In this webinar, I talk about the how self-compassion is a path to sanity from all of our neuroses … and as an added benefit, it helps create better habits!
I’ve broken this webinar recording into two parts:
- Part I – My Talk: How to create sanity and better habits using self-compassion (See notes)
- Part II – Questions & Answers: I answered some vulnerable questions from some amazing people, please watch!
Part I: Leo’s Talk (with notes)
The Problem: We beat ourselves up, get down on ourselves, make ourselves wrong in a lot of ways … and this creates a broken, harsh relationship with ourselves.
This also results in making it harder to form habits!
The Path to Sanity
- Notice what’s bothering you
- See the hurt – see that you’re feeling pain & fear, locate the sensation in your heart, be with it
- Give yourself compassion – kindness, like you would to a good friend, a feeling of warmth and friendliness, wanting yourself to be happy.
Let the neuroses get calmed early on, before they grow too large. When they do grow too large, start to heal them with compassion.
It’s a changing relationship to yourself.
Better Habits: Many people feel the best way to improve their habits is to be really strict on themselves — if “mess up” with a habit, they’ll berate themselves to do better. When I suggest that they be kind to themselves even when things don’t go well, they worry that they’d be rewarding bad behavior.
This is an outdate way of training ourselves. It’s like hitting a puppy with a newspaper to make it behave — it might behave, but really it just fears you. The new methods of dog training center around treating the puppy kindly, rewarding it for good behavior, encouraging it to come closer and closer to the target behavior. This is how we should train our minds.
Self-compassion not only is a better way of training our minds, it gets rid of a lot of problems that sabotage our habits. When we are harsh on ourselves, we form a negative self-image that makes it harder to deal with bumps in the road.
Watch above, or here on Vimeo.
Part II: Questions and Answers
In the second part of the webinar, I answered a number of great questions from members, please watch! Several of the people asking questions were beautifully vulnerable, and they were facing difficulties that many people face in the Self-Compassion Challenge — this is a must watch.