Dealing With Other People - Meditation & Coffee

Hello!

You are listening to Meditation and Coffee,

The weekday meditation podcast that helps you start your day off calm,

Aware,

Intentional,

Focused,

And most importantly,

Awake.

Because did you know that the word Buddha actually means awakened one?

I'm Hannah,

Your host and founder of the online meditation community Breathe Like a Badass,

And I am obsessed with starting the day with good coffee and seriously simple meditation.

As a trained meditation teacher and a female entrepreneur,

My mission is to help anxious yet ambitious women cut through overwhelmed,

Negative self-talk,

Constant comparison and fear so they can get the calm,

Clarity and focus that they need to build happy,

Fulfilling,

Freedom-filled businesses and lives.

Meditation is not magic,

But it's a pretty good place to start.

So whether your coffee is a shot of espresso,

A latte decaf or even a tea or a chai,

I invite you to join me every weekday to start your day off right.

FYI,

These sessions are recorded live on my Instagram page,

At Breathe Like a Badass,

So if you'd prefer to join in and watch them live,

You can do so there.

The videos are also available after the lives on my IGTV page.

Now,

On to the meditation and coffee.

Good morning,

We are live on another session of meditation and coffee.

This practice is designed basically to be a reminder of a very simple principle in meditation,

But that it's extremely easy to forget.

It's based on the idea that we are not meditating to necessarily get better at meditation or to be the world's best meditators.

We're meditating because we want to be better in the world.

We want to feel better in our own skin.

We want to do better work.

We want to feel happier in our lives in general.

We want to be better people,

More compassionate to others and notice moments in our life as well so that we're not just constantly missing our life.

We're not reacting to situations.

We're instead responding to them in ways that we feel are compassionate and good and careful and considered so that we're not being yanked around by our emotions,

Which is something that Dan Harris,

Founder of 10% Happier,

Says a lot.

Meditation is just a way of learning how to not be yanked around by your emotions and whatever that means to you,

Whether you feel peaceful,

Calm,

Happier,

More content,

More productive,

More purposeful.

There's lots of these.

These are all the ways that meditation can help us in our lives,

But it's not always easy.

One of the hardest things and one of the most overlooked things,

I think,

In meditation is the idea that we can use it as a way to help us be more compassionate towards other people.

It's not only an individual practice.

It's also about the way that we are in the world and the way that we show up to others in our relationships with people that we find easy to get on with,

But also crucially people that we find less easy to get on with.

Situations in the world where people shock us with their tone or with their actions.

There's lots of reasons why we might want to remember the principles of meditation in our daily lives,

Not just when we're sitting down formally to practice.

That's why I'm aiming to keep this meditation today pretty short,

Because it's basically just a mantra that you can learn and that you can remind yourself of in times when people are testing your patience,

Let's put it that way.

This might be,

Like I say,

Your partner or someone that you meet in the street who is talking to you in a way that you're like,

I'm not really sure why you're taking that tone with me,

Or you might be in the supermarket and somebody might cut you up in front of you in the queue or push in or there's hundreds and hundreds of examples of tiny things that people might do where you might be like,

Okay,

I need to remind myself to be compassionate.

I need to remind myself that other people act in ways that I can't control.

And honestly,

This is really the key thing,

The key point that I would remind you and that I remind myself of every day,

Other people are effectively,

We're all similar,

Basically.

We are all wanting the same things.

We all want similar things in our lives.

We all want to be loved.

We all want to be heard.

We all want to feel like we matter.

We all want to feel like we're part of something.

We all want to feel as though our needs are important and that people are hearing what we have to say and that we're valued.

It can be really difficult to remember this when other people are behaving in ways that we're like finding a struggle.

So ultimately,

This mantra which we'll go through is based on the loving kindness principle,

The principle of loving kindness,

Which is a kind of meditation,

Which is popularized in the West by Sharon Salzberg,

Great insight meditation teacher,

Sharon Salzberg.

She talks a lot about loving kindness,

Not only to other people,

But also to yourself,

To develop more compassion to yourself.

And loving kindness meditation has actually been shown to improve other people's compassion towards others.

So they did a test where people that had done loving kindness meditation,

They were sitting in a doctor's waiting room.

They didn't realize that this was an experiment.

They thought they were just sitting there waiting.

And the people that had done loving kindness meditation were about 50%,

I think,

More likely to get up from their seat and let somebody else sit down who needed the seat.

So someone who had crutches or someone who had a bad leg.

If they walked into the waiting room,

The people that had practiced loving kindness meditation were incredibly more likely to give their seat up to other people.

So that's an example of how loving kindness meditation can make us more compassionate to other people who might be suffering,

Who might need our compassion more than maybe we feel like we need it in that moment.

And so it can apply to so many different situations.

We're going to do a quick mantra meditation today.

And like I say,

The reason that I'm calling it a mantra is not because it's fancy.

It's just basically a phrase that we're going to repeat over and over.

And you can use this in the rest of your life.

When you're going about your day,

If somebody annoys you,

If your partner is getting on your last nerve,

You can remind yourself,

Okay,

Yeah,

Other people want what I want.

Other people are similar to me.

They might not seem like they are,

But they are.

And we're all just human beings trying to do the best we can.

Again,

Some people maybe it's more apparent than others and less apparent than others.

Other people seem to,

Some people deserve our compassion apparently more than others,

But they don't.

We're all just human beings trying our best.

So I invite you to get into a normal meditation position,

Just some position that feels comfortable,

Where you're sitting upright,

But you've got your shoulders relaxed and you're balanced.

And wherever you happen to be right now,

Dropping your shoulders,

Making sure that your head and neck are balanced on top of your spine and allowing yourself to breathe in.

And if you like,

You can close your eyes,

But you don't have to,

Whatever feels best.

And now in your mind's eye,

I'd like you to bring to mind someone who you get on well with,

Someone who you love or someone who you don't have any issues with.

Family,

Friend.

And imagine that they are wanting what we all want,

To be loved,

To be safe,

To be healthy,

To be happy.

And with your eyes closed or open,

You can send them this mantra,

Picture them in your mind and send them these words,

May you be safe,

May you be well,

May you be happy,

May you be healthy,

May you be successful.

Maybe you can imagine that your words are being carried in a ball of light or energy towards that person,

Or you can even just imagine that they're standing in front of you now and you're saying or wishing,

Thinking this mantra to them.

May you be safe,

May you be well,

May you be healthy,

May you be happy,

May you be successful.

And with someone that we like or someone that we don't have any issues with,

It feels relatively easy to be able to send them those wishes.

The key here is to remember that for everyone that we like,

We're going to come across people who are more difficult,

People who we don't know,

People who are struggling with things that we know nothing about.

There's that wonderful phrase,

Be kind,

Everyone is fighting a battle that you know nothing about.

And this kind of mantra is perfect in reminding ourselves of that.

So now I'd like to invite you to think of someone who you maybe come across in your life,

But you don't really know them very well.

Maybe they're the postman,

Maybe they're the retail assistant in the post office or a shop that you went to recently.

Kind of neutral person.

And again,

Repeating them the same mantra,

Sending them these words.

Imagining with the same sense of feeling and love that you had for the previous person,

But remember that even though you don't know who this person is,

To someone they are special.

To someone they are loved,

They're a member of their family.

So again,

Sending them the mantra.

May you be safe.

May you be well.

May you be happy.

May you be healthy.

May you be successful.

May you be safe.

May you be well.

May you be happy.

May you be healthy.

May you be successful.

So now I invite you to think of someone who is difficult.

Someone who's upset you or annoyed you or behaved in a way that seems illogical.

Someone who seems difficult.

It can be someone that you know well or it can be someone who you just met in the street last week,

Doesn't matter,

But whoever's sort of making you think,

How dare they behave like that?

Or what are they thinking?

Or how rude?

Or anything like that.

And you can really feel the sense of anger or frustration that they maybe bring up in you.

And as you feel that,

Notice how it feels in your body to switch from that feeling of indignation and anger to sending them the mantra and remembering that they are too someone special in someone else's life.

Someone who is important.

Someone who's loved.

Someone's son.

Someone's daughter.

And send them the mantra as well.

May you be safe.

May you be well.

May you be happy.

May you be healthy.

May you be successful.

And as you repeat the mantra,

Again noticing how changing you are changing your perspective on this person changes perhaps the physical feeling in your body.

Does it loosen the frustration,

The tension?

Do you notice yourself being able to breathe a little more easily now that you've given the indignation a little bit of space to breathe?

Again,

Sending them the mantra,

Remembering that they are special to someone else and they just want what we all want.

They're a human being just like we all are.

May you be safe.

May you be well.

May you be happy.

May you be healthy.

May you be successful.

And then we had your eyes closed,

You can open them now.

Come back into the room or the space.

And that little mantra can be very useful when you're going about your day.

And you can remind yourself,

Even if you don't go through the whole mantra,

You can remind yourself of that mantra when something happens that annoys you,

Someone does something or says something that upsets you.

And even if people behave in ways that seem a bit thoughtless,

It's always so useful to remind ourselves that everyone is just trying their best,

Even if it doesn't seem like they are.

And everyone's just human.

And putting yourself in their shoes,

What would you do in this situation?

What would you want?

What would you expect?

What are the things that you're dealing with in your life that maybe mean that you're not always the most thoughtful or careful person?

What stresses and strains are going on in your day to day,

Which means that maybe you overlook people or you behaved in a way that wasn't always the kindest.

Maybe you were a bit rude to a shop assistant accidentally or you were a bit dismissive in an email.

You didn't really mean to be,

But you were really busy.

Maybe there are people in the street who you don't really pay much attention to,

Not because you're trying to be rude,

But just because you've got other stuff going on.

This is just a really great reminder of how firstly,

It's not always about us when people behave in annoying ways,

When other people do things that we don't really understand.

And secondly,

A really great way of reminding ourselves that it's not always about us and to get that perspective is to remember this mantra and send them that love and that good will,

Those good wishes as a reminder to ourselves that they are only human just like we are and we're all just doing what we can.

And even if we don't agree with them,

Even if we think that they are thoughtless,

Even if we think they've behaved really badly,

We can at least start to shift our perspective slightly and remember that everyone is human and that everyone's experiences have led them to behave in the way that they are today,

For better or worse.

So I hope that was helpful.

I hope that that might be a good way to start the day for those of you who are maybe feeling frustrated with other people or who are finding that they're irritated with people more recently.

I think a lot of people are feeling that.

There's a lot of political division and tension.

It's a difficult time for everyone at the moment in the world,

So a little bit of perspective can go a long way I think.

So thank you so much for being here today.

This has been another session of Meditation in Coffee.

I hope that you have a wonderful day and thanks so much for being here and I'll see you again soon.

That's it for today.

Thanks so much for listening and spending your morning with me.

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If you like this and you'd like to hear more from me and Breathe Like a Badass on how to use meditation to get the calm,

Clarity and focus you need to build a happy,

Fulfilling,

Freedom-filled business and life,

Head on over to my other full-length interview-style podcast,

Just Search Breathe Like a Badass,

Anywhere that you normally listen to podcasts.

Thank you so much for listening and I will see you for the next one.