To love is being able to honor others. Paradoxically, by honoring yourself, you can more effectively honor others because how you treat yourself often reflects how you treat others.
For instance, you’ll be more comfortable with other people’s feelings when you’re comfortable with your own feelings. Perhaps the biggest way you can honor someone else is to be comfortable with their feelings—and not by not mistaking your feelings for theirs, or their feelings for your feelings.
The biggest problems come up when people incorrectly assume what someone else meant by an action, word or expression. The receiver of the message may be hurt, so they’ll interpret the message as hurtful. Or the messenger may be angry at their self and will take the anger out onto the receiver. It’s a lifelong process, but try to clearly differentiate your feelings from someone else’s feelings so that you can honor them and their feelings.
Inspiration for the Day: “Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.” -Carl G. Jung
Note: This is an ongoing series to help provide support during these challenging times. These daily readings are part of an overall book on balance, which includes 12 essentials for maintaining balance to support resilience and your best self. The 12 essentials include mind, body, love, service, self, family, intimacy, purpose, environment/living space, nature, social relations, and spirit. This series is sharing 30 days of lessons about love. It will examine multiple aspects of love and provide knowledge and inspiration for hearts to heal and love to flow. It is designed as a daily reader to allow time to reflect, process and incorporate.
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