The Mantra of Understanding

Hi, and welcome to your Daily Mindfulness. Today I'm going to share with you what I like to call my mantra of understanding. So adopting this mantra and this way of seeing and being has radically changed my relationship to not only myself, but to others. And the mantra is this: Everyone is doing the best they can with the resources they have. Everyone is doing the best they can with the resources they have.

So at first, this might be a hard concept to swallow. You know, we might think about the parent or partner who hurt us in the past, the friend of ours who continues with self-destructive behavior.We might think about the rude person at work, or we might even think about our own mistakes and regrets. And it's really easy to think that we could have, or we should have done a lot better than we did or they should have or could have done a lot better. In other words, it's really easy to get into this habit of criticizing, fault-finding judging, putting people down for not coping with life in the same way that we do. And when people behave in ways that we feel really hurt by, it's easy to demonize them and, you know, become really resentful and bitter and judgemental.

We all do this from time to time. But here's the thing, truly, none of us wants to suffer. We all want to be happy. And I think we've all experienced times when we wished that we could have done better, but we just didn't know how, or we couldn't break free of our old conditioning or reactivity or old habits. And being judged or criticized for it wouldn't have helped.

And we've all made mistakes, we all get reactive sometimes, we all have our own conditioned patterns that we have to deal with. And we all deal with things really unskillfully sometimes, not because of an intent to harm, but just because we got caught up in our own stuff, you know. And many people have never had a chance to learn skills to deal with their wounds, their fears and their flaws. They might not know how to be less reactive, how to be less angry, how to be less afraid, how to be less anxious, how to be more nice. You know, thinking that they should know better when they don't, only breeds disconnection, tension, stress, both within ourselves and without.

But really everyone really is doing the best they can with the resources they have. And I know for myself, when I remember that fact that life is better. You know I'm more able to step out of blame, judgment, anger, and step into self compassion, forgiveness and understanding, not only with others, but with myself too. It also gives me the clarity of mind and heart to really clearly communicate my needs, my boundaries and my feelings instead of getting caught up in negativity and judgment. So the invitation today, is to see if you can remember the mantra of understanding in the days ahead and just experiment with this and see what it brings into your life.

So I hope it really serves you well, and thank you for your practice and your presence here. And let's settle in for today's meditation.