A Morning Meditation

When you wake each morning, remind yourself that you are bound to meet people today who will troublesome, manipulative, ungrateful, deceitful, envious, and overall quite unpleasant. Why would expect anything different?

Try and remember that people behave this way because they were never taught how they could be different. You, however, can make the decision to be better than the sum of your experiences.

Don’t be angry with others. Don’t lose your temper. These things are in your control.

Accept that everyone else may not have had your education or the same experiences. Don’t fault them for a difference in their judgment, but accept them as a fellow adventurer in this life. Work with them and build a world you can all enjoy.

Don’t start a fight when a compromise is sufficient. Each battle builds a wall between you both. Be careful lest you build an unscalable barrier. What will you do when your opponents refuse to listen to Reason because you refused to acknowledge their concerns?

Don’t malign or bemoan your experiences. Let your actions show that you can live in accord with Reason and no longer be a slave to the whims of emotion.

When you must speak, don’t lecture. Let your lips be silent unless spoken to. Even so, be generous in spirit and kinder in your words. You cannot influence a mind that’s unwilling to hear your message.

2 thoughts on “A Morning Meditation

    1. It’s definitely one of my favorite morning rituals that I adapted from Marcus Aurelius. I also enjoy this quote from him on cold winter mornings—“At dawn, when you have trouble getting out of bed, tell yourself, ‘I have to go to work – as a human being. What do I have to complain of, if I’m going to do what I was born for – the things I was brought into the world to do? Or is this what I was created for? To huddle under the blankets and stay warm?’”

      Liked by 1 person

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