Plus awareness & mindfulness, control & judgement, etc
I was in the passenger seat, feeling grumpy for a handful of reasons. The reasons were all valid—especially since plans weren’t unfolding the way I’d hoped (cue the world’s smallest violin)—but at some point it hit me that I had a choice: wait for an external source to snap me out of it, or take responsibility for shifting my grumpy state.
Choosing the latter would allow me to enjoy my day whatever plans did or didn’t align. It would also stop me from projecting my mood onto the people I was around, and stop me from judging myself for being grumpy in the first place. Easy…right?
Have you ever been in a similar situation, where you realize that gripping for control—over your plans, meals, to-do list, even someone else’s actions or emotions—doesn’t actually bring the security or satisfaction you thought it might?
And have you noticed how the judgments you place on yourself around that control often reflect outward in how you judge others? Like when you know you have some controlling tendencies, yet someone else’s similar behavior gets under your skin?
(Or is it just me…?)
This has been a big ego-check, but recognizing this habit has been instrumental in making meaningful shifts to support my mental, emotional, and physical wellbeing.
Even though the lessons we get handed around judgement and control are all for the sake of growth and personal development, it still sometimes feels like being thrown into a wild obstacle course.
And eventually we discover that the obstacles—or at least how we feel about and experience the obstacles—were built by us all along.
I guess being aware of that constitutes growth, but it’s not always a walk in the park…
Add to that the tension we’re faced with in global news. I’m grateful to have tools from yoga, meditation, and mindfulness to navigate the daily surges of heartache that come at us from all different angles—but it remains a disheartening undercurrent.
*I love World Central Kitchen if you’re looking for ways to support relief efforts.
And whenever I start to feel weighed down by life lessons or for whatever reason—whether from doubt, judgment, exhaustion, or emotional holes—I tend to then judge myself for feeling that way. As Tara Brach teaches, this only adds a “second arrow” to the situation—laying unnecessary suffering on top of the initial discomfort.
Feeling physically or emotionally off-kilter doesn’t doesn’t exactly make it easier to serve and show up for others, let alone ourselves.
From fixing to caring
On the flip side, something shifts when we begin to care for ourselves from a place of self-compassion and loving awareness rather than a desire to fix what’s “wrong.”
So instead of projecting our insecurities or expectations outward, we can start to see ourselves and others through a lens of understanding. We learn to extend compassion to others in the same way we learn to have compassion for ourselves.
Because if you really think about it, most of our actions and reactions are almost always a reflection of how we feel about ourselves.
As Yehuda Berg put it:
“Hurt people hurt people. That’s how pain patterns get passed on, generation after generation after generation. Break the chain today. Meet anger with sympathy, contempt with compassion, cruelty with kindness. Greet grimaces with smiles. Forgive and forget about finding fault. Love is the weapon of the future.”
It might be easier to spot reactivity in others than in ourselves—our own “inner work” can sometimes feel like looking through dirty windows. But when we’re mindful and actively committed to self-awareness and healing, the lessons start to land differently in both body and mind.
From conceptualizing to embodying
Because I’ve been doing a lot of personal work around mindful living and self-love, the messages have been coming at me with a compassionate vengeance—encouraging me to stop understanding “self-love” conceptually and to instead embody it literally.
This month—when summer can bring both joy (outdoor fun and gatherings!) or stress (anxiously trying to do and plan all the things; emotional overstimulation)—I’ll introduce a little series to explore what self-love can look and feel like.
Stay tuned for:
- Food for thought on embodying self-love through self-awareness
- The fruits of actively practicing self-love and compassion
- Insights and quotes from teachers and experts to help guide us—the aforementioned messages that have been revealing themselves to me lately 🙂
- Support for navigating this journey from a place of acceptance without passivity
Where in your life might you invite in a bit more self-love, and how might it nourish your body and mind?
Take good care,
S
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