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

Episode Date: December 16, 2020

I don’t know about you, but there have been many times during this wrenching year where I have made my pain even worse by adding on layers and layers of self-criticism. There’s a notion that is deeply ingrained in our culture that the only way to succeed -- or even to survive -- is to liberally apply an internal cattle prod. But there is research that strongly suggests that this approach simply leads to extra anxiety, and that there is a more successful approach, called self-compassion. My guest today has been at the very forefront of this research. Kristin Neff has empirically demonstrated the value of self-compassion; she has 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. All of this makes her, in my opinion, a figure of incalculable importance. We recorded this interview back in 2019, and it contributed to a major turning point in my meditation practice and in my life. We are reposting it now because as we head into the new year, a time when many of us embark on self-improvement projects based in self-loathing, we could all use a little kryptonite for the inner critic.  Where to find Kristin Neff online:  Website: https://self-compassion.org Twitter: https://twitter.com/self_compassion  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/selfcompassion  At this point in the holiday season, mail delivery and shipping timelines are not on your side. For a quick and meaningful gift, send a gift subscription to the Ten Percent Happier app to your friends and family! We're offering gift subscriptions at a discount through the end of this month. No shipping required - your gift will be delivered directly to your email inbox. Get a gift subscription by visiting www.tenpercent.com/gift. That’s tenpercent (one word, all spelled out) dot com slash gift. Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/kristin-neff See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Before we jump into today's show, many of us want to live healthier lives, but keep bumping our heads up against the same obstacles over and over again. But what if there was a different way to relate to this gap between what you want to do and what you actually do? What if you could find intrinsic motivation for habit change that will make you happier instead of sending you into a shame spiral? Learn how to form healthy habits without kicking your own ass unnecessarily by taking our healthy habits course over on the 10% happier app. It's taught by the Stanford psychologist Kelly McGonical and the Great Meditation Teacher Alexis

Santos to access the course. Just download the 10% happier app wherever you get your apps or by visiting 10% calm. All one word spelled out. Okay on with the show. to baby, this is Kiki Palmer on Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcast. For ABC, this is the 10% happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Hey guys, at this point in the holiday season, male delivery and shipping timelines may not be on your side. So for a quick and meaningful gift, send a gift subscription

to the 10% happier app to your friends and family. We're offering gift subscriptions at a discount through the end of this month. No shipping required. Obviously your gift will be delivered directly to your email inbox. You can get a gift subscription by visiting 10% dot com slash gift. That's 10% one word all spelled out dot com slash gift. Okay, let's do today's episode. I don't know about you, but there have been many times during this wrenching year where I have made my pain even worse by adding on layers and layers and layers of self criticism. There's a notion that is deeply ingrained in our culture that the only way to succeed or even to survive

is to liberally apply an internal cattle prod. But there is research that strongly suggests that this approach simply leads to extra anxiety and that there is a more successful approach, which is called self-compassion. My guest today has been at the very forefront of this research. She 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 breaches in extremely difficult circumstances in her own life. All of this makes Kristen Neff, in my opinion, a figure of incalculable importance. I should say before we dive in here, we recorded this interview back in 2019, and it actually contributed to a major turning point in my own meditation practice and in my life.

We're reposting it now because, as we head into the new year, which is a time when many of us embark on self-improvement, projects based consciously or subconsciously and self-loathing, we could all use a little kryptonite for the intercritics. So here we go with Kristen Neff. 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. 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. And so I thought, you know, well, I've heard that meditation is good for stress. And it was Berkeley. So right down the street for me was the meditation group. I was lucky. I'll lay right down every street. Right down every street, yeah, in Berkeley,

so on every corner. But luckily, the one I chose to go to, the woman leaving the group, it was actually a Tiktok Han Sangha. The reason it's important is because some meditation teachers, mindfulness meditation teachers, wouldn't necessarily talk about self-compassion. So, Tiktokheim, 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 compassionate full 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. 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. 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, loving 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 in, 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 put simply the ability not to be yaked 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. Friendliness, exactly. A cooler, calmer, nicer attitude toward external and internal phenomenon. Although can I replace the word cooler with warmer? Sure, yes, better. I mean cooler. 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. is just another form of Buddhist meditation that's actually the school I've trained in and stumbled upon teachers like Jack Cornfield, Sharon Salisberg, both of whom have written a lot about

mindfulness. Again, just being able to be non-judgmentally aware of stuff and compassion, which is adding in the not just non-judgmentally aware, but having a certain element of warmth in the awareness. Right. So the mindfulness is aimed at holding experience in a non-judgmental manner. So the compassion is aimed at holding the experience there in a friendly manner. And 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, sorry, let me see if I can restate that, and I'm also thinking that there may be yet another paradox. Probably.

One paradox is, 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. 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 pain 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? And so, they're targeted kind of two different targets. They have to be both held together. And you know, 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 me is a typical Western-raised and patriarchal system guy. I think I'm not gonna say that to myself. Right, 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 there's mammals. When we come out of the womb, the way we feel safe is by connection with other people. Connection love, 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 isn't work for everyone. You can do it with physical touch, so like 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 stand-alone practice where it's just about accepting and experience completely as it is. The reason we practice is because we want to alleviate suffering. 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. So 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 mean, that's okay. 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 in the Latin 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 you're 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. So 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've, 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 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-compassion. Yes, 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. He said, 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 you don't need an actual sense of separate self to give yourself

inner compassion is anybody outside of academia use the word he ristik i love the word great on a probably not basically to the whole concept it's yeah it's it's a useful i think it is useful to use full tool we don't have to take it very seriously i just want to congratulate you that i think being the first person nearly two hundred episodes to use the word he ristik no it's great

i have not even teasing you. I think it's awesome. Anyway, yeah, there are a lot of paradoxes. But you 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 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 a woman's magazine for goodness sake, right? I don't know that I thought that, but I mean, I have a four year old, it's the first time I were a first and only child. I'm really tender with him, although I also like rough house with him and, you know,

I use fat thighs and all that stuff. But that's the first time in 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. And 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. I buy it, but it's uncomfortable. Yeah, it is.

And you find ways of doing it that are more comfortable, for instance. So the UT, a university of Texas at Austin, and so the Longhorn men's basketball team, ask me to come in and give the guys a training. How'd that go? Great. Because I didn't use the word self compassion once because it's triggering. basketball team, ask me to come in and give the guys a training. How'd that go? Great.

Because I didn't use the word self-compassion once because it's triggering. There's no, there's no, the word, something special about the word. I talked about inner resilience and inner strength training. And so basically, so when you're out there, when you're playing, you know, what mental voice do you want in your head? Do you want to coach? You're saying, you're suck. You can't do it.

You know, you're crap. You should be ashamed of yourself. I can't believe you mess it. Shot. Or do you want to coach? You're saying you're suck. You can't do it. You know, you're crap. You should be ashamed of yourself. I can't believe you messed that shot. Or do you want to coach? It's saying, hey, it's okay. This is maybe what went wrong. We can work. We can do this. I'm here. I'm supportive. So kind of an encouraging supportive kind voice. It doesn't have to take a particular form. The form, the kind mistakes, 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 just kind of a little encouragement

or a little understanding or just a little sense of acceptance, right? And so people find their own way into self-compassion. But the goal is just to be a supportive, kind, encouraging, helpful, beneficial, friendly presence. Right? 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, 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 and 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? Right. 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, you know, I'm flawed, or maybe you're 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. Or compare to other people. And also compare 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're 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, 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. We identify this experience into a sense of solid self. When reality, this is just what's unfolding. You might say, we hold this unfolding mess with great compassion and kindness and friendliness. The warmth is important. Again, just going back to the physiology, we are mammals. We've got especially human mammals.

Humans are born the most immature. It takes 25 to 27 years for the prefrontal cortex to fully mature. In my case, it's taken nearly. Yeah, and I like to make another five years for the prefrontal cortex to fully mature. My case is taken nearly. And I like to make another five years for the kids to actually leave home. 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, you know, 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 what we know again from the science is when you're kind 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. It's okay to make mistakes. Can I learn from it? What we find is that friendly supportive attitude

that 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 nine months 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, when people say self-compassion is a weakness, not for these soldiers, and if you think again to use the metaphor, if you think of life as a battle in some ways, 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 it to be a friend, that kind of that warmth, that care, that I'm gonna 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 says, you're not good enough, and you're not good as a good as this other person,

you know, kind of a very deftest 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, note 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 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. A lot of people have misconceptions about self-compassion

that is 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's a 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 it live played by the now I guess former senator resigned under a cloud out 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. It all. It's just, I'm a human being. I'm flawed. I'm imperfect. I'm trying to learn and grow. 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. We don't realize that we can actually give ourselves a lot of the support we need, not completely.

We aren't automatons, but we're so reliant on other people to meet our needs, to make us feel loved, to make us feel supported, to make us feel okay. 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. The ideal parents 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 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.

People whose parents weren't warm and supportive, they have insecure or 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 inner narrator right maybe because I descended from a long line of depressives and anxious people and alcoholics etc 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 father. 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. I told myself that any success I was experiencing here and 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. You address this a little bit, but 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 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 10 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 might develop so much fear that you're going to fail and get your parents criticism and grounding or whatever punishment that you get for your 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. 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 want to 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 in a tutor? 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. 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, encouraging, supportive approach. And also, you know, what we show, what 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 so 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 it. It allows for more with the call and acceptance and commitment therapy. It allows for more psychological flexibility. Which of course is going to make you safer, because you're going to be able to write it. Which is going to make you safer. It's going to make you safer and it's going to help you. So actually, we used to believe that the best way to motivate our children was through

harsh, 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, I mean, you're complacent. It 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, you know, 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, 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 gonna suggest you hug yourself. It's not gonna work. But there may be some other ways. What works for you? What helps you feel more accepted, more encouraged, more cared for, and using those pathways in.

Yeah, I was 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 work 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 of times. And she and I did a one-on-one compassion retreat. Okay. So this was not just self-compassion, but compassion writ large. Yeah. But obviously self-compassion is a huge focus. And so I had never done self-compassion practices before, and compassion practices before, but it was a little bit of a side interest, not the main dish.

So for 10 days, we did nothing with that, and actually filmed a lot of it, because we're going to 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 his 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 impatience, 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 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 is 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 they 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. Right. And I would, I would, you know, I'm reluctant to admit that publicly, but here we are. 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 there's 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.

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'm just fully 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-pity, 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 might be in your gut, might be in your throat, might be in your head, maybe in your heart, you know, 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 this 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 less. 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 where our bodies

and our brains are designed. So we're designed to react to touch. And also ton 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. Right, 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? Right, it's amazing. And science and hard logic is supposed to be a masculine quality. And to succeed we're supposed to be masculine. And I'm both, you know, and that's, you know, both simultaneously'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 kind of 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 fearsite. Both are necessary for all human beings. I really work hard to integrate both, to honor both. But in work context, the Yang, the kind of masculine, is honored and valued, at the more feminine isn't, and that's a real disadvantage to women. But the way men masculine is honored and valued at 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 tenderized. 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. I think maybe that's what you're picking up on when saying, I'm a touchy-fili scientist. I'm integrating my left and right brain, and both are really important, I feel.

Seven A. Celacii, who's a teacher, I really, 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 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-feelly is sexist in many ways. Well, 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 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 am 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 think it's just annoying. You aren't consciously doing it. So you ask what we know about it and biases. They're 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 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, CEO, wow, wow, I just reached this snap judgment about somebody based on their pigmentation that's pretty negative. 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, again, this is at the end and the young. The young kind of gives us 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.

That's right. It's not like I signed up for a young, I wanted to be prejudiced. This is part of the larger culture. So you have to be able to hold the pain. 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 the, 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, excepting 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. You know, think of a firefighter who jumps into a burning building to save people who are you know, about to go up in flames or service, you know, a service man and woman who actually risks their own lives to protect people. That is an ultimate act of compassion, you know, but it's the other side of it is taking action. Or motivate 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 not the more the young side of self-compassion. But people, first of all, that confused, 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. So a man aren't allowed to be young, and women aren't allowed to be young. We all need both. So we're kind of both messed up because of it. 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 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, you have a lot of, you have to have a lot of acceptance, and you have to be able to touch the pain of it. You know, and I'm sure that my colleague, Chris Gurmur, 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. I mean, 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, I'm not privileged. He could open to it, and you have to open to the pain, the in, hold it with kindness before you can take action, which is the yang and do something about it. Both are really needed. The flip side is for women, and I'm a woman, so my next book is actually, I'm gonna be called, Fierce Compassion for Women.

It's kind of, I think women really need to cultivate this yang energy. We need to protect ourselves. We need to say, no more, we're gonna stop subordinating our needs. No, you can't sexually harass me. 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. 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. 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. Right. Right. You know.

On this Yang or Yang or whatever Yang, let's go with Yang, a version, the 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. Right. 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 side, you know, your're kind of more masculine and competitive, strong

side, we get called names for it. This is the 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. You know, 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,

I prefer to do it. It's carrying force. You're being forceful, but it's not aggressive, it's not personal. You aren't like blaming people. You're just the force that mom and bear 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 know, you can target it as they know that's not okay, but it just means that you aren't okay, but know 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, you know. 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. You know. Much more of my conversation with Kristen Neff right after this. Life is short and it's full of a lot of interesting questions. What is happiness really mean? How do I get the most out of my time here on earth? And what really is the best cereal? These are the questions I seek to resolve on my weekly podcast. Life is Short, with

Justin Long. If you're looking for the answer to deep philosophical questions, like, what is the meaning of life? I can't really help you. But I do believe that we really enrich our experience here by learning from others. And that's why in each episode, I like to talk with actors, musicians, artists, scientists, and many more types of people about how they get the most out of life. We explore how they felt during the highs and sometimes more importantly, the lows of their careers. We discuss how they've been able to stay happy during some of the harder times. But if I'm being honest, it's mostly just fun chats between friends about the important stuff.

Like if you had a sandwich named after you, what would be on it? Follow life is short wherever you get your podcasts. You can also listen to Add Free on the Amazon Music or Wondery app. I owe you something which is, at some point, I cut you off and sent us down a tangent. You were about to say something about tone of voice. Oh yes, all right, okay.

So what we know from the research, and this is a lot, you've probably interviewed Docker Keltoner from UC Berkeley. I have, he's not been on the show. Docker Keltoner, Docker Keltoner. I don't know how to pronounce the name. It's a, it's a cracker. Docker, it might be. Docker Keltoner.

Okay. So, Docker, I did a piece on him for nightline about 10 years ago. He runs a, a greater good center. The greater good center and also basically a lab that studies Compassion not just self-compatial, but all yeah, all compassion of compassion. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, really cool guy I've actually really eager to have him on the show so that you should have me be great come to New York Yeah, but yeah, so 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, so touch we talked about, touch is 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's the sound of compassion? So if I'm talking to my son and he's heard himself. Yeah. Yeah, 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. Yeah, around, there's not a single culture where it's like, woohoo, you're hurt. It's not like, it's a pretty good. Well, among my teenage boys, culture where it's like, woohoo, your heart. It's not like it's a pic of a monk, my teenage boys, we would laugh at each other if we were hurt. So the passion part of our brain had not come to it. But as it expressed, so this

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. And there's a little less research on gaze, but tone of voice. Also gaze is another one. There's a little less research on gaze, but tone of voice. So for some people, you know, 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. 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? Are you being tense and tight with yourself and kind of cold? Are you being more relaxed and more warm with yourself? That's why I made the joke

earlier that it's about warming things up. It's about, I suppose, the cooling, people are cool, there is something about warmth. And again, this is just our physiology. So we need to, you know, it's really, it's not about, 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. It's about, you know, often when we teach people self-compassion, we say,

see if you can just kind of drop out of your head and your mind and the storyline and just drop into your body. And 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, just 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 the practice. So it seemed 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 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 like 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, 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. You know, if people say, what would Jesus say? In a way, what would Jesus say is,

a self-compassion practice? You know, 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. That very simple act. I think there's a lot of reasons of how it operates. One thing you're perspective taking is that it'd be 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 disidentifying 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, when we forget that, when we make a mistake or we get that call from the doctor, we think, something has gone wrong. This is the plan I signed up for. So everyone else is being perfect. It has a perfect life. And it's just me who's struggling. So reminding yourself of common humanity,

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 the moment where I'm really having a tough time. And then you remind yourself of common humanity. 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 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, 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 going to abandon myself. I mean, think about that. Don't we do that? We abandon ourselves. We're struggling. We just, you know, 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, it's like this, we've got this incredible, powerful tool. All you need to do is remember to use it, and we don't. And so you can just think, well, what am I really good friend say to me right now? Or what would I say to a really good friend right now? Or what would Jesus say, whatever, whatever 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 want to 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. Right? 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, 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. So you just talked about a lot of approaches we could take, but I'm still wondering for the listener here, many of whom are meditators. Can you describe how we would do self-compassion as part of our meditation practice? 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. So if you're meditating, so for instance, we teach meditation in a 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 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 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 plan. 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. It's hard. These jobs are 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 carrying 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. What's the website? Aselfcompassion.org. If you Google Self Compassion, you'll find me. Nice. We'll also put it in the show that's for this. But 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, maybe peaceful, maybe healthy, maybe 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 to say, maybe 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? And then you use that as your phrase. in this moment exactly what I need to hear, what would that be? And then you use that as your phrase. So it's a little more personalized,

and also it can be a little more targeted toward what you need to hear is addressing the real pain you're in. Then you can, you know, you may accept myself as I am, you know, may I 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. There's something that that Zen teacher and Berkeley low these many years said about self-compassion that turned you on and has become your life, your livelihood, your career. How has it played out in your life? You mentioned a son, you have a son who has such a 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 he got diagnosed. And I can't even imagine how I would have gone through without, 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, you know, it's really hard. This is 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, 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 jump out of window and the kind of game myself that love and support and that care. Then I was able to also breathe out for him and that allowed me to stay connected in those moments, whether than just focusing on him or just being overwhelmed. 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.

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 yin, 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 nuts. 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 to joke I'm glad I'm a compassionate 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 mean, the habit of whatever pain, whatever mess is happening, I just hold that with compassion. That's the name 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 compassionate mess. It's a really, it's a nice idea because, you know, it kind of explains what it is. And that actually is the call, 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 a woman. 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, we can, we can, maybe have two titles.

But I, I, I love that phrase because it just really captures it. So high-celled esteem is not an achievable goal. 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 and 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, you know, daily thorns in your side maybe. But for me, it's like, I have the whole self-critical thing around, I have more, around belly fat than 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 in 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 the 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,

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 of that, that's, you know, that that's hurts. Whether or not it should hurt, whether or not, you know, whatever. It doesn't matter because it does hurt.

So you look in the mirror, oh wow, that's painful. I mean, look, I'm 52. You know, 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, I 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 the human experience. There was no human being alive that didn't get older, you know, and that these things their body didn't start changing. And that's not what it means to be human. It's not just me. 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 back.

No, but 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. Oh, I'm well aware of that news. I'm just what's happening cognitively for me is, I know I'm gonna die. I know everybody, I know is going to die, but I feel too young to be at that 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 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-pack. You know, again, if you want to, that's fine, that's your goal. It's nothing wrong with it.

But just remembering that, you know, that you're human-ness. Remembering your human-ness. Letting go of the idea of perfection, which is false and an illusion, right? Cause there's a lot of suffering, but it's false and it's illusion. So just opening to the reality that human, 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, yeah, so you, but you forget it, right? It's not that you, you know it, 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 head. That's what it'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 sets it up. 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 can 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 creative ways, maybe thinking about it differently. You know what's not working in my routine now, how it 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, 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 want to comfort yourself to kind of counteract your feeling bad about yourself. And it actually ends up working against you. Shame is not the best motivating force. Wouldn't you agree? When you're feeling it, full of shame. Relatively, I will agree. When you're full of shame, there isn't really a guet of the go at it, you're full of shame, does it really get up and go out of here? No, but there's some like a dry, eyed 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, you know, 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? But thinking, 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 kind of... Right, so that's a very important... Kindness is not... Yeah, kindness sometimes remembering kindness can be in or 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 and make things better? How can I help you? How can I help you reach your... to accept it, but the kind of softest 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, to save 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. It 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 is, again, it's 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 our connectedness 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 where we're all messes. You're a mess, I'm a mess, everyone's a mess. That's just part of being human. 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. So I think in my self-compassion program, I think we have 37 different practices, 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. I'm talking to you as a human being right now,

if you struggle with this. What works for you? I'm talking to you as a human being right now, if you struggle with this. 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, our human beings. 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 know?

It's incredibly intriguing and attractive and probably not going to land it right now, but I do think. Well, you already have a meditation practice. Yes. So it's just a matter of just kind of reminding yourself that it's not just about the awareness. It's also about the connectedness and it's about the care, it's about the warmth.

Yeah, I think I just need the little phrase that gets me in that door. Yes, exactly. And what that phrase is, you know, only you know, really. No, but it's a great thing to think about and explore. There are two questions I want to ask before I go, both of which can be short if you want, but that's up to you. One of them is, is there something I should have asked, but didn't? We covered a lot of ground, didn't we? I think we're okay. I think we covered a broad range of it.

Cool. Then the final question is, I always do this kind of semi facetious thing at the end, which is ask people to step into what I call the plug zone. Can you unabashedly plug, and I'm giving you permission here to plug everything, all the resources that are out there, where you are on social media, blah, blah, blah again. Yeah, yeah. So I can, because I can say say basically the last 10 years of my life with my colleague Chris Grimer, we've been developing the technology. He's actually connected with Harvard. Harvard, okay. Boston, but we've been developing the technology of how to teach self-compassion. It's not just a good idea.

We know the technology, the pedagogy of how to help people be more self-compassionate. And it was, you know, developed in the Mindful Self-Compassion program. And it's taught all over the world. You could either go to the Center for MSC and find a teacher. You can take it online. But the cool thing is our workbook just came out in August. It was a number one bestseller. But the workbook has it all in there, and it's only like, you know, 15 bucks or something, and actually it guides you through in the sequence, and it helps you do all the practices

safely. It's a very accessible way to access these practices, the Mindful Self-Compassion Workbook, and you know, a year ago that one had been available. You would have just had to have someone in your area. You've had to spend a lot more time and money to learn the practices. And now it's just one click away. Cool. And your website again is self-compassion. Self-compassion.org. Yeah. And do you have a Twitter or Instagram or anything about that?

I do have a Twitter. I have someone who tweets for me. I'm embarrassed to say it or I remember what Twitter handle is. No, I think that's a badge of honor. I can send it to you. I'm also on Facebook, but probably the easiest way place to go is if you just Google self-compassion because I've got videos, I've got a TED Talk. You can take your own self-compassion,

you can test your own self-compassion level with the scale. I've got, for those of you science nerds, Listeen, I've got the original PDFs of probably like, well over a thousand articles research on self-compassion organized by category. I put a lot of work into this to try to facilitate the research. So if you wanna know what's been done

with self-compassion and body image issues, I what's been done with self-compassion and body image issues, I've got a section on self-compassion and body image with all the original PDFs of the scientific articles. So if you're a scientist, that's a place to go. If you want to use the scale and research, you've got to take the scale. I've got practices, guided meditations, written exercises. Kind of, I've tried to design it as a one-stop shopping,

so to speak. So if anyone's interested, they can find that resource. You did a great job with this. Thank you very much. Thank you. That's my kind and friendly voice. At least I'm directing it to you. I'll learn how to do it to myself at some point. Yes.

Thank you. You're welcome. You're welcome. Big thanks to Kristen. Big thanks, as, big thanks as always to the team who works so hard to make this show a reality. Samuel Johns is our senior producer,

DJ Kashmir is our producer, Jules Dodson, is our AP, our sound designer is Matt Boynton of Ultraviolet Audio. Maria Wartell is our production coordinator. We get an enormous amount of insight and input from our TPH colleagues, such as Jen Poient, Nate Toby Ben-Ruven and Liz Levin, and of course, as always, big thank you to my ABC News comrades, Ryan Kessler and Josh Kohan.

We'll see you all on Friday for a bonus. 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 Wondery Plus in Apple Podcasts. Before you go, do us a solid and tell us all about yourself by completing a short survey at Wondery.com slash survey. all about yourself by completing a short survey at Wondery.com slash survey.