Nine months ago I began a journey of practicing mindfulness every day and we've reached day 275. Yesterday, I talked about how thinking positively translates to positive results. Today is a new day.
In Japan, being mindful of others is embedded in its culture. The emphasis is on working together to achieve a greater whole, which is the contrast of Western individualism. Since coming to Japan and starting my mindfulness practice I'm noticing the weight of everything I do. For example, if I decided to start being loud and obnoxious in the middle of a train, people would look at me, see that I'm a foreigner, and now I've projected a negative image of foreigners to people who generally have little to no interaction with them. I become a representative image of foreigners and now people think foreigners are loud and obnoxious.
The opposite is true, too. Whenever I help people out they tend to remember that very strongly and I've seen in a lot of my students that they become really enthusiastic about learning English and meeting more foreigners. Simply being nice and having fun with people is helping to strengthen their passion and giving them something to work toward. They're not the best examples, but while we may not realize it at that time, our actions are having a bigger impact than we may think.
Learning to be more mindful is not only helping me notice how my actions might influence other people, but it's helping me think about where those actions will end up taking me. It's helping me learn to be more empathetic. I'm learning to see peoples' intentions differently. What at first might come across as someone being rude might actually be someone acting in a way that's looking out for the greater interest of the whole. Maybe that's their way of trying to protect everyone. It's constantly reminding me not to assume anything and really think about things.
Everything is connected in some way and our actions help weave a path for everything to walk down. The more we learn to recognize how much of an impact we have on the world around us the more we can learn to see where those actions might take us.
Peace
"Not only can you not plan the impact you're going to have, you often won't recognize it when you're having it." - Dick CostoloI was watching some videos about people and noticed a lot of toxicity. It made me think about how their actions are impacting the people around them. Although the internet has a vast wealth of information and enables us to connect in a lot of way, there's also a huge divide among people and a lot of toxicity as a result. Some people just wanna watch the world burn and they can be real dicks. The internet makes apparent the good and bad sides of humanity in a lot of ways. I've been guilty of going off on people before and it made me realize how often I don't consider what effect my actions end up having.
In Japan, being mindful of others is embedded in its culture. The emphasis is on working together to achieve a greater whole, which is the contrast of Western individualism. Since coming to Japan and starting my mindfulness practice I'm noticing the weight of everything I do. For example, if I decided to start being loud and obnoxious in the middle of a train, people would look at me, see that I'm a foreigner, and now I've projected a negative image of foreigners to people who generally have little to no interaction with them. I become a representative image of foreigners and now people think foreigners are loud and obnoxious.
The opposite is true, too. Whenever I help people out they tend to remember that very strongly and I've seen in a lot of my students that they become really enthusiastic about learning English and meeting more foreigners. Simply being nice and having fun with people is helping to strengthen their passion and giving them something to work toward. They're not the best examples, but while we may not realize it at that time, our actions are having a bigger impact than we may think.
Learning to be more mindful is not only helping me notice how my actions might influence other people, but it's helping me think about where those actions will end up taking me. It's helping me learn to be more empathetic. I'm learning to see peoples' intentions differently. What at first might come across as someone being rude might actually be someone acting in a way that's looking out for the greater interest of the whole. Maybe that's their way of trying to protect everyone. It's constantly reminding me not to assume anything and really think about things.
Everything is connected in some way and our actions help weave a path for everything to walk down. The more we learn to recognize how much of an impact we have on the world around us the more we can learn to see where those actions might take us.
Peace
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| Each action creates its own ripple in the world we inhabit. How far will they carry on? Who knows? |
If you have any thoughts, stories, or experiences, leave a comment below!
ReplyDeleteHave a great day~