What you do for yourself — any gesture of kindness, any gesture of gentleness, any gesture of honesty and clear seeing toward yourself — will affect how you experience your world. In fact, it will transform how you experience the world. What you do for yourself, you’re doing for others, and what you do for others, you’re doing for yourself.
~ Pema Chödrön
(Start Where You Are: A Guide to Compassionate Living)
Portraits are to daily faces
As an Evening West,
To a fine — pedantic sunshine —
In a satin Vest!
~ Emily Dickinson
(The Poems of Emily Dickinson, #174)
Practice sharing the fullness of your being, your best self, your enthusiasm, your vitality, your spirit, your trust, your openness, above all, your presence. Share it with yourself, with your family, with the world.
~ Jon Kabat-Zinn
(Jon Kabat-Zinn: In His Own Words)
Wise words. 🙏🏼 💜
I’ve been mulling them over a lot lately. 🙏🏼 💙
Mrs Schwartz looks like she could have been a school teacher in the mist of pretty violet hues.
All three parings work well. I resonate with the first pairing. I certainly needed this reminder this morning. 😊
I have found it to be so true that practicing self-compassion does transform how I experience the world. It’s almost magical how others respond. Kindness, gentleness and honesty are extremely contagious! 💙
Good morning Barbara – hope you are taking care of you! 🙂
Thank you, Karma – I am managing to take good care of myself, with a little help from friends and family. 🙂
Those are great words of wisdom Barbara! We need a kinder world these days, for most everyone is fretting with everyone else.
Kindness starts at home, doesn’t it? It seems the more harshly we criticize ourselves the more we tend to be contentious with others.
Yes, it does … I think it is the overall state of the world anymore Barbara. I believe no one has tolerance for anything or anyone anymore. I feel the weather also has a lot to do with it.
You might be on to something there – it’s exhausting trying to be pleasant and kind, to ourselves or to others, when the weather is making us miserable.
Yes and every day on the news, the crime is worse … stabbings, fights, barricaded gunmen. I could go on and on and I know for years, crime and dissension might run rampant in extended heat waves, but it seems like it is getting worse, at least here anyway.
This last quote resonates with me today, Barbara. We’re taught to be kind to others; learning to be kind to ourselves — without guilt — is a lesson we have to practice. By the way, I hope “Mrs. Schwarz” was pleased with her portrait. She looks pretty stern, doesn’t she?!
I think Mrs. Schwarz was trying very hard to hold still for her portrait! I wonder how long she had to stand there without sitting down?
So often we’re faced with that question: how do I care for myself without feeling selfish? It doesn’t have to be one or the other, we can learn to be kind to ourselves and others at the same time.