Hi, and welcome to your Daily Mindfulness. So I'm just going to start out by sharing a quote by Traci Lea LaRussa. So just seeing how this lands with you when you hear it. She says, "Judge tenderly, if you must. There's usually a side, you have not heard, a story you know nothing about, and a battle being waged that you're not having to fight." So, you know, we all, every single one of us has a tendency to be judgmental sometimes.

It's pretty normal. But the storylines that we often hold on to are the ones where we're critical of others or being critical of ourselves. So we kind of end up feeding ourselves a story that somehow the other or ourselves is not good enough, maybe even bad, or we reduce them to a particular label. Yeah, he's a weirdo. She's selfish.

They're all hypocrites or horrible people. And of course, as you might know, from firsthand experience, these storylines can drum up a lot of negativity and hostility both within and without. So when we're commenting on another person, whether it's just in here or it's out loud, it's important to recognize two things. First of all, our stories, our assumptions about others, they're very subjective, meaning it might say more about how we see the world than it actually does about the other person. For instance, every single one of us will see a certain person or a certain thing or place in our own unique way.

And even if some people around us agree about our opinion, it doesn't make it ultimately true. And the way that we view people is influenced by our mood, our beliefs, our unconscious biases and our history. So a simple example, some people see the best in everyone, others often see the worst. So our judgments maybe more reflections of ourselves than we think. They can be warped in that way.

So they might not be as accurate as we think. And that's important to know. So secondly, as Traci points to in her quote, there's usually so much more to any given story than we could possibly know, and we could be altogether wrong in our assumptions about somebody. Now, I remember having pretty hard, harsh judgment, rather of a man who was rude to me at a train station one day. And then not too long later when grieving the death of a loved one, I was really cold and unfriendly to someone in a very similar way when I was walking on the beach.

I was just in so much pain. I didn't have anything left to give. I don't know if you've ever experienced something similar. So that made me question my view on what happened with that man. I was wondering what his story was that day.

As Traci says, right? There's usually a side you've not heard, a story you know nothing about, and a battle being waged that you're not having to fight. And it's helpful to remember that this is the case and to judge tenderly, or better yet we can maybe learn to let go of those storylines altogether. And when we're willing to do that, we begin to experience a new sense of freedom and peace, not only in our own mind, but also in our relationships with others and our whole life. So as always thank you for your practice and your presence here. And just inviting you to settle in now for today's meditation.