High Performance Mindset | Learn from World-Class Leaders, Consultants, Athletes & Coaches about Mindset - 747: Building Self-Compassion Without Losing Your Edge with Danae Frentz, Mental Performance Consultant

Episode Date: April 30, 2026

In this episode of The High Performance Mindset, Dr. Cindra Kamphoff sits down with Danae Frentz—a mental performance professional and self-compassion researcher—to explore a powerful idea that challenges how many high achievers think: being hard on yourself isn't what drives success—self-compassion is. Drawing from nearly a decade of research and applied work in sport and performance psychology, Danae shares how self-compassion helps athletes and performers regulate emotions, recover from setbacks, and sustain high performance without burnout. She explains that self-compassion isn't about lowering standards—it's about responding to challenges in a way that fuels growth, resilience, and confidence. Throughout the conversation, Danae breaks down the science behind self-compassion and its connection to performance, well-being, and emotional regulation. She highlights how perfectionism and a harsh inner critic often block growth—and how shifting your inner dialogue can actually help you perform better, not worse. Danae also shares her personal journey with perfectionism and how learning to practice self-compassion transformed both her performance and well-being. Together, we explore the common misconceptions that keep people stuck—like the fear that being kind to yourself will make you complacent—and why the opposite is actually true. You'll walk away with simple, practical tools you can use immediately—especially in moments of failure or self-doubt—including how to respond to your inner critic and what to say to yourself when things don't go as planned. This episode is a powerful reminder that you don't have to be your harshest critic to succeed—you can be your strongest ally. You'll Learn: What self-compassion really is—and what it's not  How self-compassion improves performance, resilience, and emotional regulation  The connection between perfectionism and self-criticism  Why being hard on yourself can actually hold you back  A simple way to respond to mistakes with more effectiveness and less judgment  How self-compassion and confidence work together  One small step you can take today to be kinder—and more effective—with yourself      Episode Resources & Links Learn more about the Mentally Strong Institute: https://mentallystronginstitute.com/ Download the National Confidence Research Study: https://confidencestudy.com/ Request a Free Mental Breakthrough Call with a Mentally Strong Coach: https://freementalbreakthroughcall.com/ Learn more about Danae Frentz and her work: frentzmentalperformance.ca

If you've ever felt like being hard on yourself is the reason you succeed, this conversation is going to challenge that. Today, I am joined by Denei Friends, a mental performance expert who helps high achievers build self-compassion without losing their edge. Denae has an academic background in sport and performance psychology from the University of Alberta, where her graduate research focused on self-compassion and its impact of performance and well-being. I also just recently learned that she received the Outstanding Research Award, specifically the Association for Applied Sports Psychology Master's Thesis Award in 2003, which is really cool. She brings both the science and the real world application to her work, helping athletes, performers, and professionals shift

from self-criticism to be a more resilient, sustainable mindset. And today we're going to be diving into the science behind self-compassion, how it connects to perfectionism, and why being kinder to yourself might actually be the key to performing better, not worse. Deney, thank you so much for joining here, joining us here on the high-performance mindset podcast. Yeah, thank you so much for having me, Sandra, excited to be here. I'm excited for you to be here as well. We've got to know each other through the Association for Applied Sports Psychology, and it's been fun to learn more about your work on self-compassion.

And just to get us started, why do you think this conversation matters to those people who are listening? Like, why should they keep listening and why does it really matter to them and their well-being in their performance? Yeah. I mean, I guess the first question I'd ask anyone who's watching or listening in, like, have you ever experienced a setback? Have you ever made a mistake, failed in some way, experienced some sort of challenge or difficulty?

And that's everyone, right? No one is perfect. And so I feel like learning about ways to recover and build resilience and grow from setbacks, failure, adversity is something that's relevant for anyone because those are natural parts of life in sport and school and work anywhere. Absolutely. And Deney, I know you knew we conducted a national research study on confidence last year, but one of our findings that really surprised me is we found 70% of people struggle with a harsh inner critic and have difficulty letting go of mistakes. Right? So that means on average, 70% of working.

Americans, at least that's what our study surveyed, struggle with what we're talking about today. And I see it as well in my work with executives and leaders and athletes. That's why I'm so excited to talk to you about self-compassion. So tell us, let's just start kind of simple. How do you define self-compassion in your own words? Yeah, self-compassion is essentially treating yourself with understanding and support like you would a close friend or a teammate or someone that you deeply love. And so essentially you're taking that understanding, support, encouragement, and turning it inward to yourself.

So that might involve kindness. And it might also involve some honesty, right? Just like you would give you back to someone you are close with. You're going to be honest and supportive. And so how can you be honest and supportive to yourself in a moment, specifically of struggle or pressure? So essentially treating yourself the way you treat someone you care about. Yeah. And not only is this important for athletes, which, you know, that's what your master's thesis was about. But it's also important for us in our daily life as we lead, as we're professionals, you know, to be able to be, I like the honest and supportive. It's not like you're lying to yourself.

No, no, you're not sugarcoding it. If you go up to someone after they made a mistake in a big work presentation, you wouldn't say, hey, you crush that because they wouldn't believe it, right? You're not you're not voting it. And so you don't say the same thing to yourself either. And that's why I think sometimes when we think about affirmations or just shifting to being positive and having positive self-talk, our brain doesn't buy it. It's like, I don't think so.

And so if we can shift to something that is either neutral and technical, which is what we talk about in sports psychology, or we shift to something that is balanced, right? It's honest and supportive. It's accurately kind of calling out what is in this situation and also supporting you along the way, giving you some encouragement. And so, you know, I love reading about the research on self-compassion. I have one of my favorite books over there. And this part of my shelf is like the ones I always use, right? And I love Kristen Neff's self-compassion workbook.

And specifically, there's a quote in there about that when you are self-critical, you're both the attacker and the attacked. And that kind of just like hit me when I first read it, like in the heart, right? Like when I'm being really critical of myself, I am both the attacking myself and I'm the attacker. And so what does the research say about self-compassion and specifically how it's connected to well-being or performance? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, self-compassion, like you were saying, it's tricky when you are both kind of the person who is judging and the person receiving that judgment.

it's painful to receive harsh criticism from other people, and yet we do it to ourselves all the time. Most people are more critical of themselves than others. So when we think about self-compassion, the research, it's associated with greater levels of psychological well-being, self-efficacy, perseverance, mastery, responsibility, like all these positive emotions, happiness, optimism, empathy. So all those types of things. And it's associated with less, stress, stress, happiness, optimism, empathy. less, stress, pessimity, fear of failure. If we think of perfectism, which I think we'll touch on in a little bit, kind of perfectionism.

So self-compassion is associated with less maladaptive perfectionism. For contingent self-worth, I think a lot of times as entrepreneurs or athletes or businessmen with business women, business people, we kind of associate our identity with what we do. And sometimes well, we perform out what we do. And so self-compassion can kind of like break that, that contingent self-worth or that contingent identity on being successful. Well, being where we find it. And it's also associated with like less negative emotions like anxiety, depression, rumination. So just that negative thought spiral that we just kind of can't get out of that loop.

It's associated with less of that, less worry. associated with lower levels of like body shame or body dissatisfaction. So lots of facets that it's supporting in helpful ways. Outstanding. Like that's the reason why people should keep listening. Because I think to myself, okay, would you like to experience less stress? Would you like to experience less rumination? Less maladaptive perfectionism. Less worry. I don't know who would say no to that. I think everyone who's listening would say, absolutely, I'd like to experience all of those less often. And it's not just that, but it's also, this is something that I've been mulling over recently. Self-compassion is not only associated with lower levels of that. And I'll just mention right off

the hop, because you'll hear it in research, like correlation is not causation, so we'll just sure up there, right? Yeah. Self-compassion is correlated with lower levels of that. Doesn't necessarily I mean, that's the only reason that's causing that or is the reason causing that. But self-compassion, I think, is also associated with enhancing one's capacity to hold negative emotions. Again, often we want to suppress or like just kind of pretend those bad things didn't happen and try to kind of grit it out or tough it out with the kind of sports psych verbiage or kind of cultural tropes and scripts that we see in the performance domain of sport. But I think self-compassion allows us to hold space and acknowledge, like, this is actually really hard right now. And that doesn't make me weak. This is painful.

Or this is a struggle. We acknowledge it and actually accept it, not saying that we're going to live in that space forever, but when we acknowledge and accept that this is part of my reality, now we can actually move through it. But I think there's a lot of assistance. I think it's, I think Kristen Neff actually talks about this equation. Like self-suffering is pain multiplied by our resistance to that pain. Okay. The more that we resist the pain, the more that we resist the negative things that are happening, the more suffering we're going to actually feel.

And so when we can accept, yeah, this is hard for me. And now what am I going to do about that? Do I need to rest? Do I need to actually make, you know, changes that are going to, maybe require a bit more work or a bit more effort. That's part of self-compassion to. It's not just being kind and gentle. It's also advocating for yourself and setting boundaries and sometimes pushing. Sometimes we do need to push in those situations, but it's knowing when to do that. So helpful. And for people who aren't familiar with Kristen Neff's work, she is a professor at the

University of Texas at Austin. Would you say that she coined the term self-compassion or the kind of as the leading researcher on it, or how would you describe her role in us understanding self-compassion? Yeah, I would say she definitely coined the term self-compassion, kind of brought it from Eastern thought and brought it into Western psychology, more in the general domain, like of life. And I think there are more sport-oriented researchers that have taken it and applied it more in a sport context that are different. researchers also leaders in their own right. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Well, two things I wanted to just acknowledge that you said is like acknowledge and accept. And as you're listening, thinking about,

you know, what are you maybe struggling with and what's difficult for you? And how would helping, just acknowledge and accepting that really help you work through those difficult emotions? Because, you know, I think one part of self-compassion that I really appreciate, Deney, is like this idea that, you know, there's common humanity, meaning, you know, everyone is suffering with something. Everyone's struggling with something. And sometimes, you know, I used to feel like I was the only one, particularly when I was in college and I was really struggling with the mental game and just like believing in myself. I thought I was the only one that had negative self-talk. You know, that's, I thought I was the only one that doubted myself. And now after studying of this field, I realized, no, you know, that's like part

of the human experience. Totally. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And that's part of Kristen. NF's contributions to is these kind of three components within self-compassion. If we're getting a little bit more technical into the research, yeah, it's comprised of the obvious one, which is self-kindness, or being more understanding, compassionate, caring towards yourself. Which is what we would probably say is the first component, being able to acknowledge without judgment what's happening in the moment. So we're not over-identifying with it. We're also not suppressing it, but we're just mindfully saying this is part of my experience. And then the last one is common humanity, which you mentioned, which is this awareness. Like, you're not alone in your

struggle. Suffering, setbacks, failure. Like we said at the top of this podcast, right, is experienced by everyone. Those are common parts of just being human because no one's per-huh. And so- we're saying when you realized, hey, I'm not alone in this. Other people feel this too. Sometimes it starts to lessen, like the heaviness of what we're feeling feels like we can maybe put it down a little bit or just respond to it in a different way. And, you know, as you're listening, people who are listening, they want, like, more resilience. They want more emotional regulation. They want the things that you just said about, you know, they want optimism and empathy and, you know, being able to really be able to, less likely to burn out, less likely to worry.

So how does self-compassion actually help and impact these things like burnout, resilience, emotional regulation? Yeah. Yeah, when it comes to burnout, you've probably heard the expression like sharpen the saw or like sharpened. And we have this, I think it's quite common. It's common in sport, but it's common in life in general to like hustle and work and work hard. And those are not bad things. We also need to know when to rest. just like, yes, he was injured.

If you just tore your ACL or you just broke your foot, you wouldn't start running on it again and think, oh, I just got to tough it out. Like, no, you would probably meet with someone who could help you first. And then you would have this kind of recovery plan. And so when we think about pushing and striving and wanting to, like, reach our goals, we need to be able to have capacity to do that and not just push, but also know when to rest. And so self-compassion is kind of this, this mindful awareness and this decision to ask myself, like, what do I need right now? Like checking in with myself in this moment and asking what do I need right now. And maybe that, today is a day where you sharpen the saw.

You know you're going to saw blocks tomorrow or you're going to, you know, cut something, you know, with the axe tomorrow. But you need to spend time sharpening, which might be rest, recovery, time in nature, time with family. And really connecting with your values is another part of self-compassion. We know we live much more fulfilling lives when we are living in alignment and in connection with the things that we deep down truly care about. And that's not something anyone else can decide for us. That's something that we decide for ourselves. So if we are coming from a place of intrinsic motivation, because we're connected with our values, we're able to kind of recover and know when to rest and when to push,

that's going to come out burn out big time. That's going to allow us to maintain high levels of well-being while we're on our journey to wherever we're going, whatever goal that might be, and also celebrating the process along the way because we're not just, you know, tired and weary. Like, that might be part of it, but we know how to recharge and how to kind of celebrate the steps that we're taking along the way. That's so helpful. And I would love everyone who's listening just to ask yourself,

What do I need right now? Right now in this moment. What do I need today? And you're right. We're in such hustle culture, like go after your goals, keep working hard, keep pushing. And we don't think enough about rest or recovery or what do I need right now. So would you encourage people who are listening to like, you know, ask yourself that every day or how do we practice that more often and keep that top of mind? Yeah, I think it's a simple question. We can ask ourselves, what do I need right now? What do I have capacity for? You mentioned hustle culture, and I'll just touch on it again. I think there's nothing wrong with going after your dreams and going after something that

you're deeply passionate about. What gets tricky is when we become disembodied from limitations as human beings. Like we're not robots. We're not meant to function at full capacity all the time. And yet sometimes we place those expectations on ourselves. And that's maybe getting into some of hustle cultures. connections with perfectionism, which we can explore a little bit. But just like you would plug your phone in before you go to bed or when you know it's down, you got to also like recharge yourself

and plug into the communities and the people and the personal hobbies that help recharge you. And so, yes, maybe it's asking what do I need right now to kind of be a bit more mindful and compassionate. But maybe it's also just checking like, what is my internal battery? We charge it. Maybe that's a nice metaphor. Like, what is it? my internal battery today. If I'm at a 50% and I'm giving all that 50%, that's a win, right? But also, can I plug back in? Can I have a bit of balance where I am going to give my 50% to my work? But I'm also going to try to recharge with friends or with time and nature to kind of get that battery level up. Because if we don't plug in, yeah, we're going to burn out.

Yeah. And Danae, I know, you know, we just hosted a mental performance. Summit that was phenomenal and if people can head over and listen to the replay at mental performance summit.org but one of the things or yeah mental performance summit.org but one of the things I loved is Kerry Guest spoke and he's the Boston Celtics sports psychologist and he was talking about something similar to you is just like noticing and recharging and and being aware and acknowledging your emotions and he had this really powerful question, he said, like, what is my body telling me about my mind? And I thought that was so powerful because so many times, I guess I just check in my mind, like what is going through my mind?

But by checking in with my body, it's like, oh, I feel like this tension in my shoulders. What is that actually telling me about the mind and what I'm thinking about what I'm focused on right now? And I think acknowledging is so important in terms of just like the self-compassion piece. Absolutely. And that requires presence, like being in. in the moment being embodied. And I think so often we go through life disembodied, not knowing what our body is physically feeling because our mind is just kind of running the show and it's maybe on overdrive, thinking about the future and thinking about the past. But if we, if we are dwelling on the past or we're worrying about the future, we're being robbed of the present moment, which is

all the time. So yeah, great words from that professional to just mention like, yeah, asking what is my body telling me right now about about my mind and if we want to get super nerdy I was listening to a podcast the other day and they were saying that you know 80% of the messages like coming are coming up 80% of the messages in our brain are actually coming up from our body and only 20% are kind of going down to the body so if you think about if you're halfways in our mind I hope I'm quoting that right that's what sticks out in my mind from that from that podcast, but just that our body is talking to our mind all the time. It's whether we are actually present and listening. Yeah. And a little more we could have, yeah, a much better experience,

probably in the present moment and stay a bit more regulated instead of being kind of so in sympathetic activation or kind of more shut down. So tuning inward is really important to then be present and tune out. Hi, Dr. Cinder Campoff here. Myself and my team just conducted this national research study on confidence that you have to check out. The report which you can download at Confidencestudy.com shows research-backed ways you can grow your confidence. What leaders do to both kill and grow confidence and how confidence is not just a personal issue, but an organizational issue. I'm telling you, you've got to check this out.

It's a game changer. You can find our full report at Confidence, Study. So before we talk about the how to practice self-compassion, we've talked a lot on the high-performance mindset podcast about confidence. And I shared a lot about our competence research study. So how do you think self-compassion is different than confidence and like or how do they work together? Yeah.

Self-compassion and confidence are distinct for sure. They can definitely go hand in hand. And when I think of not being defined by someone's mistakes or not being defined by our own mistakes, that's where self-compassion is huge, comes into play, right? Being able to acknowledge, yeah, a situation for what it is and also learn and grow from it. And that's how we build confidence. I had a quote on my desk for the longest time, and it said, confidence isn't something you wait for, it's something that you build.

Nice. Passion is part of building that. it's part of sharpening the saw. It's part of kind of learning self-trust, knowing when to push, knowing you recover. And that builds confidence in themselves. Because confidence is often kind of connected to self-efficacy and competence, right? It's the belief can successfully perform a desired action or a desired behavior. And so self-compassion can help us build that ability to continue performing or build the capacity to do that as it relates to increasing our self-trust. I think it also connects back to our why. We are much more confident in the decisions

that we make when we know why we're making them. And so if you think of business leaders or a lot of the kind of entrepreneurs that you might work with in more of your capacity, I know you work in the sport round, but you also work with, you know, top execs in the business world. Sure. Confident and decisive in the decisions that you're making is important, and we can have a lot more confidence in that when we know what we value and why we're doing the things that we're doing. And self-compassion has a big part of that at the root of it. Dene, I would love to hear about why you do what you do. And can you take us back to a moment where self-compassion didn't necessarily come naturally to you?

Yes, I can definitely. This takes us back to the fall of 2016. I was third year in undergrad, and I had my sights set on pursuing. At that time, I thought physiotherapy, which at the university I was at basically required a 4.0 in order to even get an in-hound. Wow. Wow. Highly, highly competitive. Profs often would ask in undergrad, who wants to be a physiotherapist?

and everyone put their hands up and they would tell us, like, less than a percent of us in the class would make it. And so there was some of those threats, you know, he kind of felt the fear and the worry of, you know, I need to keep my grades up. And I grew up living overseas where academics was a very highly desired part of life and something that was prioritized. So by the time I got to third year, those last 60 credits, those are the ones that really count. And I had done well in my first two years. but at the start of third year I was part of a group project that we got a B,

I think we got a B on this group project and it dropped my letter grade to I think in that time or maybe it was a B plus. Regardless, it wasn't a 4.0 and I remember just having this moment of like, oh no, what's going to happen? Like feeling so much worry

and it's just one grade. Like now in hindsight, this many years later, like a decade plus later, I can look back and kind of give a lot of compassion to myself. But at that moment, it kind of felt like the sky was falling and my world was over. The career path that I was setting out to do was now going to be out of reach. And I was quite worried and kind of thought, like, did I lose my mojo?

Did I lose my academic mojo to have this group project mark? And we worked so hard on it too. I think that was the other reason was we'd put so much effort into it. just fallen short. But that fear and that worry and that need for achieving this kind of perfect grade point average to get into grad school continued into that second semester. And I had some mental blocks when I'd write exams, which was new for me because I knew all the content, but I could only complete like 80% of one of my exams. And so I got 100% on the 80% of the questions that I answered, but I didn't finish. Oh, wow. I was hitting these roadblocks mentally

like I'm not a gymnast, but like a gymnast would hit a mental block with the twisties or what have you. I was hitting my own academic mental block of kind of struggling in the exam setting, these high performance settings. And I wasn't employed during my undergrad. I was kind of putting all my eggs in one basket of trying to get good marks and also earn scholarships along the way to make grad school even an option. So when I sat down to write an exam, Cindra, it wasn't just me as a student trying to pursue a career path. It was also my livelihood.

I was trying to earn money with my grades. And so there was a lot wrapped up in that for me, which is where I think the need for like having it go perfect and be successful really kind of crushed me. Like what was working for me before wasn't working anymore. and I kind of hit a wall and hit a breaking point where I learned about self-compassion in that kind of second semester from who would then become my master's thesis supervisor, Dr. Amber Mossowich. And I remember learning about perfectionism first and thinking, wow, that's fascinating. Like I see some of that in me, which I have loved, but, you know, I can recognize that. That's maybe a bit of a deficit or the maladaptive side is coming out for me in this moment. but then the next unit was on self-compassion and I thought this stuff like this is what I need.

And I remember sitting down with sitting down with her asking for a meeting and expressing, hey, I know you did a self-compassion intervention with athletes. Like what actually was in that intervention? Like what specifically were the questions that you had them do? Because I was trying to glean that information so I could apply it to me because I knew I needed it in the academic setting. And, you know, as the turn of events would happen, I ended up doing an undergrad research project with her that was then published, and then I ended up getting a chance to do my master's with her. So she played a really important role in opening my mind up to

self-compassion and also kind of accepting me when I didn't know who was going to accept me with my grade point out. And spoiler alert, I still did graduate. with a 4.0 it was fine. But it was a moment in time that I really struggled. And I'm going to refer to basically express to me like Deney, regardless of how this semester wraps up for you, like, I want to work with you in some capacity. I want to do this undergrad research project with you. And this story, I hope sharing it encourages other people that you can give rise to someone else's compassionate voice. You can help be a little. of someone else's self-compassion.

But being able to hear from someone else, hey, like, win-lose or drive, got you back. I mean, you care about you. I'm in this with you. That can be so powerful to hear from someone else, just as it's up. Because it was powerful for me to feel accepted in that moment where I didn't really know what was going to happen.

But that also can give rise to someone else's self-compassionate voice. Wow. was powerful. Thank you so much for like your vulnerability and everyone who's listening can think about times where they had high standards for themselves and they fell short and, you know, just a really powerful example of perfection and, you know, how that can get in the way of really appreciating yourself and seeing your progress instead of, you know, how far you still have to go. You can give rise to someone else's self-compassionate voice by say, I got your back. Yeah. And you can give rise to your own too. Like just like how we started, you know, thinking about self-compassionist, treating yourself the way you talk to someone else. So if I look back at that version of me like 10 years ago, I mean, I have perspective now, but to kind of tell that younger version of me like, hey, I got your back. We're going to be okay. It's going to be fine. Like, I know this feels like a lot right now. And also.

thought so much. People want to work with you. People want to connect with you because of who you are, not because of how you're performing. And I think that can be super powerful. Yeah, it makes me think quite a bit about what you said about how it's easy to believe like our identity is what we do instead of just seeing the value as a whole person. So your example was, you know, your perfectionism was getting in the way of you practicing self-compassion. What are, some of the other barriers that people experienced practice self-compassion. I'm asking this question because I'm thinking about you, the listener, and what holds you back from practicing self-compassion? I think there's a lot of misconceptions that self-compassion makes you soft. And in a culture and a world that is still

often dominated by masculine norms and masculine descriptions of things, like you think about how much people want to be mentally tough. And I know you use the word greedy a lot, but grit is very dynamic. It's not just hard work and like, you know, it's true. There's so much more to it. And so I think there's some misconceptions, just like with grit, I think there's some misconceptions with compassion. It doesn't make you soft. It does not make you complacent. But I think those kind of old school cultural scripts in sport of no pain, no gain, tough it out, even in just everyday life of like, got to work hard. Those are things that get in the way.

But self-compassion is actually associated with like responsibility and taking action and wanting to not experience the same mistake as you did before because you're making adjustments. So I think there's there's some of the cultural scripts that get in the way, that kind of fear of being soft. I think also fear of change. A lot of people think that, you know, they did an action and it got. them some level of success, so they're going to keep doing that behavior, that action. And so that there's a fear of change. There's a fear of letting go of what's worked so far for me.

And so if someone, you know, really benefits from or has benefited from hard work and digging in and being super disciplined and motivated, thinking about something like self-compassion is kind of scary. But I want to give a metaphor of like, With hustle culture or hard work, that's kind of like a hammer, like just doing more and kind of hitting the nail on the head. But not every problem in our life is a nail, right? Not every situation requires a hammer. If you might try to hammer a screw into a wall and you will write the drywall because that's not a screw is meant to be fixed into a wall. And so something like self-compassion that allows you to pause and acknowledge a situation for

what it is and then ask yourself, what do I need in this moment is like having a Swiss Army knife. There's a lot of different gizmos on a Swiss Army knife. Having self-compassion allows you the pause to then give yourself what you need for the job. And sometimes we need a hammer, but most of the time we don't. So use that Swiss Army knife. Yes, and we're not getting rid of the hammer. I want to make that very clear to listeners. Like, we still need to be able to dig in, when we need to. So we don't get rid of the hammer, but we're also adding the fact that we have us with Sarmony. There are so many other tools that we can use when needed. The hammer is not the only one. That's so powerful. And I think that's, I love the analogy of the, you're right, it's like

hammer, hammer, hammer, hammer, hammer. And, you know, about five years ago, Deney, I was doing this workshop with educators. And I got this feedback that afterwards, because I did talk a little bit about grit that they were like they they assumed that the um the administrator brought me in because i wanted them to like work harder and when i came back the next month i was like actually grit is not grind you know if you look at the definition of grit it's like passion purpose perseverance towards your long-term goals so it's really like you know energy fueling and energy giving instead of like go, go, go, push, push, push, push, push, you know, because that, especially as a former athlete, I guess I am still an athlete, but I should say former competitive athlete.

That's what I would say, you know, that grind, man, that is so part of my DNA and it's like, actually that's not what grit really is. Yeah, yeah, and I appreciate you sharing that. I'm also still an athlete, still play like premier level women's soccer here in Edmonton. Cool. Ryan mindset is tough to disentangle from, whether it's in sport or in like business or working or school, like that idea that you just have to kind of do more and do it with bigger effort and push, push, push, like that is grind. And I love the distinction you gave. Like, grit is not grind.

There's energy. There's an awareness of like when is too much. You know, there's that. back. Right. And yeah, kind of makes me think of, yeah, kind of makes me, yeah, like, grit is this consistency of interest, right? You have to have the passion at the perseverance of effort, like both of those to be gritty. But if the, if the interest starts to fade, that's when you pivot. To just keep going and going and going, that's not going to serve you in the long run. So it is deeply rooted to values and passion, just like self-compassion. So let's talk a little bit more about the how to practice self-compassion. And I've loved what we've talked about so far, like the two A's when you talked about like acknowledging and then you talked about accepting, right, and not resisting the pain or emotions.

Kind of this idea that all emotions are meant to be felt. So what would be a tool or a script that you could give someone to, particularly when their inner critic is very loud? Yeah. I actually want to just touch on the two A's that you mentioned, because I've got a couple others that maybe help give a bit of a framework for someone who is critical. Cool. So we accept that this is part of my reality, whether it's like, this is hard, I made a mistake. There's some acceptance there. Then we acknowledge, I'm not alone in this, right? Other people experience the same type of suffering or mistakes or challenges, kind of are validating our experiences. and then we affirm. We build ourselves back up with encouragement. And then the last one I would say is we adjust. What is one small thing that I want to change?

What's one adjustment I can make to learn from this experience, grow from it, maybe not experience it again in the future? So actually we'll give you those four A's again. We've got an idea. Acknowledge, affirm, and then adjust. And these are words that kind of came to me when I was, in my thesis and I've not really like put them formally in a bit of a pathway, but in thinking about our interview today and thinking about something that would be tangible for listeners, I think

bringing those four back is helpful. Four A's. It's so helpful. Four A's to grow in yourself compassion. What does that look like in the moment to accept, acknowledge, affirm, and adjust? Maybe give us an example of yourself or someone that you work with. I always to keep the confidentiality intact. But how? How do you think it would work day to day? Yeah. I work with a lot of athletes, so a lot of my examples would kind of come from sport. But more generally speaking, the accept bit is this is hard.

Like, say someone made a mistake at work or they're loaded with a bunch of big tasks that they feel incapable of doing. If we just pretend that the insecurity isn't there and we just suppress it, that's not helpful. So the first step would be accepting, this is hard, right? Then we acknowledge, I'm not the only one who feels this weight. Anyone who's trying to be new or has a big, tall task in front of them would feel overwhelmed as well. Then we affirm, I was given this task for a reason. People think I can do it. I believe I can do it.

I've got the skill set. I can trust myself. And then we maybe adjust. Maybe I need to ask for a little bit more direction from a boss or I need to ask for a little bit more support from a colleague to help get the ball roll. So that would be a more general example of how we would maybe apply self-compassion in that moment, acknowledging, or accepting, acknowledging, and then affirming ourselves. We've got the skill set and the strengths for the job, and then we adjust or we adapt to the situation. It's so easy for people to get in this cycle of just overthinking and ruminating.

So I'm going to encourage all of you to listen and notice acceptance, acknowledge, affirm, and adjust, and use that in your day-to-day, because it's so easy to get in this belief that we're not enough or beat ourselves up for making a mistake when really mistakes are a part of learning and growing. Yeah. Again, and that's where perfectionism gets in the way, because perfectionism is setting those super high standards for yourself, but they're really unattainable. And people who are self-compassionate, they still set high standards for themselves and also when inevitable setbacks and challenges come their way, they know how to respond in order to continue that momentum,

to learn to grow from it and keep building. So that kind of mindset of work smarter, not harder is part of it. And just this reminder, if anyone's kind of listening to this right now and you're going through a hard time, I encourage you to talk to yourself the way you'd talk to a close friend, someone you care about, or ask yourself, would I say this to the 10-year-old version of me? And if you would, then we don't say it to yourself, right? So think of how you would maybe speak to the 10-year-old version of you or someone that you're close with, a friend, family member.

I have this beautiful picture by my bedside of my dad and my grandparents, and I'm about 10 years old or maybe even younger. And I love looking at that. And I think it's like it's such a great reminder of like the, the kid in me, you know? And so I encourage people who are listening, like, can you take out a 10-year-old picture of you or maybe a younger version? And yes, would you say that to the 10-year-old version of yourself? So powerful. Yeah. And if the answer is no, then say something different or just ask, what would I say to the 10-year-old version of me? I saw another clip of self-compassion. It's like, I wouldn't say it's quite this accurate, but just like, how? you would talk to your dog or like a pet like so much love and unconditional care for some of these these you know younger versions of you or like an animal and talk to yourself that way talk to yourself

the way talk to someone you deeply care about whether that's little you a pet a close friend family member can be very very powerful to give rise to your self-compassion voice Deney, thank you so much for empowering us to grow in our self-compassion and giving us real tangible things that we can use. Love the four A's. So how can people follow along with your work and reach out to you to learn more about what you do? Yeah, you can follow me on my website. You can find me at Fencementalperformance.ca, France is F-R-E-N-T-Z, because I'm Canadian, at performance.ca. you can follow me on LinkedIn, or Instagram.

Same thing, France Mental Performance, would love to connect with you all and see how we can either collaborate or how I can journey alongside you and continuing to cultivate self-compassion to grow and develop as you journey on in your pursuits of work, school, sport, life,

wherever you might apply this. But excited to connect, hopefully, with some of your listeners in the future. Absolutely. So Deney, here's what I loved about our conversation today. When you talked about the definition of self-compassion and what that's really about, and you said, like, be honest and supportive. We talked about the research on why you should grow in your self-compassion, really practice it. And it's a practice that you can keep using, right? Less stress, less rumination, less maladaptive perfectionism, less fear of failure. Were some of the

outcomes that you shared. I also appreciated this idea of like suffering equals pain times resistance to the pain. So, you know, continuing to think about how can you resist the pain less and acknowledge and accept. Your four R's, or your four A's, I meant accept, acknowledge, affirm, and adjust. And then at the end, when we're talking about what would I say to my 10-year-old self or what would, what would would you know, what would I really do to empower them? So thank you so much, Denei. My last question for you is this. If someone listening is really hard on themselves right now, what's one small step that they could take today to be more self-compassionate? Yeah, I would say pause and ask

yourself, what do I need right now? Or what would I say to little me? Amazing. Thank you so much, Denei, for crushing it and providing just such important, valuable information and tools. Thank you for being here on the high performance mindset podcast. Thanks for having me, Cindra. Appreciate it. Way to go for finishing another episode of the high performance mindset. I'm giving you a virtual fist pump. Holy cow, did that go by way too fast for anyone else? If you want more, remember to subscribe, and you can head over to Dr. Cindra for show notes and enjoy my exclusive community for high performers where you get access to videos about mindset each week.

So again, you can add over to Dr. Cyndra.com. See you next week.