Kristen Neff, a compassion researcher, explains compassion as opening our hearts to our own pain and suffering, offering understanding and kindness upon failure or mistakes, and recognizing the shared human experience. It hasn’t always been clear to me what self-compassion is because my inner critic was such a trusted voice throughout my life. With enough new information and fresh perspectives and practice, we can transform the thoughts we generate, listen to, and trust to cultivate self-compassion and love all the parts of ourselves.

Curiosity is a practice and can be used as a method for discovery over and over again. Keep asking positively framed and generative questions starting with What can I and How can I and eventually the answers you are seeking will find you.

We can identify our easy buttons by recognizing the actions we go to for numbing and asking ourselves if we really need them. It may make us feel better right now, but it can be severely detrimental and even become an addiction overtime if left unchecked.

Being open to new perspectives, especially when we are in pain and suffering enables us to grow and change…to see, try and understand things differently. Be open to new ideas and perspectives, at least consider them before choosing to refuse them. It is a choice after all and it may open your world to a whole new and improved experience.

Featured guest author, Carolyn Colleen, explains Breathe, Focus, FIERCE Action, part of the F.I.E.R.C.E process from her book, F.I.E.R.C.E.: Transform Your Life in the Face of Adversity, 5 Minutes at a Time! This method can be used to overcome adversity and anxiety in many situations, whether moving through an anxiety attack or moving forward through painful and tiring chemotherapy on a larger journey of beating cancer. I am a huge advocate of using breath to recenter ourselves, which is a large part of the process she shares.

She is an amazing human being, doing great and impacting work, which I am honored to share with you!

I’ve been trying to understand self-love for a long time. I read a lot of articles and books and have written the words myself that we each absolutely deserve love and belonging, but they continued to be just words to me. The feeling of heaviness and self-loathing wasn’t really going away.

I realize now that there is a difference between self-care and self-love and that self-love has to exist internally to really evolve.

That gloominess that was enveloping me has been replaced by a light and joyful energy, and I continued to remain curious about this occurrence, how it happened, and what could've created this change. That night, just before my inner Glenda showed up, I had finally asked a question that allowed space for a new energy and different emotions. I was stuck in a cycle of anger and fear and wasn't allowing space for compassion and joy, so when I realized my energy wasn't where I wanted it to be and questioned it, invitation and space were created to feel something different.

I had this expectation that yoga would be this incredible and joyful experience every time I practiced and was disappointed each time I got on my mat. I thought: I must be doing it wrong. This isn’t the exceptional experience I want. So I resisted. Then a month or two would go by and I would try again and repeated the experience. I was being really hard on myself for not wanting to practice yoga and getting quite angry with myself and not practicing much self-compassion.

Now, I am adjusting my expectations and embracing it and really feeling the unexected emotions as they come. Right now my practice is rather intense and that’s okay. This is what I need right now to heal and move through this transformation; whatever it might be. This is my journey, I can practice compassion, and embrace what is instead of what I expect.