, find an amicable way forward.

But there are also situations where we try to set boundaries or propose a fair solution or make amends, but the behavior of the other person is disappointing or it doesn't change. When this happens. This is when we often have a sense of closing our hearts to the other person. In other words, we hold a grievance against them. There's a sense of making our minds up about them and then resenting them.

But what are the results of doing that? Like closing our own hearts brings about feelings of tension, heaviness, or hardness into our mind and our body. It brings us more negative, more reactive sort of behaviors. And so we're more likely to say or do things we might later regret in response to that person. Now, of course, it's sometimes, really is the most helpful and effective thing to hang up the phone, block someone on social media, or in some cases you might even need to completely distance yourself from someone who's really causing you a lot of distress. But as a general rule, even when all of that is happening, you don't need to close your heart to anyone.

So when we feel the urge to close down, we can stay open-hearted in three ways. First, we can shift the way we think. So instead of concluding that this person is just no good, remembering that we all make mistakes. Life has probably been hot on this other person too and they have their own conditioning and troubles to deal with. They may well have had good intentions and they may also be struggling in their own ways.

Second thing that we can change is the way we feel. We can choose to respond to the situation and the person with compassion, patience, and wisdom. Now this doesn't mean that we become a doormat. Not at all. We can still be firm, clear and ask for boundaries to be set with others, but without the need for tipping into resentment and ill will.

The third thing is to reflect on our own part in things. So we can ask ourselves, given that things have become difficult with this person, are there things that we may have done that have prompted the other person to act this way? Whatever the lessons that are there, there's no need to judge yourself about it, but just instead, focusing on anything you can learn and see differently. So keeping your heart open may or may not mean that you change anything at all in your behavior, but either way you will have shed a lot of heaviness and negativity. So you'll feel a little better and brighter as a result. I hope you found this helpful and as always, thank you for your practice and your presence here.

Let's settle in for today's meditation.