Good morning,
And thank you for joining me for a mindful morning moment,
Where I will be speaking with you today about self-compassion.
My name is Ali,
And I'm so thankful that you have made this time for yourself today and chosen to do your practice with me.
The first thing I would like for you to acknowledge today is that self-compassion can feel hard,
And that is completely normal.
I like to remind my students that all of the practices we do in our lives,
Whether it be listening to an inspirational talk like you're doing right now,
Having a meditation or journaling practice,
Whatever it might be for you,
It is called practice for a reason.
We practice things in life because we know we need them and we know that we want to get better at doing them.
We want to be doing these things that fill up our cup.
So recognize that self-love,
Self-compassion is a practice.
And just as if you are practicing a sport,
When you make a mistake,
Say your inner critic really got the best of you for a moment,
Or maybe even for days or months or even years because sometimes life is hard.
Just as when you are practicing at getting better at a sport,
You are practicing the act of self-love.
You will make mistakes,
But you can also keep going and keep trying again.
One of the most important parts of self-love is to come from a place of non-judgment.
That essentially means offering yourself kindness.
Well,
How do we do this,
You might be asking yourself.
You have the ability within you to be compassionate and kind.
You do it all the time with your friends,
Your loved ones.
You already have this skill.
One of the ways we can access self-compassion,
And it is something that Kristin Neff,
Who is a pioneer in the field of self-compassion talks about,
We access self-compassion by offering ourselves the same comfort and compassion that we would offer a dear friend going through that same situation.
In mindfulness,
We talk about being a witness to our experience.
We come from a place of not judging ourselves at all,
But simply making observations about what we are experiencing in that moment.
So a great way to practice self-compassion is to firstly stop and observe what might be happening for you in that specific moment.
Maybe you notice that your breath has gotten shallow,
And your heart rate has increased,
And your mind has been very busy with lots of negative thoughts.
Maybe so many thoughts that you might notice in that moment that maybe you haven't been present for the last minute or so.
Can you just observe this without judgment?
And then coming from this place of observation and being a witness,
Almost watching yourself going through this situation,
Then you can begin to offer kindness and support to yourself by viewing yourself as a dear friend.
What might you say to that friend now?
Maybe it's,
Wow,
You've been through so much lately,
And you have been doing your best that you possibly could in this situation.
It's tough,
And you are doing great.
It's okay that you haven't done everything as you wanted to.
You are still loved,
And you are still enough just as you are.
I would like to end today's talk with a quote from Glennon Doyle from their book called Untamed.
The only thing that was ever wrong with me was my belief that there was something wrong with me.
I quit spending my life trying to control myself and began to trust myself.
We only control what we don't trust.
We can either control ourselves or love ourselves,
But we can't do both.
Thank you for joining me this morning.
If you would like to continue your practice either today or tomorrow,
I recommend listening to my Mindful Morning Moments self-compassion meditation or journaling tracks.
I encourage you to follow my profile and continue with one of my Mindful Morning Moments each day as you learn to fill up your own cup and keep practicing this act of self-love again and again.
