I was just thinking about how I’m going to exercise later, and what type of exercise that I want to do. It got me thinking about the need, not only for physical exercise but for mental exercise in the capacity of kindness and compassion and gratitude, and being a good human being.
It really got me kind of spruced up and I’m like “Holy crap!”. In the same way that I schedule exercise into my day to day life, why don’t I schedule compassion into my day to day life? Why don’t I schedule gratitude into my day to day life? I work out every single day at 5 o’clock, but have I ever sat down at specifically 5 o’clock and said I’m just going to be grateful for the next 10 minutes.’ Or said, specifically at 3 o’clock at every single day I’m going to go do a random act of kindness for someone.
I find it interesting that we all prioritize ourselves but we don’t prioritize being selfless.
We don’t prioritize doing things for other people, appreciating them and taking time out to be a kind, genuine, and good person, or at least even think about these points in our lives. Much like working out, compassion is a muscle; if you want to have that muscle grow and become stronger, you’ll need to exercise it, you’ll need to train it. In the same way you need to go to the gym, and do the bench-press to build up your chest, you’ll need to continually train yourself to be compassionate or to be grateful. If you don’t train it, and if you don’t exercise it on a day to day basis, then it’s probably not going to happen for you.
So I really encourage anyone who’s listening to this right now, if you have a set day and time that you also exercise, schedule a time throughout the day, that you actively think about and meditate on and exercise gratitude, compassion, kindness, etc, That’s how you’ll be a much happier and more productive individual.