What if you were kinder to yourself?
Reprogramming the brain to be more mindful & compassionate
** Real QUICK, if you liked the contents of this weeks email, please do me a favor & press the little “heart” up above next to my name. It will show the internet that ppl actually read & like what I do & then will allow for it to be seen by more ppl. It’ll mean the world to me if you did that for me. Thank you so much!
Reprogramming The Brain
Mindfulness involves a kind & self compassionate approach toward the self.
Yet, rather than a self compassionate attitude, many ppl suffer from a non-accepting & self-critical relationship with the self.
And alot of this has to do with the way we’ve been “programmed” (I’ll explain more about this later).
The nature of this type of non accepting relationship can be best understood when we take a listen to our inner critic — the internal voice in our heads that criticizes everything about ourselves and the world.
“Mindfulness involves a kind & self compassionate approach toward the self.”
In this weeks email, the aim is to familiarize yourself with your inner critic and learn how to effectively cultivate a friendly and caring relationship with yourself by increasing awareness of the mean inner voice in your head and by practicing self compassion through meditation and self care techniques.
So let’s get into it:
Here’s the LOC breakdown for you to PREVIEW what you’re getting in this email (at a glance):
Mindful Insights
In this section, you will find:
(1) A list of books that can help you to cultivate a stronger & more loving relationship with yourself. (2) A short (5 min) loving-kindness meditation that I created. (3) A powerful & short story about self criticism
Mindful Weekly Challenge
The inner critic exercise — an exercise to help you become more aware of this inner critical voice & the consequences it poses in terms of emotions & motivation.
Mindful Approach
This week we talk about compassion and why it’s so important in terms of cultivating a more fulfilled & happier life.
Mindful Reflection
IRL scenario of how I create space to offer myself & others a little compassion.
Mindful Insights
1) Good Reads To Cultivate Compassion—
These books can help you to see the light and to become more compassionate for yourself and for others.
They have either been read by me or highly recommended from other ppl I know. So if you are struggling with giving yourself and/or others compassion, I highly encourage you to give one of these books a read:
You Are A Badass: How to Stop Doubting Your Greatness & Start Living An Awesome Life — Jen Sincero
The Mindful Path To Self Compassion: Freeing Yourself From Destructive Thoughts & Emotions — Chris Germer
Self-Compassion: Stop Beating Yourself Up & Leave Insecurity Behind — Kristen Neff
The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You're Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are —Brené Brown
2) A Loving-Kindness Meditation —
Loving-kindness meditation (also known as metta meditation) is a practice rooted in compassion. And while other mindfulness-based meditations help you cultivate a calmer, softer, & kinder mind, loving-kindness meditation has one purpose— to direct well wishes & goodwill to first ourselves & then onto others.
The more we meditate with loving-kindness in mind, the more we foster compassion and let go of judgment and hostility. The more we familiarize ourselves with our own pain and suffering, the more we understand the quiet suffering in others.
See if you can take some time for yourself to practice along this loving kindness meditation. It starts off giving some information around loving kindness & then the meditation practice starts at 6:15 seconds
3) Short (5 min) Story About Self Criticism —
We all have an inner voice in our heads. Sometimes the voice is nurturing and tells us we are safe & okay. Other times there’s a voice that puts us in our place to make sure we’re doing the things we have to do to keep ourselves aligned & in check. However the critical voice can sometimes be a little too critical & if we listen to it & accept the mean things it says, it can set us up for mental distress.
This short video is an animation that nicely portrays what the self critical mind looks like and how we can overcome it.
Mindful Challenge
This exercise (in the form of questions) helps us to identify our inner critic. It’s important to recognize the voice in our heads and the hurtful things it says because it’s then when we’re able to shine light onto it, deny its truth, & form our own truth…a truth that serves us in a healthier more positive way.
When you find some time, see if you can go through these questions and answer them with complete honesty. See what comes up for you. You can jot your responses on paper or in your head…whatever works best for you.
I hope this finds you well and if you have any questions or want to talk about this further, you can always send me a message, or we can get a conversation going on the private fb group — ZEN SPACE
Get to know yourself DEEPER—
• Which parts of yourself or your life are you most critical of?
• When you are critical of yourself, in what ways does that criticism manifest? (For example, Doyou use insults? Do you try to understand your limitations?)
• How does it feel to be self-critical?
• What type of language do you use when you are being self-critical? Can you give some examples?
• Imagine that another person was speaking to you, using the same words and tone that you use towards yourself when you are being self-critical. How would you react? Would you allow this to happen?
• If you would not allow this, consider why and how you allow your inner critic to treat you this way?
• As a result of your criticism, do you feel a sense of motivation to strive for self-improvement, or do you feel defeated?
• When you identify something about yourself that you consider a flaw, or when you fail or make a mistake, what would a good friend, who loves you unconditionally, say to you?
• Consider the possibilities if you could replace the inner critic with a voice that is similar to your friend’s voice (see the previous question)? What would be possible?
Mindful Approach
Why don’t we show ourselves a little more love than we do? Why are we so quick to judge or belittle ourselves when things don’t go as planned or when we make a mistake? Why are we so hard on ourselves? Why cant we just give ourselves a break?
The way I see it, is that at some point in our lives, we took on this belief that we have to treat ourselves this way. And this belief stems from the way we’ve been programmed.
We can understand how we’re programmed, when we tune into the inner voice in our head that’s critiquing everything about ourselves or the world.
The Inner Critic—
The inner critic is a voice that:
blames you when things go wrong;
calls you names like “fool,” “weak,” “ugly”;
compares you to other ppl;
sets high or impossible standards of perfection; monitors your failures and setbacks;
pays little or no attention to your accomplishments or strengths;
exaggerates & generalizes your weaknesses (you always mess things up).
The way we respond to the inner critic is different for many of us. Some of us respond with destructive thoughts and believe the inner critic to be true. Some of us form healthier ways to deal with the inner critic so that we don’t take on what it says as our truth and form constructive thoughts to counter it instead.
The function of the inner critic is to prevent us from making mistakes and to motivate us towards our ideals. Essentially it tries to keep us safe from harm and makes sure that certain conditions in our life are met.
It’s actually considered important to have this inner voice so that we can function at our optimal levels. The ability to monitor and evaluate our behavior allows us to make the necessary changes if need be to keep us more aligned with who we want to be.
The inner critic wants the best for us, however, it does so in a hurtful and unproductive way. If we aren’t aware of this process, it can result in negative emotions like guilt, shame, & anger.
High levels of self criticism over time can become how we define the relationship we have with ourselves. It can become our norm. And so rather than treating ourselves with warmth, kindness, & reassurance, we develop maladaptive behaviors which negatively affects the way we relate to ourselves.
The Programming—
Programming happens from the moment we are born to this very moment right here, right now.
We have been and are currently being programmed with all kinds of beliefs all the time about who we are, what we should be to be considered “good enough,” how life is suppose to operate, how other ppl are, etc.
This process of programming also applies to a larger time frame, like a history that goes back hundred of years & it can be very powerful and can have a detrimental impact on the way we see ourselves and the world.
The biggest problem about our programming is that it leads us to believe something that’s not necessarily true & this can be best observed when we tap into to our inner critic.
We need to reprogram ourselves to create a truth that serves us because this old, self critical, negative way of being is outdated & just not true. It’s not who we are. All the things that we were led to believe about ourselves, about our culture, about life at large, is not who we are. We are not these beliefs. We are not our programming.
Easier said though right? It’s challenging to shift the way you see yourself and the world especially when you’ve been seeing life with a certain lens for so long.
“All the things that we were led to believe about ourselves, about our culture, about life at large, is not who we are. We are not these beliefs. We are not our programming.”
And while it may seem difficult, with practice you make progress and eventually are able to shift.
You need to challenge yourself to see that there is a difference between what happens to you and the beliefs that results out of what happens to you.
It’s understood—strong external events can trigger strong internal beliefs. And these beliefs start to operate like a “lens” through which we look at ourselves, at others, and at the world.
If we start to identify with these beliefs, with this programming (for example: I am oppressed; I am worth less than others because of my life circumstances; I can’t do anything right; I’m a POS and not going anywhere in life— it starts to become who we are.
So the belief itself isn’t so much the problem. The problem is that we mistake those beliefs for who we are. Identification with these beliefs is the main issue here.
Mindfulness can help us to become aware of how we are “programmed.” Mindfulness helps us to get in contact with a part of ourselves that we call the “observer.” The observer is not your beliefs and thoughts, it is aware of them. The more we learn to connect to this inner observer, the less our beliefs influence our self view.
One way we can learn to connect to our inner observer is by first creating space for ourselves. We can take moments in this space to form our own truth about ourselves and the world rather than just having someone else project their truth onto us.
When we start living from a place of awareness & understanding, we can start to experience a shift. We become aware that we are not our skin color. We are not our history. We are not what happened to us. We are the silent observer in ourselves that has been there from the very beginning.
Self compassion—
Self compassion involves treating yourself with care and concern when considering personal mistakes, failures, and painful life situations.
It’s being able to show yourself care & understanding when you screw up rather than being harshly critical. When life is stressful, instead of immediately trying to control or fix the problem, a self compassionate response might entail pausing first to offer yourself soothing & comfort.
It also involves recognizing that humans are imperfect, that all ppl fail, make mistakes, and have serious life challenges.
Mindfulness, when it comes to self compassion, involves being aware of ones painful experiences in a balanced way that neither ignores and avoids nor amplifies painful thoughts and emotions.
It’s necessary to be mindfully aware of our own suffering to be able to extend compassion towards ourselves.
Awareness is key—
When we become aware of how we treat ourselves when confronted with personal weaknesses and obstacles, we are then able to reduce the negative impact of the inner critic & promote self compassion.
& that’s it for this week.
I’ll leave you with a few examples to what self compassionate sounds like in hopes that you can integrate this understanding so that you can start giving yourself a little more love & kindness that you deserve.
A self compassionate voice:
Understand that you are not perfect;
Makes you stop to first take care of yourself rather than solve the problem;
Is aware that everybody makes mistakes;
Accepts you even when you make mistakes;
Cares about your personal wellbeing.
** NEXT WEEK: we’re going into the 7th pillar of mindfulness — THE EGO. **
Mindful Reflection
So you most likely follow me on social media & you may have saw my status the other day talking about something personal that has to do with my family…
If you didn’t see the status, a short recap of what I said is that I’ve been dealing with the news of my grandparents & uncle with down syndrome having had tested positive for covid. My grandma is thankfully okay with very minimal side effects, while my grandfather and uncle are hospitalized fighting for their lives.
This is the reality I am currently living in & it’s definitely not easy.
And so you may be probably wondering:
How am I holding up?
& how does this relate to compassion?
So I’m holding up okay. And that’s one of the main reasons why I’m bringing this up here in this weeks email. First, because it’s something that’s currently happening & also because Im handling with resilience.
I’m allowing myself to feel my emotions. I check in with myself often & also with the family to keep up to date. I meditate. I trust. I accept. I show myself love. And I show others love.
What I don’t do is — I don’t defeat myself. I don’t blame myself. I don’t run away from my feelings. I don’t run away from the problem. I don’t get done on myself when I start feeling like I’m not doing enough to show support.
I simply do what I can in a way that I may create space for myself and for others in a balanced & healthy way.
It’s challenging to keep your peace when it feels like everything around you is falling apart, right? Because for me it’s a HUGE challenge. And it wouldn’t have made it easier, had I not been equipped with the self healing techniques that I’ve been learning in my life up until this point.
It takes inner work & so much practice to respond to the adversity, pain, & setbacks life throws at us in a way that helps us to sustain a sense of inner peace & balance. It’s not an easy process to go through but it’s so worth it when you’re able to successfully apply your newly found ways of living to serve you in a constructive & more healthier way.
until next week my friend,
namaste.
** BTW if you ever have any questions or feedback, you can always REPLY to these emails directly. Im always down to chat & go over anything I covered, any mindfulness or meditation questions, or simply just connect & get to know you more. If that’s something you’d like to do, feel FREE and just respond to the email(s).
***ALSO, if you haven’t already you can join the private group on FB where we can get conversations going & talk about important & meaningful topics or ideas as it relates to us or the world. Plus, I’d rather talk too you, not at you.
So come talk to me.
ZEN SPACE
I’m Victor.
Or the mindfulness guy.
I aim to find calm & balance in my life through inspirations between alternative Eastern traditional Buddhism styles of meditation & mindfulness, as well as modern secular styles too.
I believe that we ALL have the capacity to create greatness for ourselves & I’m willing to show you how.
you can find me hanging out on:
Instagram —@2whomitmayconcrn_
Facebook — @iamzenrn
TikTok — @iamzenrn
Join the fam!
ZenRn Facebook Community
Enjoyed the email?
Tell your friends or loved ones! Share with someone you feel may greatly benefit off just having some positive content in their email box every Monday. (& it would also mean the world to me).
Want More?
Visit the Zen Rn website for more mindful treats >>
https://www.iamzenrn.com
~I’m here to hold space for you because you deserve it.~
Victor Padilla