Being Honest

How hard it can be to tell the truth sometimes. I mean the deep down, taking a good soft look at yourself and being compassionate about your situation. Wow, I can't believe I just wrote that! I first wrote "take a good HARD look at yourself. What a difference one word can make. Looking softly at myself, can I then be softer to others, namely those that challenge me and and bring out qualities that are undesirable, like anger, frustration, and impatience? While these qualities are normal to express, we can learn from them by examining our reactions and looking for the root cause of why we may get so disturbed. Then, taking it a step further, can we look at ourselves with acceptance, understanding, and patience? Getting to my point of being softer on ourselves coupled with being honest, allows us to more deeply express our true emotions, and helps us develop into the creative, and loving human beings that we are. The truth is, I had a terrible flare up, my entire left hip (my surgical hip), became inflamed after my "sweating" entry. Then one day later I got my period and had to take a break from vigorous asana practice. I was terribly hard on myself when this occured. All kinds of thoughts popped into my head..."you can't teach anymore, you can't enroll in the 500 hour teacher trainer, you are out of shape, you are getting old, you are a weakling, and on and on. I realized tonight, that I need to be softer on myself, and that all good things will come, and that this flare up, may have occured anyway, without my vigorous asana practice. I learned, the hard way (by beating myself up) that what I really need to do is to be softer with my precious self. If I can remember that next time something like this comes along, the road won't be as bumpy, I won't be as grumpy, and my hip won't be so lumpy....till next time, whoever may be reading this!