San Diego, USA
One Deep Breath | Compassion
Newsletter
Compassion feels like acceptance of the heart.
"One Deep Breath" is a weekly mindful newsletter that brings heart connected content straight to your inbox. Each edition features easy to read insights, and personally practiced tools to share and support you in deepening your felt connection to the present moment and the wonders of the world around you.
In this weeks Newsletter, I wanted to extend the invitation to join me in starting the week with Self Compassion.
So often, our focus is pulled to the responsibilities at hand, the unfinished projects, the lingering to do list items we know we "should" be doing.
For this week I am offering a new practice.
Instead of teaming up with the inner bully that judges us for our short comings, what if we took a moment to notice how much "we are doing."
What if we shifted out attention to notice the efforts of how all these parts of us are working day in an day out, to meet our core needs, and support the people around us.
Our muscles, supporting us with movement in getting us to where we need to go.
Our eyes, and ears for taking in the information of the world around us.
Our stomach and digestive tract for converting our food into nourishing nutrients.
Our lungs and respitory system for effortlessly supplying fresh oxygen to our cells.
Our heart and blood vessels for supplying energy to our vital organs.
All of the parts of our problem solving mind, doing their best to look out for our best interest in preparing for the future.
Self compassion is an act of self care. A practice of self forgiveness.
It is a remembering that while all systems may not always be in perfect operation, they are doing there best in this current circumstance.
Self compassion, doesn't mean we give up on our daily responsibilities, rather it is a giving in to the present moment capacity that's available to us.
Trusting that when I take care of myself, I will be most able to take care of the responsibilities around me.
Self Compassion is an act of love, that includes oneself in the equation of beautiful world.
Sometimes as hard as we try, our determined inner critic stories, remain at the helm.
When this happens, the most effective way I've learned to gain access to a deeper level of self compassion, is through following the trailheads of my own inner stories with genuine curiosity.
As we better understand our self limitting beliefs, their origins, and how they have been placed by our own self protective system. We give ourselves the opportunity to decide in each moment, if these inner critic narratives are genuinely helping or hindering us in living our most healthy and empowered lives.
For this reason, I felt inspired to create and share a Free 5 Part Blog Series A Beginners Guide to IFS (Internal Family Systems) a model brought to life by Family systems Therapist Dick Schwartz.
IFS is the most practical model I have found, to directly and compassionatly meet the parts of our mind that are keeping us blocked from experiecing more self acceptance and self love.
Released today is the 4th Week of the series!
You can find a link to the first four blog posts here:
Week 4 | The Healing Process Unburdening Exiles
In this series it includes an overview of Parts Work, and also self paced exercises that help you to get curious in deepening your own connection to parts, and Self Understanding.
Self Compassion Invitation: Living from Self Trust + Self Forgiveness
As you go through your day and week, see if awareness can notice a moment of self criticism when things don't go as planned.
Instead of taking the inner narrative as truth, see if there is available a curiosity towards the inner voice.
This time consider it as one of many available perspectives of an adaptive mind, trying to keep you safe.
What might be its goal for you behind the harsh words?
Can you feel the care in its intent?
Can you ask it to rephrase it in a way that feels more supportive, rather than destructive?
How does this shift in how you show up to your challenge at hand?
Self Compassion is a daily practice of giving yourself grace for being a perfectly imperfect creation, a shared part of life, that is like the rest of us, simply doing it's best.
May your week be slightly gentler,
Greg
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