DailyJim: We contribute to maybe 5 percent of other peoples’ troubles

Hello everyone welcome to another daily gym today is thursday may 16th 2024 i'm doing this before midnight yay i want to talk about how we are often maybe five percent of the troubles that somebody else is experiencing so uh to get more into it uh reached out to a friend haven't talked to in a little while we hung out and then haven't heard back from her and i was like what happened, We just hung out, went out dancing and whatnot, but I haven't heard back. And I was like, huh, I'm so confused. And I think it's so easy for me to go, aha, what did I do? I must have done something or I didn't do something. Somehow this person is not talking to me because it's my fault.

And not just it's my fault. It's all my fault. The whole reason this person is not talking to me is because of something that I did. But how often is that the case? I don't know if that's ever the case. Maybe it's not 5%. Maybe it's 10%, 20, 30, 40, 50, maybe 60, 70% of the reason why somebody is not doing something is because of what I've done. But it's never 100%. Is it never? I mean, I don't know if it's ever 100%. Maybe we'll say 99.9% chance that it's never a hundred percent.

And I wonder how life would look if we realize that. There's some famous quote, I'm obviously going to butcher it, but something about, we don't know the battles that other people are fighting on the inside. What have we thought about the battles that other people are fighting on the inside? What if we thought about the battles that we're fighting outside of this one specific scenario? are you? What if we realize that maybe we're grouchy today, not because of the way the person looked at us. Maybe that's only 5% of it. Maybe another 50% comes from the fact that we didn't sleep well. Maybe another 30% comes from the fact that we, um, have a deadline that we're late for. And what that's 85%, maybe another 15% comes from.

Just our, you know, something that we've read on Twitter or something that has to do with kind of the larger scope of politics and economy and stuff. So what if we started paying attention to the multitudes of conflicts that people are having? This idea that we have one conflict in our life and this conflict is causing all of the pain and the anger and the anguish and the fear and the uncertainty, I just think is not very accurate. I just don't think it's very accurate that our life is run by one particular event and not by others. I think we are a complex amalgamation of conflicts.

I want to record this episode before I go out because I would like to record it while I'm sober, not after I've had a few drinks. And also while, and who knows, I'm going to go dancing. I don't know how long I'll be out dancing.

But I also just wanted to go because my friend's waiting on me. But I was also worried that the rain was going to start and it was going to get loud and you wouldn't be able to hear the voice note, it's a podcast, both things.

And so that's just the internal conflict going on in me right now. That is avoiding all the other conflicts that have happened. There's so much else going on inside of my own mind or heart or body or whatever you want to call it. And that's not even talking about the conflicts that are going on inside other people or amongst people.

What would life look like if we just recognized that we're in this constant state of conflict and it's okay. It's actually okay. Conflict is okay. It's not quote unquote bad. Conflict is two people, two things wanting different things or feeling different things or having different things. Difference is okay. How do we interact with the difference and realize that we also have a lot of similarity?

I don't know. this is a little bit of rambling as most of these episodes are but there's something that has me feeling quite rejuvenated just this idea that maybe when i reach out to people instead of assuming that i'm a hundred percent of the problem of why they're not communicating with me or 100 of the reason that the thing fell apart maybe only maybe i'm 5 10 15 20 of it or at least my behaviors are. And what if I started to communicate to them and to myself how they might be going through other stuff and to recognize that maybe it's not all about what I did. Now, this is not to say that my behaviors didn't contribute anything. I also don't think it's ever zero percent. Maybe sometimes it's zero percent, but maybe it's, I think it's often like one, two, 3%, um, at least. And so just to, not to give myself all of the blame or all of the fault and none, and also not to give my, like the behaviors, none of the blame or none of the fault. But just to recognize that life is really complex. There are so many moving parts. And I think if we realize that, then we might have a lot more compassion for ourselves and and for other people, and other beings. On that note, I'm going to go dance. Talk to you all on Monday. I hope you spend the weekend however you would like to spend the weekend. Take care.