Contentment is born of the ability

to laugh at oneself unaffectedly.

If we laugh at ourselves first, then others won’t. Instead, they’ll be laughing with us. This way we will be eliminating duality—no me and no other.

We’ll be eliminating egoism—I am an important person who does not make mistakes. And even if I did, no one would dare laugh at me!

We’ll be giving fearlessness—giving another person the okay to smile without the fear of hurting our feelings or embarrassing us. And we’ll be giving ourselves fearlessness too, by realizing that many things we deem meaningful really aren’t. Like pride. Expectations of not making mistakes. Exaggeration of status. These are false measures of a person’s worth.

What matters is that we try to do something as best we can and then see what happens. Made a mistake? Rarely is it life-threatening. If we can forgo self-recrimination—and maybe even find some humor in what happened—we’ll be in a better frame of mind to figure out how to not repeat the mistake.