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  • Home
  • About
    • The Happy Fan Club
  • Offerings
    • Redesign Your Life 2.0
    • Get Creative
    • Personal Coaching
  • Creativity Conversations
  • LET'S CONNECT!
  • Blog
    • Live Free Your Way
    • Seeing Things Differently
    • Mistaking Assumptions for Truth
    • How Humor Keeps Us Sane
    • Know Thyself
    • Peach Pie for Breakfast
    • Explore Experience Express
    • Should You Be Downshifting?
    • Stop the Hustle!
    • Do Your Habits Serve or Sabotage
    • Settle Down? Down Where?
    • What Lights You Up?
    • Saying Yes When Your Mind Says No
    • Independence From What?
    • Letting Ourselves Off the Hook
    • Letting Go of Assumptions
    • Is Kindness Allowed?
    • How to Throw a Wrench in the Works
    • Happiness
    • Daring to be Lighthearted
    • What Happens When You See Things Differently
    • Find Delight in Everyday Life
    • Are You Saying What Needs to Be Said
    • Is Your Life in Alignment
    • Are You Trapped by Your Past
    • Can You Love Your Life
    • The Hallmark of Creativity
    • Out Of Ideas?
    • Waking Up to a New World
    • Are You a Possibilitarian?
    • Want to Love Your Life?
    • Is Creativity Necessary
    • What's Stopping You?
    • An Unexpected Discovery
    • Free Your Mind
    • Is Your Creative Genius Hiding
    • Empty Headed or Clear Minded?
    • Is Stress Really Necessary?
    • Will Creativity Improve Your Life?
    • Is Creativity In Your Future?
    • Replace Fear With Love
    • How to Get Out of Your Own Way
    • Just Take A Moment
    • You Don't Have To - You Get To
    • The Good News About Being Stuck
    • Interested in Inner Freedom?
    • Are You a Hoarder?
    • What Remains
    • Co-vid 19 Free Pass to the Roller Coaster
    • Grace Under Pressure
    • Now is the Time To Notice
    • Hanging With the Wrong Crowd
    • Make Your Life Simpler
    • What Could Be Different For You
    • Everything is a Miracle
    • Do You Have A Negativity Bias
    • Are You Really Seeing Or Just Assuming?
    • Happiness and Resilience
    • Wherever You Go, There You Are
    • Is Stress Making You Sick?
    • What I Wish My Humans Knew
    • Looking Backwards
    • Daring to Change Course
    • Lost in Thought or Taking Action?
    • Still Can't Focus?
    • Do Your Thoughts Get Dark and Gloomy?
    • Can't Focus?
    • An Instant Formula for New Ideas
    • Talk Yourself Out of Another Great Idea?
    • Is Your Busyness Keeping You From Getting Things Done?
    • What's that Feeling In the Pit of My Stomach?
    • How Cool is This?
    • How to Make Your New Year Happier
    • Why Be Open To Life?
    • Simple Ways to Transform Your Life
    • Get Clarity and Confidence
    • Are You Driven by Fear or Love?
    • The Number One Way to Keep Your Vision Alive and Well
    • Why Stop Trying to Figure it Out?
    • What Are You Trying to Prove?
    • Do Your Goals Reflect Your Hearts Desire
    • Why My Cat is My Spiritual Teacher
    • Surviving the Holidays
    • 3 Convincing Reasons
    • 3 Secrets to Enjoying the Holidays
    • 5 Quick Steps to Get Your Mojo Back
    • 3 Ways to Keep Your Energy High
    • 5 Reasons to Do Good
    • Pain Relief for the Soul
    • Tired of Living by the Rules? Go Rogue!
    • What? You've Made a Mess? Excellent!
    • Why You Need to Be Inspired Now
    • Change Your Life in Just 48 Hours?
    • The Cure For Mental Overload
    • 5 Infallible Ways to Stay Inspired
  • Newsletter

Is Kindness Allowed?

6/4/2021

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​What's your definition of kindness? 

I want to make a point that may at first seem like a downer, but it's for good reason, so bear with me.

When a close friend's well-known husband was dying, he told his wife that the most important thing in life is kindness. That statement has stayed with me ever since she shared it with me.

Now, I can imagine we'd all appreciate kindness being shown to us when we come to the end of our lives, raw and vulnerable and wide open as we would most likely be.

But what about how we treat ourselves? Are we showing the same kind of kindness to ourselves that we imagine we would show to others? 

Have you (as I have) found it to be true that it's often easier to be kind to others, but not to ourselves? 

How much kindness do you show yourself? Generosity, support, consideration - how often do we know when to show that to ourselves when we're caught up in a bad mood or thoughts that are mean, scary or worrisome? 

When our thoughts and feelings carry us away, we often feel like victims, pushing our noses even deeper into them in order to somehow get through to the other side. But that never works out well. We stay mired in the constriction of it unnecessarily.

When we're angry with a person or a situation, we rarely take the time to support or be kind to ourselves while we're stewing in our own juices, so to speak. We might have enough presence of mind not to directly lash out, but internally the dialogue inside our heads can stay on a continuous feedback loop. 

I'm sure you've been there, too. So what would it look like to be kind to ourselves?

It hurts to dwell on painful thoughts or feelings. What we don't often remember is that we don't have to dwell on them. 

One of the kindest things we can do for ourselves is to remember that thoughts and feelings are not what we assume they are. They appear and disappear unless we have an issue with them. But in and of themselves, they don't have to make us lose our focus on what it is we really want to be paying attention to.

I'll admit that sometimes it takes more time than I'd like to regain my focus and get back to that deeper place within me, beneath the surface of those roiling waters.

But I do get there. I can notice that I'm feeling like a victim, believing I can't get away from all that unpleasantness; sometimes there's even a fascination with where they will take me. But there's a cost for allowing myself to be fascinated by them.

Our insecurities can easily keep us distracted and so far from being at our best, but most of that distraction is both from habit and a misunderstanding of how to handle our feelings and thoughts when they're painful - hurting us more than others.

If we could see that the thoughts and feelings that pass through us are really only forms that have the potential to become solid when we breathe life into them, we wouldn't seem them as bad or wrong. Just things we don't ned to focus on. and We can let them continue on their journey. 

We have a deeper nature that has much more wisdom and grace and when we let ourselves drop into it, will reveal the shadows to be what they are so they become powerless to affect us.

And whether the thoughts and feelings stick around for a while or  fade away quickly, , we will still be fine. Judgment, blame, fear, worry, anger -  who we are is so much deeper and stronger and resilient.

And that deeper nature is free from all of it. Letting ourselves remember that can free us to get on with our lives.

Once we begin to let ourselves touch that deeper nature, we automatically become kinder to ourselves, and kinder to ourselves because we know what they're going through.

Sometimes we forget that we're all in this together. But if you look closely, you'll see that we all suffer for the same basic reasons.

But we can also find freedom for the same reasons as well.

And what a kindness that is.
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