I nearly wounded someone today. Thankfully, only nearly.

We all have those moments when, perhaps even before we’ve thought about it, we’ve wounded others – with a well-chosen barb, a dose of sarcastic humour, by locking them out or turning away, by reminding them of their bad habits or inabilities, by yelling or insulting … by shaming.

All too often we are wounding other people because we just got wounded ourselves, sometimes by a thought or a memory rising quietly inside; a thought that nobody else can even see. We deal with our own pain by swinging it out onto somebody else.

And sometimes we wound others because, to put it simply, it’s what happened to us repeatedly along our life journey and now it’s their turn for a share of it.

But perhaps even more often than we wound others, we wound ourselves.

… and more deeply.

When faced with a situation, an opportunity, a challenge we tell ourselves we’re not good enough, not smart enough, not attractive enough, not talented enough, not powerful enough, not important enough …

We shame ourselves into not trying, or giving up, or playing small…

Maybe the next time you sense you are wounding yourself or wounding another human being, pause and reflect on where that comes from?