When you go home this evening, don’t try and improve your kitchen by washing up every dish and cup and knife and fork and spoon. Before you do all that washing up, please count how many clean dishes there are and how many dirty dishes there are. And if the clean ones outnumber the dirty ones, quit while you’re ahead!
Otherwise what happens? You spend all your weekends, all your holidays doing things, never appreciating and enjoying life; always trying to change the people you live with rather than appreciating them; always changing yourself, rather than appreciating yourself; trying to change your kids rather than loving them.
I’ll tell you the secret. If you just appreciate your kids and love them for who they are, they get better. If you appreciate yourself and love yourself as you are, then you improve. When you try and change, often things get worse. When you love people for who they are, it’s like the sun shining in the garden and then the flowers grow.
~ Ajahn Brahm