I asked my Facebook friends if they would like me to return to posting about kindness. Overwhelmingly, people asked to see kindness again. A few people who know me well asked if I could do a little teaching about kindness. After thinking about all of their comments, I decided that I would continue the kindness posts and include mini-teaching weeks.
This week, I thought we could look at being kind to ourselves. There's a lot of conversation about "self-care" and very little conversation about self kindness.
What is the difference? Self care usually involves some kind of product -- massages or bath bombs or special wine or... Much of this is not available now that we are staying at home.
Self kindness is the conscious act of being kind to yourself; learning to cut yourself some slack.
Very simply, living a kind life begins with being kind to yourself.
Our first lesson in self kindness is simply admitting that sometimes, you get screaming, raging angry with yourself.
Everyone does this. We internalize messages from parents, teachers, and media. In order to sell us stuff, we're told over and over and over again -- by sophisticated manipulators -- that we aren't good enough. The only solution to getting good enough is to buy buy buy.
We buy and buy and still, we are left feeling angry with ourselves and feeling inadequate.
So what actually works?
Over the course of this week, I will share with you things I learned from fifteen years of working with clients and my own therapy as well as what I learned in my Master's program. These things work, if you're willing to simply admit that there's something going on inside you.
For today, I ask you to contemplate the idea that you might be really, really angry with yourself. Tomorrow, we'll talk about what to do about it.
I don't have some webinar I'm selling. I am not in this so that you can sooth your self loathing through credit card purchases. I'm here because some of you knew me well enough to ask.
Feel free to leave a comment. If it's too sensitive, send me a DM.
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