My mum (bless her soul) used to say "It all begins at home". She was referring to manners. Her view was, it didn't matter if you were well-behaved at school, so long as you remained rude at home, then it all adds to zero.
As an adult, I realized that this philosophy does not merely pertain to one's conduct but in all areas of life. For example, when friends of mine are distressed, I find myself giving them advice on taking it easy, not taking things so seriously or personally. But when I, myself am stressed, I am challenged to heed my own counseling.
Understanding something intellectually, and applying it consistently in your own life can be two polar extremes. For example, I've been a student of meditation for a number of years. What meditation essentially teaches you is to be a witness to your thoughts. We all have thoughts, darting in and out of our conscious minds. The science (or should I say the art) of meditation is where you train yourself to be a passive observer of these thoughts, rather than engaging in them.
So the idea is to instill that practice into your everyday life, not just when you are on the cushion, so to speak. How is this useful? To me, it can prove to be useful in any situation, especially in relating to other people. We all have triggers or hot-buttons that when pressed, send us on an emotional tail-spin, for example, feeling our blood boil and the instinct to react. Meditation builds self-awareness so you can "see" these emotions as they are occurring and the physical manifestations in your body that equates to these feelings. e.g. shortness of breath, heart-beating faster. When you can "see" this happening, it is almost like witnessing yourself in a scene that's playing in slow motion, such that you catch yourself before the automatic reaction of lashing out verbally. That is giving yourself the power to choose your reactions.
In his book "Seven Habits of Highly Effective People", Stephen Covey refers to this as the gap between the stimulus and the response. In this gap, you are able to choose your response. Eckhart Tolle, author of "The Power of the Now" refers to it as "being present". I have known these as mere "concepts" for quite some time, but it wasn't until recently that I started deploying them in my life on a regular basis. For example, I have this pet-peeve of people yawning when I am talking to them. It solicits an automatic reaction in me that makes my blood boil. Somewhere in my past, I made up that it is rude to yawn while in conversation with someone, because it indicates that you are either bored, disinterested or worse, apathetic, in which case I am wasting my time with you. So now when that happens, I put the meditative process into practice (not always successfully I might add :-) I will see someone yawn, I will say to myself in my head "OK, I feel my blood boiling. It does not mean anything. Take deep breaths, keep breathing, keep breathing, calm down." I will repeat this matra in my head over and over until I feel calm.
This process teaches me to be humble in my judgement of other people's reactions. For example, if someone lashes out verbally and I perceive it as being ill-conceived or unnecessary, before I summon them to eternal damnation in my corner of the world, I stop and ask myself, "Am I always successful in applying the meditative technique to my own responses?" The answer is invariably "No" and once again I am forced to reliquish to my late mother's wise phrase, "It all begins at home". Until I, myself have truly mastered my responses, who am I to judge those who have not. And from reading text on the topic, once one has reached that stage of enlightentment, judgments are irrelevant altogether anyway.
It all begins with oneself.
