Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - Deep Cuts: Kryptonite for the Inner Critic | Kristin Neff

Episode Date: August 21, 2023

The scientific case for self-compassion and why it doesn’t have to lead to passivity, self absorption, or cheesiness.Today's guest is Kristin Neff, an Associate Professor of Educational Psychology at the University of Texas at Austin. She’s the author of the book Self-Compassion: The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself and Fierce Self-Compassion: How Women Can Harness Kindness to Speak Up, Claim Their Power, and Thrive.For tickets to TPH's live event in Boston on September 7:https://thewilbur.com/armory/artist/dan-harris/For tickets to TPH's live and live streamed event in Colorado on November 3rd:https://www.milehichurch.org/calendar/10-percent-happier-with-dan-harris/Do you have a favorite episode of TPH? We want to hear about it!Here’s how you can help us uncover these hidden gems.Call [phone]Tell us your name and favorite episodeAnd, in a couple of sentences, tell us why this episode hit home for youDo this and your episode and story may be part of our Deep Cuts featureIn this episode we talk about:How Kristin first got into meditation and why she was drawn to the practice of compassion How, paradoxically, self-compassion actually makes us less focused on ourselvesThe three components of self-compassionOne of the big blockers for men in practicing self-compassionWhat self-compassion is and isn’tHow research shows that self-compassion is a trainable skillWhether we actually need the internal cattle prod to get aheadBeing kind to yourself even when you notice prejudice coming up in your mind And how men and women deal with shame differentlyFull Shownotes:https://www.tenpercent.com/tph/podcast-episode/kristin-neff-rerunSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

It's the 10% happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Hello, party people. Quick little plug here at the top. I have a couple of live events coming up on November 3rd. I'm doing a thing at the mile high church in Lakewood, Colorado, which is right outside of Denver. If you're not in the area, you can watch the live stream. There's a link for in-person and live stream tickets in the show notes. Also, I'm told there are still a handful of tickets

available for the live podcast taping. We're doing in Boston on September 7th. There's also a link for that in the show notes. Anyway, enough self-promotion today. We're talking about one of my favorite subjects. It's a mental skill that is easy and yet unwise to dismiss. Self-compassion. There is a notion that is deeply ingrained in our culture that the only way to succeed or even really to survive is to liberally apply an internal cattle prod.

However, there is plenty of research that strongly suggests that this self-laceration approach simply leads to more anxiety and that there's actually a better alternative, the aforementioned self-compassion. And my guest today has been at the forefront of this research. Kristen Neff has empirically demonstrated the value of self-compassion. She's shown that it doesn't have to lead to passivity, self-absorption, or cheesiness. And as you will hear, she has practiced what she preaches in extremely difficult circumstances in her own life.

She's a big part of the reason why I've been doing self-compassion. I like to think of it as a kryptonite for my inner critic. This episode, I should say, is the first installment of a new feature that we're calling Deep Cuts, where you, the listener, get to choose your favorite TPH episode from the archives. It's very simple. Just give us a call, leave us a voice mail that includes the episode you want to hear and why. And the number to do that is 5086560540.

We'll put the number in the show notes so you don't have to write it down. Anyway, here's the voice mail we got about today's episode. Hello, my name is Space Williams. I live outside Santa Fe on Unfeeded Taiwan Pueblo lands. And I'm calling because my favorite episode of 10% happier is kryptonite for the inner critic, the Dr. Krypton F. Listening to that episode really sparked a journey for me and practicing mindful self-compassion

ever since has really helped me reduce the unrelenting inner critic that's been such a part of my life. The journey has also led me to re-examine my relationship with shame and while I can't say I'm free from it, I can say my life is immeasurably improved because it has so much less a hold on me. Thank you so much for all you do and for bringing these wonderful experts and their great practices into our lives. Be well. Thank you, Stace.

A little bit more about Kristen F. before we dive in. She's an associate professor of educational psychology at the University of Texas at Austin. She's the author of a book called Self-Compassion and the follow-up book, Fear Self-Compassion. This is a great episode. I do have one little editorial note here before we go. You're gonna hear me mention a few times in this interview a book that I was working on at the time.

Four years later, I'm still working on that same book. And part of the reason for that is that I've decided to be self-compassionate in the writing process, to take my time and make the thing as good as I possibly can. All right, enjoy. Have you been considering starting or restarting your meditation practice? Well, in the words of highway billboards across America, if you're looking for a sign, this is it. To help you get started, we're offering subscriptions at a 40% discount until September 3rd. Of course, nothing is permanent. So get this deal before it ends by going to 10% dot com slash 40. That's 10% one word all spelled out. .com slash 40 for 40% off your subscription. Nice to see you.

Thank you for doing this. I've been wanting to talk to you for a while actually, because I'm actually writing a book about kindness right now, and I want to do a chapter about self-compassion. So you are the leading expert. So before we get to self-compassion though, I want to hear how you got interested in meditation in the first place.

Right. So it was my last year of graduate school. I was finishing up my PhD at Berkeley. And then basically my life was a mess, right? I had gotten out of a divorce. It was a very messy divorce. I was feeling a lot of shame. And I was also feeling a lot of stress.

Not so much about what I finished my PhD, but more after seven years of my life when I get a job. The job mark goes really tight. So I thought, well, I've heard that meditation is good for stress. It was Berkeley. So right down the street for me was the meditation group. I was lucky. I'll go right down every street.

Right down every street, yeah, and Berkeley, so on every corner. But luckily, the one I chose to go to, the woman leading the group, it was actually a Tiktok Han Sangha. The reason it's important is because some meditation teachers, mindful and suspended teachers, wouldn't necessarily talk about self-compassion. Tiktok Han, one thing that's unique about him is he's really emphasizes the heart qualities of practice. Especially since he's a Vietnamese Zen master and Zen doesn't talk a lot about compassionful

stop as I understand it. Right, but he does in particular, right? And so I started in his tradition and the very first night I went, the woman talked about having compassion for yourself, that you needed to actively cultivate compassion for yourself as well as others. And so I was also learning mindfulness, but because my life was such a mess, because I was such a mess, almost immediately,

I saw the difference it made. When I turned toward myself with this kind of kind, warm, supportive attitude, I just saw my own experience and really made a difference. So, and then I started practicing more in the insight meditation tradition. I think because I'm a scientist, it just was a little more compatible with my way of approaching things, but with people like Jack Cornfield, the Path With Heart, Sharon

Salzburg, Levinge Kindness. So I was always really drawn to the integration of, you might say, the spaciousness of mindfulness with the heart-opening qualities of compassion. And I was fortunate because it was there at my practice from the very beginning. And that was about 20 years ago. And let me just jump in and define terms for people because some people... Yes. I just never know.

We have a lot of experienced meditators who listen for new folks who are coming every week. So, once you start to meditate, there are lots of ways to meditate. There are lots of ways to meditate. And within Buddhism, there are, I would say at least two big skills we're trying to teach. One is mindfulness, which is, puts simply the ability not to be

yacked around by your emotions. Yes, like that. The other is compassion, or if you're afraid as I am of gooey words, you can just re-translate that into friendliness, just kind of a cooler, calmer, nicer attitude toward external and internal phenomena. I look at our replacement word cooler with warmer.

Sure, yes, better. I mean cool. I know what you mean. I know what you mean. Yeah, but fair enough. So it sounds like you pivoted from the initial Zen tradition into what's known as the insight tradition, which is just another form of Buddhist meditation.

It's actually the school I've trained in and you stumbled upon teachers like Jack Cornfield, Sharon Salisberg, both of whom have written a lot about mindfulness, again, just being able to be nonjudgmentally aware of stuff and compassion, which is adding in the not just nonjudgmentally aware, but having a certain element of warmth in the awareness. Right, and so the mindfulness is aimed

at holding experience in a nonjudgmental manner. So the compassion is aimed at holding the experience or in a friendly manner. And so they have slightly different targets. And so both need to be practiced. So the compassion is aimed at holding the experiencer in a friendly manner. So they have slightly different targets and so both need to be practiced. That can actually almost appear to conflict sometimes because you accept your experience as it is, including the fact that it's painful at the same time that you're wishing yourself well and you want to help. And so it almost forms a bit of a paradox. Actually, one of the

sayings we like to say is we give ourselves compassion not to feel better, but because we feel bad. So you have to allow the experience to be as it is at the same time as toward the experience or because you're friendly because you care, you do what you can to help. So one paradox is since, let me see if I can restate that. And I'm also thinking that there may be yet another paradox. Probably one paradox is you in mindfulness meditation, we are not trying to control anything. We're just trying to see things as they are. See clearly insight is the clear seeing of whatever's happening. So that it doesn't own us. is the clear seeing of whatever's happening, so that it doesn't own us.

But in this case, when you add in the compassion layer, you're trying to notice that they're suffering there, and you're not trying to alleviate it per se, you're just sending warmth toward the suffering as it is. Right, you aren't trying to manipulate your experience, because if you use compassion to try to make the pang go away, it's actually just another form of resistance. So you have to fully accept the fact that this is painful, this hurts, you know, and that's the

mindfulness validating and accepting the fact that this is really painful right now. And at the same time we give ourselves warmth and kindness, you know, I'm so sorry, it's so painful. Is there anything I can do to help and support myself in this moment? Right? And so, they're targeted kind of two different targets. So they have to be both held together. And they say compassion and wisdom.

They're two wings of a bird. We need both wings. We need to tend toward ourselves at the same time we accept our experience. All right. Well, I was just going to ask you how we do this. Because I think most of the listeners will understand basic mindfulness meditation will often pick the breath

as our object we sit and try to feel the breath every time we get distracted, which will happen a million times, we start again, compassion meditation or self-compassion meditation involves a little bit more kind of discursive thinking or not discursive thinking targeted thinking where you are Sending well wishes toward yourself and you did this little thing where you said I'm so sorry You're feeling this way. Is there anything I can do like and that for me as a typical

Western raised in Patriarchal system guy think I think I'm not gonna say that to myself. Right, right I have to do that you don't that to myself. Right, right. Do I have to do that? You don't have to do it that way. You can give yourself, you know, you can do it physically. So what we're doing is there's really two different safety systems. So we're activating the care safety system because as mammals, you know, when we come

out of the womb with the way we feel safe is by connection with other people. Connection, love, warmth, that's what allows us to feel safe. And so what we're doing is we're kind of intentionally targeting the care system. And you can do it with language, but it's true that English doesn't work for everyone. You can do it with physical touch. So putting your hand on your body in a way

that feels supportive. You can just do it with friendliness, like, hey, it's okay. You can call yourself buddy if you want, whatever works, the language, it doesn't really matter what the language is. What matters is the attitude of caring and warmth, and that can be expressed in a lot of ways. But mindfulness, it's not intended to be a standalone practice where it's just about accepting and experience completely as it is. The reason we practice is because we want to alleviate suffering.

Right? And so ironically, when we practice, we have to accept what's happening because we don't, it's going to make things worse. But at the same time, it's really helpful. For instance, there's some research that shows if you teach people some self-compassion before they learn mindfulness meditation, they're more likely to stick with it. Because what happens is, you know, the mind starts saying, oh, I can't do this, I'm so bad at this, and it starts judging, you know, we start judging ourselves.

And although it is, we want to accept that and just see them as thoughts. It really makes a difference if you give yourself some kindness, oh man that's kind of hard, I'm like, that's okay, you know, the friendliness, the warmth, the human connection. And I know people get confused because it's self-compassion, but compassion is inherently connected. The word compassion and the lat means to suffer with. And so when you give

yourself compassion, it's not really aimed at yourself. It's just opening up. You're actually becoming less self-issue, your focus is less on the self. And just remembering that all people are imperfect. All people suffer. It's not just me. And that's where some of the feelings of connectedness come. So connectedness and kindness and mindfulness, those three components, at least the way I think about it, make up the experience of compassion. I want to get back to literally how we do this because... Yeah, because that's where I that's what I've been spending the last 10 years doing. Yeah, and I can't imagine myself giving myself a hug. So, but before we go there, I just want to get back to the, because I said earlier

that there was a second paradox, and you just touched on it, which is in mindfulness meditation, especially in the Buddhist tradition, one of the goals they hold out, which is very confusing for people, is that you will ultimately see through the illusion of the self. Absolutely. And yet, here you are talking about self-. Yes, yeah, that's right. And so it's confusing. So for instance, I was talking to one Buddhist teacher, he said, you didn't even bat her nine. Oh, you just mean inner compassion. If you think of it as inwardly directed compassion is supposed to just outwardly directed compassion. And of course, compassion is unidirectional inside and outside that it makes sense.

The word self is like a heuristic, but you don't need an actual sense of separate self to give yourself inner compassion. Does anybody outside of academia use the word heuristic? I mean I love the word, it's great. I don't probably not. Basically it's an intellectual concept. It's yeah, it's a useful. I think of it as useful. It's a useful tool. We don't have to take it very seriously. I just want to congratulate you. I think being the first person on nearly 200 episodes to use the word he risked there. No, it's great. I'm not even teasing you. I think it's awesome.

Anyway, yeah, there are a lot of paradoxes. But, know, so going back to it, and I'm really glad you're bringing this up because in a way one of the big blocks, especially for men, to practicing self-compassion, and which is a shame because we know for their research, it's one of the most powerful sources of strength, coping and resilience we have available to us. One of the blocks, especially for men, is it goes against gender roles. It seems too feminine. It seems weak. It seems flowery, right? Or like just uncomfortable uncomfortable. Yeah, because men especially are socialized against expressing this this type of warmth and tenderness

Even outwardly even outwardly. Yeah, and even outwardly, but especially when you add the word self I mean, isn't self-alongance magazine for goodness sake, right? I don't know that I thought that, but I mean, I have a four-year-old, just the first time, my first in all, I were a first and only child. I'm really tender with him, although I also like roughhouse with him and, you know, by his fat thighs and all that stuff. But that's the first time my life, other than maybe with cats

or some of their dogs that I've been really tender and probably with cats and dogs when nobody's looking. Right. So the idea of the proposition that you have already articulated here that I should say these super warm things that I would never, I've never probably, other than to my son, set out loud, or to hug myself, it's just hard, it's uncomfortable. Yeah, I'd buy it, but it's uncomfortable. Yeah, it is.

And you don't have, and again, you find ways of doing it that are more comfortable for instance So the UT Working a University of Texas at Austin and so the longhorn men's basketball team As we can come in and give the guys a training Great because I didn't use the word self-compassion once because it's triggering. There's no does no read the word It's nothing special about the word. I talked about inner resilience and inner strength training. So basically, when you're out there, when you're playing, what mental voice do you want in your head?

Do you want to coach? You're stuck. You can't do it. You should be ashamed of yourself. I can't believe you messed that shot. Or do you want to coach that saying, hey, it's okay. This is maybe what went wrong. We can do this.

I'm here. I'm supportive. I'm kind of an encouraging, supportive kind voice. It doesn't have to take a particular form. The form, the kindness takes, depends on what you need. And maybe what you need is not a hug, maybe that's not going to be helpful for you. But maybe you need, you know, just kind of a little encouragement or a little understanding or just a little sense of acceptance.

And so people find their own way into self-compassion. That the goal is just to be a supportive, kind, encouraging, helpful, beneficial, friendly presence. And so if the word friendliness works for you, that works for me. So for instance, in our training program for teens, we call it making friends with yourself. And so you could absolutely use that metaphor,

and you could think, what would you say to a friend? So the types of things, let's say you had a friend, maybe one of your buddies come to you and say, Dan, I'm so upset, this is happening, or I got a cancer diagnosis, or something like that. What types of things would you say to support your friend? Because that's the language that probably works for you,

then you can try to use that type of language with yourself. The language itself is not important. What's important is this feeling of support, encouragement, and kindness. What if I don't like myself? is this feeling of support, encouragement, and kindness? What if I don't like myself? Right, so in a way, this is what self-compassion is exactly designed to address.

I mean, it's helpful for everyone. But many people internalize these ideas that I'm not good enough, I'm flawed, or maybe were rejected by your parents. So first of all, the first thing self compassion does is tune into the pain of that. You know, wow, that's kind of, that's hard, right? If you don't like yourself. And it's not about saying, it's not self esteem. Self esteem is, I judge myself positively or I judge myself negatively.

Oh, compared to other people. And also compared to other people. And self-esteem is really contingent. It's dependent on success. If you don't succeed, your self-esteem deserts you. It's a fair-weather friend. So self-compassion, this kind of more unconditionally friendly attitude, just says, hey, everyone's

imperfect. That's part of the human experience. One thing we like to say is the goal of practice is simply to become a compassionate mess. You still a mess. You know, you do what you can, but you're a human. So by definition, you're going to be a mess. But can you hold that mess with kindness, with friendliness?

Because if you don't, if you take, it's kind of, again, another paradox. If you take that your imperfection or messiness personally, if you identify with it as who you are, then you aren't seeing the whole picture. Because as, you know, when you really start getting into practice, the reality of who we are is so much bigger than this particular moment in time.

And, you know, we identify this experience into a sense of solid self. When reality, this is just what's unfolding. So you might say, we hold this unfolding mess with great compassion and kindness and friendliness. The warmth is important. And again, just going back to the physiology, we are mammals, right? And we've got, especially human mammals, we, our humans are born the most immature. It takes 25 to 27 years for the prefrontal cortex to fully mature.

And I like to take cases taken nearly for it. Yeah, and I like to make it take another five years for the kids to actually leave home. You know, and the reason that's because the human brain is so plastic and able to change and evolve, that's why we're such slow developers. But physiologically we needed a system in place that would prompt the infant or the child to be safe by being taken care of by parents or people who elders who take care of them. And that would also prompt the parents to take care of the child. So we have a very evolved care system as part of our physiology.

And so we know again from the sciences when you're kind to yourself, when you're friendly towards yourself, touch is one way to do it, but other ways to do it as well. You actually lower the cortisol levels, you reduce the sympathetic nervous reactivity, and you actually activate things like heart rate variability. Probably oxytocin, the dots haven't been totally connected, so but most likely you're increasing oxytocin, you're actually activating this physiological system, this design to make us feel safe.

The problem with not liking yourself is it's very threatening and you feel isolated. And so remembering that hey everyone's imperfect, you know, it's okay to make mistakes. Can I learn from it? What we find is that friendly supportive attitude, it has all sorts of benefits, it increases motivation, it allows you to cope. So just for an example, there was one study done of soldiers who had come back from Iraq and Afghanistan and actually seen action overseas. And they found that how soldiers treated themselves, how compassionate they were to themselves around the real trauma they had experienced was a very powerful predictor of whether or not they developed PTSD and

I'm once later post-traumatic stress disorder. And in fact, it was more powerful than how much action they had seen. So more important than what you experience in life is how you relate to yourself in the midst of that experience when it's really traumatic or difficult. And so, you know, when people say self-compassion is a weakness, not for these soldiers, you know, and if you think, again, to use the metaphor, if you think of life as a battle in some way, it's challenging. It's really hard to be a human being. It always has been.

But you might say even especially now, when you go into these challenges or when you go into battle, who do you want inside your head? Do you want an ally who's saying, I'm on your side, I'm here to support you, do you want to be a friend, that kind of that warmth, that care, that I'm going to do what I can to try to meet your needs as best I can? Do you want that voice inside your head? Or do you want a voice that shames you and say, it says, you're not good enough and you're not good as a good as a other person, you know, kind of a very de fetist voice.

And strong self criticism, people think it makes them stronger. It actually doesn't. You're actually pulling out the rug from underneath yourself. Again, that doesn't mean it's like, Stuart Smiley, I'm great, I'm wonderful. Yeah, what you're saying is, I acknowledge I'm a flawed human being. Everyone is a flawed human being. I'm going to try to be as friendly and supportive as I can.

I'm going to try to learn from my mistakes. It's supposed to take my mistakes personally. What can to learn from my mistakes. As opposed to taking my mistakes personally, what can I learn from this? And that kind of attitude of learning and growth actually is a very powerful way to actually succeed and be more motivated. So it makes you more strong, not weaker. It makes you more motivated, not less.

It actually allows you to feel more connected, not more isolated, right?. It actually allows you to feel more connected, not more isolated. A lot of people have misconceptions about self-compassion that it's at least a self-pity or self-indulgence. They're all completely the opposite. So the entire practice in a weird way is paradoxical. I just was taking some notes here because I realized there were about six things I need to follow up on.

Could that sign of a good guess, by the way, so I don't say that to criticize. I know I've been promising the listener that will dive into the nitty-gritty of how to actually do this thing, but you've raised a couple of things that I do think we need to chase down. You talked about Stuart Smalley. Yes. That is a character from Centering at Live, played by the now, I guess, former Senator resigned under a cloud.

Al Franken from Minnesota, back in his acting, comedian days, he was on SNL and he played a character named Stuart Smalley would look in the mirror and say something like, I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and dog-gun it, people like me. Yes. So that is not what you're talking about. That's right. Yeah, it's not positive thinking. It's actually, it's not about judgments or evaluations at all.

It's just, I'm a human being. I'm flawed. I'm imperfect. I'm trying to learn and grow. I'm doing the best I can. And it's really about a supportive, friendly attitude toward oneself. And that support is a tremendous source

of strength coping and resilience. And it's one that, you know, it's really kind of, it makes me a bit sad that in our society, we don't utilize this strength. You know, we don't realize that we can actually give ourselves a lot of the support we need, not completely. We are automatons, but we're so reliant on other people to meet our needs, to make us feel love, to make us feel supported, to make us feel okay.

And they've got their own stuff going on. They can't always be there for ourselves. Some people like to describe self-compassion as a way of re-parenting yourself. So the ideal parents, you know, met your needs consistently, they were warm, they were accepting, they also helped guide you and pointed out where you made mistakes to help you learn and grow and you know become the person hopefully that would be the ideal person we all want to be. But of course, no one has perfect parents. People who have more

supportive, warm, kind caring parents, they do tend to have more natural self-compassion, they internalize that. And people whose parents weren't warm and supportive, you know, they have insecure attachment. It's a little harder. Naturally, you're less self-compassionate. The beautiful thing about this, is you can learn it as a skill. This is not just a naturally occurring personality trait. I mean, it is, but it's also a practice. You can actually do this. You can actually cultivate the ability to be kinder and more supportive to yourself, especially

when you're struggling. I mean, that's a really exciting thing about self-compassion is there's a lot of research shows that shows this is actually a trainable skill. It's interesting to talk about the role of your parents. I had and have very warm and supportive parents, and yet I have a very nasty inter-narrater, maybe because I descended from a long line of depressives and anxious people and alcoholics etc. Yeah, yeah. And one of the stories I told myself for a long time before getting into meditation was

my father has an expression which is the price of security is insecurity. In other words, we venerate worrying, especially in the Jewish side of my family. And actually that's not his personal motto. I learned later he made that up to make me feel better about the fact that I was worrying all the time. Okay. And I told myself that any success I was experiencing here in the hallways of ABC News where I've been for 19 years now

and has traditionally been a very tough place, less so now, but was very, very tough when I first got here. Was because I was worrying all the time and had very high standards, et cetera, et cetera. And I think a lot of people tell this story. Now you address this a little bit, but I want you to, I just wanna go back to it.

This internal cattle prod that many of us have. Yes. How do you, what do you say to folks, and I'm sure you hear the argument all the time? Like this is the thing that's keeping me afloat Right, and and you know There's a way in which it is true, right? So for instance if you have a very I like to use this example. Let's say a parent is trying to motivate their child and so in some ways

We are we are our own parent and our own child right self-disulfiating So there's two ways to motivate a child to do better. So let's say the child comes home with a family math grade and the parent, tries once the child to go to college, so you can motivate that child with fear. You can be really harsh. I'm ashamed of you. You're good for nothing, loser. You know, I'm going to ground you for ten months.

That will kind of work. The child will probably work harder and study more next time because they're afraid of getting that negative reaction. So it kind of works, but there are a lot of unintended consequences. For instance, a performance anxiety. They may be so anxious the next time they take the test, it's actually going to undermine their ability to do peak performance, fear of failure. You know, it just, you might develop so much fear that you're going to fail and get, you

know, your parents criticism and, you know, grounding or whatever punishment that you get fear of failure, and then eventually you might give up. So there's another way to motivate that child, and that's with encouragement and support. First of all, hey, I'm so sorry, you failed. Ouch, bummer, you know, kind of, it's okay. I love you anyway. It doesn't affect my love for you. The bottom line is, it's okay, you're human, you fail.

But because I care about you, and I know you wanna go to college, what can I do to help you? How can I support you? Can we look and see your study patterns? Maybe this didn't work out so well. Should we hire her in a tutor? I believe in you. How can I support you? Can we look and see your study patterns? Maybe this didn't work out so well. Should we hire an tutor? You know, I believe in you. How can I support you to reach your goals? So the goals of self-compassionate people are just as high as everyone else's, because of course you care about yourself, you want to reach your goals. But what happens

when you don't meet them? That's the big difference. So, yes, fear, punishment, and kind of in a way this intercritic is kind of harsh self-punishment. It kind of works, but then it might lead to anxiety, neuroticism, depression, you know, look at the epidemic of suicide, and it has a lot of negative consequences. You can reach the same heights from this kind of encouraging supportive approach. And also, you know, what we show with the research shows is when you feel safe because of this kind of bottom line, even if I fail, it's going to be okay. What we know is, you probably know this negative emotions narrow our focus and positive emotions brought in our focus. So when you feel safe and you've

got the positive emotion of kindness and we know that compassion actually is rewarding emotion, it actually allows you to see more possibilities. Maybe you didn't, you know, when you are self-threat focused, you didn't see this opportunity, but when you feel safe, oh I see, maybe there's a completely different way to approach it. I didn't even think about. So it allows for more what they call and you know acceptance and commitment therapy. It allows for more psychological flexibility Which of course is going to make you safer, but it's going to make you safer and it's going to help you you know so so actually You know, we used to believe that the best way to motivate our children was through harsh corporal corporal punishment, spare the rod, spoil the child. And we know well now, through a lot of research, that actually that's not the best way to motivate our children.

It works, but it causes so much damage as other ways to motivate our children. This doesn't mean you're complacent. It doesn't mean you do whatever you want. That's not healthy. But how do we learn? How do we grow? How do we recover from our mistakes, and do better next time, all in the context of the bottom line is I love you, you know.

We can actually learn to do that with ourselves. It does feel weird at first. I'm not going to lie, if you spent your whole life relating to yourself in a particular way, you know, kind of with this harshness, it feels a little strange to be more friendly towards yourself. But you can practice it and it does get easier with time. And I really encourage people to find their own authentic voice. Again, for you, Dan, I'm not going to suggest you hug yourself. It's not going to work.

But there may be, you know, some other ways. What works for you? What helps you feel more accepted, you know some other ways what works for you what helps you feel more Accepted you know more encouraged more cared for and using those pathways in Oh, it's gonna tell a story that I I don't know if I've told this in the podcast before so if you've heard this before I apologize, but I About 10 11 months ago No, maybe nine months ago, I can't write. Anyway, not that long ago, did a retreat as part of this book

that I'm writing about, kindness. I did a one on, I convinced one of my favorite meditation teachers who has a real focus on compassion and self-compassion. Her name is Spring Washam. Oh, yeah, yeah, she's a great person. She's a phenomenal human being and has been on the show a couple times and she and I did a one-on-one compassion retreat. She's a phenomenal human being and has been on the show a couple times. She and I did a one-on-one compassion retreat.

This was not just self-compassion, but compassion writ large. Obviously self-compassion is a huge focus. I had never done self-compassion practices before, and compassion practices before, but it was a little bit of like a side interest not the main dish. And so for 10 days, we did nothing with that and actually filmed a lot of it

because we're gonna use it in the 10% happier app. Anyway, at the beginning, she was saying, you know, when you're sending compassion to yourself, you know, maybe you put your hand on your heart and I was like, there is no, I love this ring, but there's no way I'm doing that. And then by day five or six, there was a moment, and I'm embarrassed to say it was on camera probably because I think it happened repeatedly, where I was, I noticed something coming up, maybe some of my inner repeated hobgoblins are sort of a rushing sense, you know, in patients, and a suffering that comes from like not wanting to be here right now

and looking forward to the next thing. And then also a lot of self-criticism, like, oh, wow, you were just off your game for the last 10 minutes, or you have some memory surfaces of me being horrible in some one way. And I actually did say, all right, it's okay. And put my hand, I felt my hand go to my heart. And when I noticed this, actually, there, once I was, once all the inner chatter had come down, because I was on retreat and I didn't have a lot to think about.

And I was more aware of what was going on. When I felt bad, it actually manifested in the area around my heart. So it actually hurt. There. So anyway, yeah, you're right. I'm not the kind of guy traditionally who would hug himself. And yet here I was on this retreat

with my hand on my heart, sending myself well wishes. And I would, I would, you know, I'm reluctant to admit that publicly, but here we are, right? I do admit it publicly because I think actually, it will be useful for other men who would resist this type of thing. Right.

The difference between loving kindness and compassion, you know, there are two sides of the same coin, but loving kindness is more general, wishing yourself well to be happy and peaceful. Compassion is specifically, by definition, aimed at suffering, aimed at pain. So one practice we teach, which is actually very useful, is if you're feeling something difficult, maybe anger or fear or sadness or grief or confusion, to the extent that you can locate it in your body, and that's one of the gifts of mindfulness practice, is the ability to actually physically see that great new study by Richie Davidson that found that the ability to

actually know where the emotion is manifested in your body. So this congruence between knowing what you're feeling and where it is in your body, that that engine of itself leads to well-being. It's called inter-reception. Well inter-reception is actually the ability to feel things in your body, but the ability to feel your difficult emotions as a bodily sensation and track. When I'm more anxious, my body feels this way. When I, you know, just track the changes in your body as kind of attuned with your body

as a manifestation of your emotions, it's actually, it's a really useful skill. But anyway, so if you have... I think it's really insane that for me as a meditator, that happened quickly. Yes. That I just, instead of being fully engulfed and overwhelmed by an emotion for me, mostly anger or self-reli, I was switching to noticing how it felt.

Right. Okay. And so what you can do if you can just put a hand wherever that emotion is experienced. It might be in your gut, it might be in your throat, it might be in your head, it may be in your heart, it almost doesn't matter. And then so what happens is when you put a warm hand here, again part of this is just physiology.

You know, just think about it. When babies are born, they have no language. Touch for human beings is great research on touch in the care system. Touch is one of the primary access points for compassion, for feeling safe, for feeling cared for. Our whole parasympathetic nervous system is very closely linked to touch. And so, you know, it's sad because yes, it is touchy-feely, but none the left. Literally.

But as human beings, that's the way we're designed physiologically. So there are other ways to access it, but it seems ashamed to miss out on that really powerful tool just because it feels uncomfortable because as human beings, that's the way our bodies and our brains are designed. We're designed to react to touch. And also tone of voice. I was just gonna say, this is why I think you're,

to hold that thought, but I wouldn't give you a compliment. This is why I think you're such a successful communicator on this, because you do have a style that is a little touchy-feely, but you back it up with so many basic biological and scientific facts that even somebody like me who has such a powerful allergy to that kind of style, I have to listen.

Well, thank you. Well, I think in some ways that's the integration of the masculine and feminine, right? So sadly, why do we not like touchy-feely because it's kind of seen to be feminine qualities and science and hard logic is supposed to be a masculine quality and, you know, to succeed we're supposed to be masculine and I'm both, you know, and that's, you know, both simultaneously that's kind of we all are right. We all are. But here's the thing, is men are socialized. They aren't allowed to be in touch with the more warm, you know, I said earlier, I'm kind of referring to this as the in and young of self-compassion.

There's the receptive tender side, and there's also the action-oriented, kind of, more fierce side. And both are necessary for all human beings. I really work hard to integrate both, to honor both. But in work context, the young, the kind of masculine is honored and valued, and the more feminine isn't. And that's a real disadvantage to women. But the way men suffer is because in the relational field,

they're socialized not to be in touch with those more tender size. And that hurts men too. You know, and so we're all being harmed by not being able to be our true authentic cells, which is both masculine and feminine, both active and passive, both receptive and goal-oriented. These essential dialectic, we need both simultaneously all the time. And I think maybe that's what you're picking up on when saying, I'm a touchy-fili scientist.

You know, I'm integrating my left and right brain, and both are really important, I feel. Seven A. Celacii, who's a teacher, I was a friend, and a teacher I really like. She also teaches a lot on the 10% happier app. And so she has mentioned something like, you think you're thinking your thoughts, this is a quote she's used taking from somebody else,

but you think you're thinking your thoughts, but you're actually thinking the culture's thoughts. That's right. And so for me, I mean, I don't wanna think of myself as sexist because obviously that's one of the worst things you can be in our world society right now. And yet, obviously this allergy I have to the touchy-feely is sexist in many ways, and that we are socialized to be that way.

Because the feminine has less power, that's one of the outcomes of patriarchy. Is this side of human nature, when it's devalued by patriarchy, it means that, so not you, Dan, is person, but in terms of the larger cultural context, which is operated in you unconsciously. You know, you're choosing to be this way. But when you think touchy-feely, what it's triggering is less powerful. If I'm touchy-feely, I'm less powerful because I'm moving more toward the feminine where there's less power. And that's, that's damaging to men.

Yeah, well, I guess consciously, I'm not thinking that consciously. I know you're just annoying. You aren't consciously doing this. So you ask what we know about it and biases are all implicit, they're all unconscious, whether it's about race or gender. These things are operating outside of our awareness. And one of the beautiful things about mindfulness is that it does give us more clarity.

I mean, we've talked a lot about it a lot on this show, and I know it's sort of a little bit off topic for what you've come here to discuss, but bringing into the sunlight, which is a painful process embarrassing, humiliating, and see, oh wow, wow, I just reached this snap judgment about somebody based on their pigmentation, that's pretty negative.

Yeah. And that's in you if you can see that, and as you said before, not take it personally, then you're not owned by it, and then you're avoiding a whole many, many worst mistakes. Yes, exactly, but that's why you also need to see that this is, again, this is at the end and the young. The young kind of gives us the clarity and it's kind of the slightly more masculine energy, but you also have to be kind to yourself. You didn't choose to be prejudiced. It's not like I signed up for a, yo, I want to be prejudiced, you know.

This is part of the larger culture and so you have to be able to hold the pain. And so these two, this dialectic of self-compassion, so the in energy allows us to kind of be with ourselves in a compassionate way to kind of validate ourselves, to accept ourselves as we are. It's very powerful. It's especially powerful for dealing with shame. How do you hold shame? Shame drives so much negative behavior, so much destructive behavior. People can't even begin to touch their shame so they act out, they start shooting people. I mean, it's really destructive. And actually, you know, there's a little bit of gender and shame as well because it manifests differently, but a lot of men's behavior,

what we know psychologically is driven by the avoidance of shame, right? How do you hold shame that intense pain? You have to hold it with kindness. You know, hey, this is part of being human. Everyone feels this. Everyone's imperfect. Everyone makes mistakes. You know, the mess of shame, we need to hold it with compassion. And so the healing power of self-compassion is more part of it. You know, it's not totally either orbit. It's part more part of the inside, the kind of being with ourselves and a kind, accepting, warm way, loving way. If I can use that word as a scientist, but it is, it's an expression of love. But then there's also the action side.

Think of a firefighter who jumps into a burning building to save people who are about to go up in flames or service men and women who actually risks their own lives to protect people, that is an ultimate act of compassion. But it's the other side of it, it's taking action. Or a coach who motivates the kid to achieve their goals or teachers or people who work three jobs to put food on their table for their kids, all these stem from care. But sometimes care requires being with acceptance. Sometimes care requires taking action to try to alleviate suffering.

And that's slightly more the young side of self-compassion. But people, first of all, that confuse, they don't realize it's there, and that's why they think it's weak, that's why they think it's selfish, They don't realize that it also has these action qualities. And then that's where gender comes in. All right. So a man aren't allowed to be in and women aren't allowed to be young. We all need both. So we're kind of both messed up because of it. You know. And so self-compassion is a way to hold all of it. You can hold the pain of things like patriarchy. I'm not sure you don't want to be patriarchal, but you're a white man. And so some of the, you know, can you didn't choose to be this way,

but this is part of the larger culture that's actually encoded in your brain patterns. Right. So how do you deal with that? Well, first of all, you have to have a lot of kindness. You have to have a lot of forgiveness. in your brain patterns. So how do you deal with that? Well, first of all, you have to have a lot of kindness, you have to have a lot of forgiveness, you have to have a lot of acceptance, and you have to be able to touch the pain of it. And I'm sure that my colleague, Chris Germer,

we were talking about this issue, and he just, it's a white male, he broke down and cried because he touched the pain of that. He's such a kind guy. And when he really opened to the pain of his own privilege, you know, it was just, yeah, it was really touching. But because he developed all these self-compassion practices with me, he was able to hold it.

So he didn't have to defend himself. He didn't have to pretend, oh, it's not there. It's not, I'm not privileged. You know, he could open to it. And you have to open to the pain, the yen, hold it with kindness before you can take action, which is the yang and do something about it. And both are really needed. And the flip side is for women, and I'm a woman. So my next book is actually going to be called, Self-compassion for women. I think women really need to cultivate this Yang energy. We need to protect ourselves. We need to say, no more. We're going to stop

subordinating our needs. No, you can't sexually harass me. No, you can't abuse me. No, you can't pay me less. No, you know, it has to be more equal. I'm not just going to like give up everything that's valuable to me, to meet other people's needs, that socialization. You know, you may call me names, but I'm not going to buy it. You know, women really need to rise up and claim their power, which has been stripped for them in large part because they aren't allowed to have this more yang energy, you know. And so everyone really needs both. And I think the beautiful thing about compassion is it is both. There's mama and there's mama

bear. On this yang or yang or whatever yang, let's go with Yang, a version to sort of fierce self-compassion. I think of my wife, I'll have to ask her permission because it's personal. I watch with her dealing, I don't think we've referred to it as struggling with the Yang side of self-compassion, but I do watch her struggle with how to draw boundaries with me, with our son, with her bosses.

And she's really uncomfortable with it. And then sometimes maybe she feels she takes it too far and is overly harsh and like, high-training that is really tricky. And I have compassion for that. Yeah. And so, you know, I'm similar. So I'm a successful academic. And usually in many, any male dominated feel to be successful, you've got to really draw on your young site, you know, you're kind of more masculine and competitive, strong

side. We get called names for it. This is, double-bind woman or end to succeed. We have to be young, but we aren't personally liked when we're young. People like us when we're young, but we can't succeed. And so that's why I just do it with the double-bind. I don't care. I'm going to do it anyway. But see, this is the thing. If you use that energy, the drawing boundaries, or the protecting yourself, or saying, no,

I need to do my needs, if you do it from a place of care, we further do it. It's caring force. You're being forceful, but it's not aggressive, it's not personal. You aren't blaming people. You're just the force that mom of energy comes from a very pure loving place of care and kindness. And when you remember that, when you integrate both energies, then it's clean, then you don't just explode.

You can target it and say, no, that's not okay, but it just means that you aren't okay, but no, that behavior is not okay. And so when integration is allowed to occur, it just works a lot better. It's also a lot more effective. But we're going to have to confront gender roles in order for both man and woman to be able to be our full authentic selves because there's so much pain in the world. Coming up, Kristin Neff talks about compassion as something you feel in your body, the formal

and informal ways of practicing self-compassion and how to take a self-compassion break. I cut you off and sent us down to a tangent. You were about to say something about tone of voice. Oh yes, all right. So you've probably interviewed Dr. Keltner from UC Berkeley. He's doing some great research on this, showing that basically the triggers of the care system, the triggers of compassion. There are different ones, like so touch we talked about, touch as a powerful trigger, but tone of voice. So his research shows that around the world universally,

regardless of what culture you go to, there's the same sound of compassion, which is, I'm going to ask you to do it down. What the same sound of compassion, which is, I'm going to ask you to do it down. What's the sound of compassion? So, if I'm talking to my son and he's heard himself. Yeah. Or, yeah, if anyone, if anyone was heard, what would you naturally say? Are you okay, dude? No, what's the sound without words? Make a sound, a sound. Yes.

Yeah. There's not a single culture where it's like, woohoo! You hurt! So there's a particular sound and there's some term for it that, that kind of up and down and animals do it too. It's actually, again, this is part of our physiology. Remember, when we come out of the womb, we don't have language. So those first couple years of life are so important. This is where our whole attachment system is formed preverbally. So what are our communicators that we're saying from we're loved and cared for, things like touch

and tone of voice. Also gaze is another one. I mean, there's a little less research on gaze, but tone of voice. So for some people, maybe they don't say particularly harsh things to themself, but their tone is really cold. So warming up the tone, you know, internally. Internally. Internally. You can actually, it's not just what you say, it's how you say it.

It's also your body posture. Is your body posture tense? Like are you being tense and tight with yourself and kind of cold? Or you'd be more relaxed and more tight with yourself and kind of cold, or you being more relaxed and more warm with yourself. And that's why I made the joke earlier that it's about warming things up as opposed to cooling, to be more cool, because there is something about warmth, you know. And again, this is just our physiology. You know, it's not a mental practice. Compassion is not a mental practice.

There is a mental component, but it's really an embodied practice. It's about feeling. Often when we teach people self-compassion, we say, see if you can just drop out of your head and your mind in the storyline and just drop into your body. What we're doing in a way is, if you want to be scientific about it, it's the parasympathetic nervous system. We're calming down our cortisol is reducing, you know, the less adrenaline, our heart rate becomes more variable, more flexible, oxytocin is being released, and this is actually an embodied experience.

And so that's why I think it's really useful to come to self-combation, not just to the mind. Yes, the words are important. There's one pathway in. You can actually approach it as an embodied practice. So we've now teed me up to finally get to how to do a practice. So it seems I'm guessing, based on I'm not guessing. Based on my experience, there are kind of two ways. One is the formals seated or practice, and the other is free range on the go practice. In formal, yeah, yeah.

And so what we find actually in our research, so we've developed this training program called the Mindful Self Compassion Program, and we find it doesn't matter which one you do. They're equivalent, they're both effective. So you can sit in meditation. We know that loving kindness, meditation, increases self-compassion. We have other meditations like using the breath as a way to kind of calm and soothing yourself.

Or we actually teach a practice where we tailor the phrases to be a little more aimed at your pain. Because loving kindness, sometimes it can be hard to throw friendly wishes when you're just in a lot of pain. You can actually, with compassion, you need to turn toward the pain directly and just kind of validate that it hurts, that kind of kind of, that type of attitude of the pain. So you can do that in city meditation, but there are a lot of informal practices. So we do teach people to find a touch that feels supportive. Hand on heart works are about 50% of people, about 50% it doesn't.

Some people that hands on the solar plexus, some people like putting a hand on your face, some people just holding their own hand. I mean, people have to find a way in the type of touch that works. That's one way. Learning to speak to yourself in a more friendly and supportive manner. For many people, the best way is to think about what would I say to a close friend who I really cared about? Who was going through the exact same situation I'm in? You know, what would I more naturally say, especially if I was at my most compassionate?

What would I say to support them, to help them, to let them know that I cared about them in their time of struggle. So you can use that as a template for yourself. You can also imagine what an ideally compassionate person would say to you or spiritual figure. If people say, what would Jesus say? In a way, what would Jesus say is a self-compassion practice. Can I model my inner dialogue based on what I would imagine someone like Jesus would say? So it can work with religion, it can also be separate from it. Compassionate letter writing, you'll probably like this.

There was one study that showed if you wrote a self-compassionate letter for seven days straight, it reduced depression for three months and increased happiness for six months, right? That very simple act. And I think there's a lot of reasons of how it operates. One thing you're perspective taking, instead of being lost in the pain, you're stepping outside of yourself and doing perspective taking and saying, wow, you're really having a hard time. Is there anything I can do to help? So by doing that, you're just identifying with the pain, which in and of itself is powerful, that's kind of the mindfulness. But then you're also adding the sense of connectedness.

Hey, it happens to everyone. Imperfection is the human experience. It's not just you. You know, and we forget that when we make a mistake or we get that call from the doctor, we think, something has gone wrong. call from the doctor, we think something has gone wrong. This is the plan I signed up for. Everyone else is being perfect.

It has a perfect life and it's just me who's struggling. So reminding yourself of common humanity that this is normal and this is part of being human, you aren't alone. And then the kindness, the warmth, the kindness, the care aspect. All three elements are really important. So another way you can practice self-compassion is just reminding yourself of those three components. We have something called the self-compassion break. First, you use mindfulness.

You just remember, wow, this is, I'm struggling. You might think that's obvious. It's really not. A lot of people aren't even aware that they're struggling. They're so lost in the struggle or trying to fix the struggle, or they don't have any perspective. They're totally identified with it. They can't help themselves when they're lost in the pain.

So first is mindfulness. Oh, I see. This is a moment where I'm really having a tough time. And then you remind yourself of common humanity. Well, this is part of life. It's not just me. It's not abnormal to be struggling. The sense of isolation that we get when we fall into the illusion that everyone else is perfect and we aren't, it's debilitating. They say, evolutionary

biology, alone monkey is a dead monkey. So that feeling isolated because we've made a mistake, it's really, really detrimental. So remember, hey? So the feeling isolated because we've made a mistake, it's really, really detrimental. So remember, hey, this is part of how we learn. This is normal. It's natural. There's nothing wrong to make a mistake. And then bringing in the kindness, you know, what can I say to let myself know that even though I'm struggling, I care, I'm there for myself, I can support myself, I'm not gonna abandon myself. I mean, think about that. Don't we do that?

We abandon ourselves. We're struggling. We just, our minds don't even go there. We have this ability when we're in pain to actually give ourselves care, support, and kindness. And we just abandon it. We don't even use it. We just, we, support, and kindness, and we just abandon it. We don't even use it. We've got this incredible, powerful tool. All we need to do is remember to use it.

And we don't. And so you can just think, well, what am I really good friends, say to me right now, or what would I say to a really good friend right now? Or what would Jesus say, whatever image you have of compassion? Just remembering the kindness, when you put those three together. So these are the three components of self-compassion in my model, the mindfulness, the common humanity, and the kindness.

But if you wanna talk about how it feels in a moment to vian self-compassion, it feels like loving connected presence. You're holding your pain in loving connected presence. But sometimes, the pain is because you need to protect yourself. It's different. It feels like fierce and powered clarity. This is not okay. I'm going to stand together with my brothers and sisters, and I'm going to say no. Me too. Me too.

Me too, exactly. And so the face, the manifestation of this caring force may vary, but it's all coming from the same place. And mindfulness and compassion are kind of, they aren't exactly the same because again they have the slightly different targets, but it's part of the same dance. At some point, it's just open heart-mind. And when your heart is open and your mind is open, you are connected with everything.

Coming up, Kristen talks about how to do self-compassion as part of your meditation practice, using the breath to activate compassion and how her self-compassion practice has helped her in her own life. What is your most important experience? You talked about a lot of approaches we could take, but I'm just wondering for the listener here,

many of whom are med- if not all of whom are meditators, can you describe how we would do self-compassion as part of our meditations? Yes, right. Which I would only imagine fuels the ability to do it off the surface. We know meditation is one of the best ways you can actually train your brain and change your normal structure. So it's very powerful.

It's not the only way to do it. It's equally important to integrate it in your daily life But so if you're meditating So for instance we teach meditation in the mindful self-compassion program Some is like what you do when your mind wanders You can use the wand or your mind as the opportunity for self-compassion So not only do you notice that your mind is wandered, you might actually use that to say, ah, you know, just like imagine like your mind is like a little toddler who wandered

off, can you just hold the hand of that toddler, gently bring it back to where it's supposed to be. Of course, it wanders, you know, that's what it does, but I can still be kind to the wandering mind. You can actually use any sort of frustration that occurs in practice. Let's say you fall asleep, you can't focus, you know, whatever you aren't in that lovely peaceful state that people like. You can use that as an opportunity to practice compassion. Give yourself some kindness and acceptance and remember that this is just part of the human experience. So that's one way you can do it. You can also, for instance, the breath,

the breath can be used to kind of calm the mind and settle the mind as a focus of attention. But there's also quality to the breath that you can focus in on. The breath itself can be very soothing, very comforting. Paul Gilbert actually talks about the soothing rhythm of the breath. You know, you can actually notice it, it's a strange way in which it's this internal rocking motion that you can rest in. You can lie yourself to be cared for by the breath. So that's another just little slant on it. You can use to activate this. Another practice, my favorite practice, is again using the breath, we imagine that we're breathing with each in-breath, you're breathing in compassion for yourself, and with each out-breath, you breathe out compassion for others.

It's a derivation of the Tibetan tongue-clam. That practice is a little more, it's a beautiful practice, but you breathe in suffering of the Tibetan tongue. But that practice is a little more. It's a beautiful practice, but you breathe in suffering of the world, and you transform it, and you breathe out compassion. So if your aim is to actually cultivate self-compassion, we find it's actually

a little more useful, a little less challenging. Just breathe in for yourself. This is hard for me, breathe out for others. This is a really good practice for caregivers. We teach doctors and nurses or teachers. You know, it's hard. These jobs are hard. It's hard to care for others. I feel burnt out. I feel overwhelmed. Breathing compassion for yourself. It's hard to feel this empathic distress. It's hard to do what I do. I feel overwhelmed. I feel burnt out. Breathing compassion for yourself, validate your own pain. And then when you breathe out, breathe out compassion

for the person you're caring for, they're struggling too. And the nice thing about breathing compassion in and out is it's very connecting. It's a practice that's very connecting. Good breath in, breath out. You can focus a little more on yourself if your pain is more salient or focus more on the other if their pain is more salient. But this idea that it's this flow inward and outward, that's why it's a really nice practice. All these meditations I have on my website, people can access them. What's the website? Aselfcompassion.org. If you Google Self-compassion, you'll find me. Nice. We'll also put it in the show. What about the repetition of phrases? Like, may I be happy?

Yeah. So loving kindness, we do teach loving kindness. So again, my colleague, Chris Grimmer, I think he's brilliant. He developed a way of helping people find personally meaningful phrases that really help the things that they need to hear. The standard phrases are fine and they work for a lot of people but you know, may be safe, may be peaceful, maybe healthy, may live with these. If you're devastated because you've just lost your son or something like that, it feels kind of a little incongruent, say,

may be safe, may be happy, may be peaceful, may live safe, maybe happy, maybe peaceful, maybe with these. So actually, you guys, people through an exercise where you actually think, what do I need to hear right now? If I had someone who could whisper in my ear in this moment exactly what I need to hear, what would that be? Then you use that as your phrase. So it's a little more personalized. It also can be a little more targeted toward what you need to hear is dressing the real pain you're in. Then

you can, you know, you may accept myself as I am, you know, may support myself, you know, I'm okay. Whatever it is you need to hear, you actually personalize your phrases to touch that directly. So that's one way we kind of work with the loving kindness practice. How has this practice played? I mean, you got interested in self-compassion through something that Zen teacher and Berkeley low these many years

said about self-compassion that turned you on and has become your livelihood, your career. How has it played out in your life? You know, you mentioned a son, you have a son who has different needs. How has this all worked for you? Yeah, well, yeah, so I talk a lot about my son because he's really my best teacher. So, yeah, so my son is autistic and I had about seven years of pretty dedicated, self-compassion practice under my belt by the time it got diagnosed. And I can't even imagine how I would have gotten through without it.

I would have, but it helped me tremendously. So it helped me both not only the mindfulness practice of accepting my feelings, you know, allowing the grief to be there, allowing the feelings of disappointment to be there without judging them, without making them go away. But what really helped was in addition to that, giving myself that it's really hard, it's really hard, you know, I'd actually give myself that love,

that kindness, that care, especially like when he was having a ear splitting tantrum, you know, even though he was in pain, I made when he was having a ear splitting tantrum, you know, even though he was in pain, I made sure he was safe, but that's when I would do my breathing in compassion practice. I would just, this is so hard, breathing for me, this is so hard, I feel overwhelmed, I don't know what to do, I want to feel like I want to jump out of a window, you know, and it's, you know, in the kind of game myself, that love and support and that care.

And then I was able to also breathe out for him. And so it allowed me to stay connected in those moments, where then just focusing on him or just being overwhelmed. So it's really helped me in that practice. Just really everything I've gone through, I mean, at this point, self-compassion has become a habit. Occasionally, yes, sure, thoughts will come up, feelings of failure and stuff come up and there's pain.

But now, my habit is to just recognize it as pain and to do whatever I need to do to be there for myself in the moment. Again, whether that's, I need some acceptance, some yen, some soothing, some comforting, some validating, or whether that's action. It's helped me, you might say, well, you know, so I'm an academic. And there's been some struggles in my academic career as well.

It's really helped me the fact that I can integrate the care with the taking action. It's helped me be more stable and more balanced, even in times of challenge. Get, I'm still a mess. Don't get me wrong, get, I'm still a mess. But I am a compassionate mess. It's an achievable goal.

I mean, that's the beauty of it. I sometimes joke I'm glad I'm a compassion teacher, not a mindfulness teacher. Because I don't always have equanimity. I'm not always aware. I get lost, but I can pretty quickly now. I'm in the habit of whatever pain,

whatever mess is happening. I just hold that with compassion. That's the name of your book, by the way, compassionate mess. That's the name. I was thinking that. I think it's going to be fierce, self-compassion for women, but I'm also like the idea of compassion and mess. It's a really nice idea because it kind of explains what it is, and that actually is the... Rob Nairn actually said that. Message to your editor. Okay, the book can be more likely to pick up an airport. But that's right, but remember, my book's for women.

I know. I think women, I know a lot of women. I feel like I've sold a lot of books to women. Okay, so we can maybe have two titles. I love that phrase because it just really captures it. So high-celled esteem is not an achievable goal, you know. Maybe not even a desirable goal. Yeah, exactly.

But compassionate mess is, and when you hold things in compassion, anything becomes workable. That's the thing. It becomes workable. And you can actually learn, it sounds strange, but you actually learn to rest your awareness in the loving connected presence in the compassion holding the pain as opposed to your awareness being identified with the pain. So let's walk me through that.

So how this works in a moment in your mind for you. So for me, I have lots of, I don't want to guess at what your little daily thorns in your side may be. Thorns in your side maybe but for me it's like Yeah, I have the whole Self-critical thing around I have more Around belly fat that I want to have I'm skinny guy, but I wish I had the abs I had in my mid 30s And I'm now well coming up on 48 and they're not there anymore in any discernible way And so every time I pass a reflective surface when I was just at a beach for a week with my family, there was a lot of like, oh my god, looking at myself. So what in that moment, how would things work?

So, okay, so and this is why the three components of mindfulness, common humanity, and kindness are helpful because they're actually like almost like a little mini instruction guide of what to do. So first, it has to always start with mindfulness. Mindfulness is the foundation. You've got to notice that hurts. Instead of being lost in the thought that I wish I had to have a six pack, it's like the pain that hurts. Whether it should hurt, whether or not it does not matter because it does hurt. So you look in the mirror, oh wow, that's painful.

Look, I'm 52. I'm past my prime. That's not fun. You know, it's just, but it's the reality, right? So you look in the mirror and you say, oh my God, I'm getting jowls or whatever it is. So identifying the pain of it, right? And then the common humanity, right?

Just remember, well, this is, it's part of being human. It's part of aging. Everyone, you know, nothing's last forever. This is actually part of being human. It's part of aging. Everyone, you know, nothing's last forever. This is actually part of the human experience. There was no human being alive that didn't get older, you know, and these things their body didn't start changing. And that's not what it means to be human.

It's not just me. You see, there's a tendency in the moment to think that every other man in the world, they're all GQ supermodels, aren't they? They all have the sense that. I have some friends who are older than me who are ripped, so that's on my mind. Yeah, okay, but they too, they too eventually, they'll get old and they'll die. Sorry to break the news, Dan. I'm well aware of that news.

I'm just what's happening cognitively for me is I know I'm going to die. I know everybody, I know is going to die, but I feel too young to be at their point. Right, right, okay. So nonetheless, so maybe some people, that's maybe your friends who managed to keep the six pack at age 50, whatever, maybe that's not their particular thing they struggle with,

but surely it's something. The human experience is about we struggle with our imperfection. The human experience is about, we struggle with our imperfection. The human experience is not about perfection. That's an Instagram illusion. You know, really, isn't it true? Yeah, maybe it's not autism, but it's something else. Maybe it's not that they don't have a six pack,

but it's something else. Everyone struggles in their own way. I've thought about starting an Instagram account of only of my son's tantrums. Right, yeah. So what you're really opening to, it's not you're opening to a particular thing, you're opening to just the fact of human imperfection.

It's normal. You know, this is, you aren't abnormal. It's nothing bad or wrong about not having a six back. You know, again, if you want to, that's fine, that's your goal. There's nothing wrong with it, but just remembering that you're human-ness, remembering your human-ness, letting go of the idea of perfection, which is false and an illusion, right?

It causes a lot of suffering, but it's false and an illusion. So just opening to the reality that human being, human isn't about me, we're like, you know that, you know, to reminding yourself of it. And then... I know it in theory, I know it for other people. You know it, yes, so you, but you forget it, right?

It's not that you, you know it, and but you don't, in the moment, you've forgotten it. It feels like a recipe for complacency. It feels like, and I know you're gonna rebut this, but let me just play out the string. It feels to me, especially as it pertains to the belly, I can't believe we're dwelling this long on my neck. That's like, no, that's good, it's good, it's nice.

That, you know, like, if I hit the gym harder, or if I hadn't eaten half of my son's plate of french fries, this wouldn't be this way. Right, okay. So what you're doing in that moment is you're kind of falling into the illusion of complete self-control. It's actually, we aren't able to control things that have them be perfect. Now, if it really is important to you and also you feel healthier and stronger,

absolutely, go to the gym. Do more sit-ups. If it's important to you and it's an important goal, and if it's going to make you happy, and it's going to help you, we leave the suffering, then you bring in the kindness. The kindness could go a couple of ways depending on what you need. The kindness, maybe. I really feel so much better in my body if I did more set sit-ups. What can I do? Maybe I can make it easier for myself.

Like me, I hire my, I pay my yoga teacher to come to me so I don't actually go to class. You know, if it's important to you and you think it'll help alleviate your suffering or make you healthy be well, you find creative ways maybe thinking about it differently. You know, what's not working in my routine now, how I can be different. That may be a way you go. And maybe at some point that the way you go is, well, I'm just going to accept it. Again, it's acceptance or change. You know, it's a matter of wisdom, right?

What's the right action to take? And I can't tell you the wise thing to do. But the thing is that getting down on yourself and shaming yourself and feeling bad about yourself or not having the six pack you want. Here's what happens, right? And maybe let me know if this is true. You think that in the moment and you feel bad about yourself. And then because you feel bad about yourself, boy, that glass of wine looks pretty nice. You know, you want to comfort yourself to kind of counteract

feeling bad about yourself and it actually ends up working against you. You know, shame is not the best motivating force. Wouldn't you agree? When you're feeling it, I will agree. Relatively, I will agree. When you're full of shame, doesn't really get up and go out of tune.

No, but there's some like a dry, I'd sort of clear-eyed analysis of deficiencies does help. Absolutely. That's the mindfulness. That's the clear scene. Constructive criticism is incredibly helpful. Kindness leads to constructive criticism. Judgment and shame leads to harsh destructive criticism. We know, for a fact, that constructive criticism is more helpful than just saying

you're a fat loser. Who does that help? So again, the motivational power of it is because it hurts so much to call yourself a fat loser, you might, you have some motivation to try to avoid that self-whip, but at the end of the day, it's probably going to undermine your efforts because you're going to be so feel so bad about yourself, you're going to have that extra glass of water, that piece of chocolate cake, right? The thing is, wow, you know, actually, this will make me happy. I can see clearly. I could open to the pain of it. How can I constructively do something different to help myself achieve my goal? So that the...

And that's the kindness. That's the most important thing? And that's the kindness. That's the kind of... Right, so that's the third part. Kindness sometimes, everyone kindness can be you and your young. Kindness sometimes says, you know, it's time, I just have to accept it. But the kindness also might be the young.

Okay, what can change a big things better? How can I help you? How can I help you reach your, you know, say to yourself, how can I help myself reach my goals in an effective, realistic manner? And the warmth and feelings of safety are actually going to be more supportive if you

being able to reach your goals than just shame and lots of dumping lots of negative feelings on yourself. That is actually pulling the rug out beneath yourself doesn't ultimately help very much. So we got a little off track, but it's important that these three elements, we need to be mindful. Mindfulness is the core we need to be aware.

We need to remember our connectedness. We aren't alone. The feelings of isolation, again, is one of the most psychologically debilitating states we can be in when we feel all alone. So feelings of isolation is, again, one of the most psychologically debilitating states we can be in when we feel all alone. So, you need to remember our connectedness in this struggle of human life and it's connected us in the mess.

I'm not the only compassionate mess where we're all messes. You're a mess, I'm a mess. Everyone's a mess. You know, that's just part of being human. And then the kindness, and how might that kindness manifest? Sometimes the kindness is tough love. Sometimes the kindness is accepting love. Sometimes the kindness is encouragement.

Sometimes the kindness is, you know, I just really need, I'm overworked, I need to cut back on my hours so I have more time to have work life balance. You know, again, wisdom knows what the right thing to do is. But what's important is the friendliness, that intention, the kindness, the kindness is always aimed at helping, alleviating suffering, you know. And so you can actually just go through those steps

and it's a very easy thing to do. You can do in the moment. I teach, we teach something called the self-compassion break where you find language that works for you because people are really different. And once you get like phrases that work for you, it's almost like a mantra and you can just repeat those phrases. Sometimes you, some touch can just automatically set it off. Right, you can use the breath. There's lots of different ways. And so I think in my self-compassion program, I think we have 37 different practices, you know, some work for some people, some don't.

But I think it's really worth spending the time to find out what works for you. And I'm talking to you as a human being right now, if you struggle with this, you know, what works for you? What doorway actually opens that door to this loving connected presence, to this feeling of oneness, this feeling of well-being, this feeling of care? You want that, we all want that, we all want that, we're human beings. And so what doorways open that for you? And it's actually worth spending some time asking that question. There's no right or wrong answer. But once you start habitually entering that doorway, that door becomes easier and easier to open.

You did a great job with this. Thank you very much. Thank you. That's my kind and friendly voice. I'm directing it to you. Yes. I'll learn how to do it to myself at some point. Yes. Thank you again. You're welcome. You're welcome. Thanks again to Christ Kristin Neff. Got to spend some time with her one-on-one a couple of weeks ago. It was a pleasure. She's the best. Thank you to you for listening.

Don't forget to check out the link in the show notes for the live event coming up in Colorado. And thank you most of all to everybody who works so hard on this show. 10% Happier is produced by Justine Davy, Gabrielle Zuckerman, Lauren Smith, and Tara Anderson, DJ Cashmere as our senior producer, Marissa Schneiderman as our senior editor, and Kimmy Regler is our executive producer, scoring and mixing by Peter Bonaventure of Ultraviolet, audio, and Nick Thorburn of the Bad Islands, Rudar Thien. We'll see you all on Wednesday for the second installment of our deep cuts series, this

one with the best-selling author and podcast host Malcolm Gladwell. Hey, hey, prime members. You can listen to 10% happier early and ad-free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today. Or you can listen early and ad-free with 1-3 Plus in Apple Podcasts. Before you go, do us a solid and tell us all about yourself by completing a short survey at 1-3.com slash survey. Survey.