Daily Buddhist [Wednesday Wisdom]

By Brendan Barca & Pema Sherpa

Age-old Buddhist wisdom for modern living. Weekly insight loved by over 18,000 practitioners. 🙏

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The Compassion We Forget to Give Ourselves

When something goes wrong, we often become our own harshest critic.

A bad Airbnb review can have us replaying everything in our mind, wondering what we should have done differently.

Getting laid off can make us question our worth or convince us that we somehow failed.

Discovering that a friend has been talking about us behind our back can send us searching for what we did to deserve it.

In difficult moments, we can be surprisingly quick to turn pain into a judgment about ourselves. Yet if someone we loved were going through the same thing, we would probably meet them with far more patience, understanding, and kindness.

Our practice asks us to bring that same compassion inward. We don't ignore what happened or pretend that everything is fine.

We can respond to the review, look for another job, have an honest conversation with our friend. And then we can let the rest go. We take responsibility where it is needed without adding another layer of suffering through shame and self-criticism.

We cannot always control what happens to us, but we can practice how we meet ourselves when it does.

Today, give yourself the compassion you deserve.

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Brendan & Pema

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