-CLICK THE PICTURE ABOVE AND TAKE A SCREEN SHOT TO USE AS PHONE WALLPAPER FOR A PRACTICE REMINDER-
SELF: Equanimity is an attitude that helps you respond to all kinds of experience with grace. If you divide life into strong categories of good and bad, you can fall into a habit of not accepting many things. Both pleasant and unpleasant things happen, whether you accept them or not. Much suffering is caused by struggling against problems or discomfort, instead of focusing on the best way to manage whatever comes.
RELATIONSHIPS: If you face relationship conflicts with an attitude of equanimity, you can stay calm enough to let facts and feelings present themselves before you act or react. Equanimity helps you struggle less over the particulars of how things happen, so many unnecessary conflicts can be prevented. An equanimous outlook can help you notice, and then resolve, competitive reactions and thinking habits.
PRACTICE: Try to go through a whole day without becoming outwardly irritated with anything or anybody. Then try to go a whole day without even becoming inwardly irritated. Continue to lengthen the time of your practice, while addressing the underlying judgments, habits, and other attachments that feed irritability and cause you to react with negativity or frustration when things don't go your way.
Excerpt From
Mindful Intelligence: and the making of you