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This month’s journaling prompts on the theme of CURIOSITY are designed to support you to expand your mind with generosity, not condemnation.
Mini-theme: Softening
Today’s Prompt: How can you use curiosity to be kinder when dealing with other people?
These are my personal responses to today’s prompt designed to encourage you to use the prompts to develop your journaling practice. If you are not already receiving the monthly themed prompt calendar there is a sign up box below and you are very welcome to come and join us.
There’s that phrase, I think it’s Stephen Covey, ‘We tend to judge ourselves by our intentions and others by their actions.’ I am guilty of that. I have started to watch myself when I deal with other people, especially my nearest and dearest.
I do get quite wound up by some of the things my loved ones say. But, you know, they are totally free to say and do what they like. As am I. That was an interesting observation about myself. Because I didn’t feel that it was safe to be me, I didn’t think that I was free to say or do what I like. And then what I was subconsciously doing was monitoring other people for signs of the same. So if I saw people expressing or doing something that didn’t agree with me I would regard it quite critically. But you see that’s just a fear response in me. It took me quite a while to go from, ‘People really shouldn’t do that and if they stopped I’d feel much better,’ to ‘People can say or do what they want it won’t make any difference to me.’
And I am learning to ‘approach with love’. Because I feel that over the years I have been dealt with in quite a judgmental way, judgment is the criteria that I use in my interactions with other people. That’s what happens isn’t it? The way we get treated is the way we treat other people.
So learning to be open and loving has taken a bit of time to learn. I have phrases in my head like, ‘Just be nice,’ ‘Be kind’.
Curiosity is an interesting approach to this stage of my ‘loving not judging people’ experiment. What makes people tick? What makes people say what they do? I could definitely use curiosity as a way to just allow people to be who they are. Curiosity as allowing. But I could also see how curiosity could lead to judgment.
One way that I could make sure I use curiosity to allow rather than to judge is to assume good intentions. That’s a great way of looking at it. I hadn’t thought of that before.
Assume good intentions. Be curious. Be loving.
That’s my task for today.
Oh and I realise that doing this, just allowing people to be who they are, it frees me up. And that is such a wonderful feeling. Judgment and criticism weigh us down, but loving and being generously curious, well that frees us up.
How about you? How can you use curiosity to improve your relationship with those around you?
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You can also view previous month’s themes here:
December Journal Prompts CLOSURE
November Journal Prompts PRACTICE
October Journal Prompts SEASONAL SHIFTS