Good morning,
Good afternoon,
Good evening,
Wherever you may be,
Whatever you may be doing.
Hello.
I wanted to talk today on probably a few things.
The one starting out is being self-compassion.
And I just did an Insight Timer live on,
And the meditation was self-compassion.
And you can hear that meditation on the Plus Premium side of the Insight Timer app.
It's called Cultivating Self-Compassion.
And really I was just interested in terms of the background to this meditation.
And one of the things which has been developing with me at this moment has been,
I guess,
My digital presence and space in the meditation practice.
And on the weekend I did my Ikigai.
And I'll probably do a talk about the Ikigai,
And maybe even a course actually.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I found it so unbelievably helpful.
It's crazy.
You know,
I'm part of a master class with Lou Redmond.
Shout out to Lou.
If you don't already,
Do follow Lou.
Lou is fantastic.
The teachers on Insight Timer that way back in 2019,
2020,
I gained an affinity with.
And,
You know,
Listening to his meditations.
And then sometime last year,
Really in the same time and space as this element of self-compassion came up,
I connected directly with Lou and coached me for a while.
Now I'm part of his master class and he continues to coach me.
And what the Ikigai showed me was where my passion really lies.
And yeah,
For certain I'm going to do a course on the Ikigai.
So if you haven't taken it already and you're listening to this,
Jump on there and take my course.
And for a while I've been kind of,
Exactly as I said earlier,
Figuring out where I sat.
And what the Ikigai did and what it's kind of there to do is to give you an understanding of purpose.
It's there to help you find your reason for being.
Purpose,
Your purpose in life.
And it's really a combination of four elements.
Passion,
Mission,
Vocation and profession.
And what it asks you to do is to understand for,
Well to dig deeper into four essential questions which lead you into this funnel in space.
What do you love?
What are you good at?
What does the world need?
And what can you get paid for?
And I took the time out on Sunday to go through that.
And it gave me such clarity and comfort.
The comfort in the fact that this is something that I've been kind of talking to people about and it's been bouncing around in my head in terms of what it was that I wanted to do in this space.
And doing the Ikigai gave me confirmation that yeah,
That is something that I want to do and this is the way that I want to,
This is the path that I want to travel down.
And it confirmed that,
So that was the comfort that it brought.
And it's essentially been a continual journey.
And I bring it back to the beginnings of this talk around self-compassion.
You know,
When I started this direct path to where I am today,
And it's always interesting,
I always like to look back at the threads that lead us to certain points in our life and where they kind of started.
And then when you get to that point,
Then you'll find that there's another thread and then you get to the end of that thread and there's another thread and there's these continual threads that all link back to the beginning.
And this thread starts last year with me being in a new country,
In a new role,
And really feeling the spotlight of requirement,
Perfectionism,
Performance.
And feeling the heat of being underneath that spotlight,
Not physically,
Not all the time,
But I guess it's that internal and self-imposed pressure to perform,
To do well.
And I could feel a misalignment.
What that misalignment was,
I wasn't sure of.
And I often call it turbulence.
And when turbulence shows up,
I typically go deeper.
And that's one of the things that this journey has shown me,
Is that where the turbulence is,
On the back end of it,
Is where the open skies and the smooth flying exist.
So I turned into it,
Did some shadow work,
And what popped up for me was self-compassion,
Which is really interesting.
And that's one of the things that I really enjoy and love about shadow work,
Is that you never really know where it's going to take you.
But speaking for self,
Definitively everywhere that it has ever pointed me to has been exactly where I needed to be and what was going on for me right now,
At that moment.
And so self-compassion showed up.
And as I said in the meditation,
I don't really remember what the original figure or shape was,
But it turned itself into a squirrel.
Significance of squirrel,
I don't know.
But it was a squirrel.
And that squirrel joined my internal family system.
And every time I do a guided meditation,
At the end of it,
I check in,
Spend time with my internal family,
And spend time with that squirrel.
That squirrel.
Self-compassion.
Giving compassion to self.
And,
You know,
As I reflect back on it,
That was something that I really needed at that time,
Obviously.
Well,
Obviously now.
That allowed me to breathe,
To stroll,
To settle,
And to do what I needed to do.
And that began a chain reaction,
If I can use that word,
But I really do feel a calling to that phrase because it was a chain reaction,
Which almost 12 months later,
To almost a day,
Leads me to this meditation right here,
Right now.
And everything that has happened in those 12 months all really started with that realization of the need to give compassion to self.
And as I sit here and kind of reflect on that,
And what I did over the weekend with the Ikigai,
I actually wonder,
While I'm curious about where the connection is,
I'd be lying if I said I knew what it is right now,
But I feel there is a connection.
And I guess what I'm saying here in this talk is,
Allow yourself time.
Allow yourself space.
And allow yourself to heal yourself.
And allow yourself to focus in on self.
And give and allow yourself to focus that energy of compassion in on self.
Because we give it and do it for others,
But all too often not for ourselves.
But all too often not for ourselves.
And when those parts in ourselves are accepted and brought into the light and out of the shadow,
It unlocks things that at that moment in time we're not fully aware of.
What I love about what the digital space allows is that it can always be there if you want it to be.
And it can act as a reference point,
Not just for me,
But for other people.
There might be somebody out there right now who's listening to this,
And it hits a chord,
Strikes a nerve,
Motivates them to do X,
Fill in the blank.
And then when they look back,
They say,
Oh,
Maybe.
That's what kind of started the ball rolling.
And for me,
There is a very distinct certainty that the place that I find myself,
Of course,
It's the sum of all the parts,
Full stop.
That shadow work that I did last year about that revealed self-compassion has allowed me to,
Today,
Give myself time and space and not as much pressure to allow things to fall into place.
And that ability on Sunday allowed me to get deeper into that ikigai.
And this talk is witness to it,
Because it allowed me to be certain on what I wanted to do in terms of a course.
So,
Yeah,
This talk in itself is just that revelation that I was talking about in terms of the thread.
You pull it back,
You pull back on it,
And it gets you to one point.
And then there's another thread which leads from there.
And the thread now,
I feel,
Is this path of this ikigai.
Let's see where it goes.
Let's see where it takes us.
So,
That was just a moment of self-reflection.
And,
I guess,
A point marked in the thread of this journey.
All the best.
Thank you.
And have a good day.
