Speaker 1: Us studious. Welcome to the Stillness Journal. I'm Maya, and
Speaker 1: to day for our final session together, I want to
Speaker 1: talk about something that might be the most difficult and
Speaker 1: most important practice of all. Meeting yourself with compassion. Not
Speaker 1: the kind of compassion you easily give to others, the
Speaker 1: kind you give to yourself. Take a moment to settle in,
Speaker 1: let your body find rest, let your hands be soft,
Speaker 1: close your eyes, or let your gaze be gentle. And
Speaker 1: as we begin, I want you to do something brave.
Speaker 1: I want you to look at yourself, not in a mirror,
Speaker 1: but in the mirror of your mind. See yourself as
Speaker 1: you are right now, not as you wish you were,
Speaker 1: not as you think you should be, just as you are.
Speaker 1: Can you meet that person with kindness? Most of us
Speaker 1: are our own harshest critics. We say things to ourselves
Speaker 1: that we would never say to some one we love.
Speaker 1: We replay our mistakes on an endless loop. We judge
Speaker 1: ourselves for every flaw, every failure, every imperfection, and we
Speaker 1: do it so automatically that we don't even realize we're
Speaker 1: doing it. The inner critic has been talking for so
Speaker 1: long that its voice has become indistinguishable from our own.
Speaker 1: It whispers to us in the morning, before we've even
Speaker 1: opened our eyes. It follows us into our dreams in
Speaker 1: comments on everything we do, not with curiosity, but with judgment,
Speaker 1: not with love, but with comparison. I remember the first
Speaker 1: time I noticed my own inner critic. I had just
Speaker 1: finished a project. I was proud of something I'd worked
Speaker 1: on for months, and as I looked at the result,
Speaker 1: I didn't feel pride. I felt a familiar sinking feeling,
Speaker 1: and I heard a voice say it's not good enough.
Speaker 1: Someone else would have done it better. You should have
Speaker 1: tried harder. And I stopped and thought, wait, whose voice
Speaker 1: is that, because it's certainly not the voice I would
Speaker 1: use with a friend. If a friend showed me their work,
Speaker 1: I would say, this is wonderful. You worked so hard.
Speaker 1: Be proud of yourself. But with myself, the standards were different,
Speaker 1: the voice was different, and I realized that I had
Speaker 1: been living with this critic for so long that I
Speaker 1: had mistaken it for truth. And I wonder if you've
Speaker 1: had that experience too, that moment when you catch yourself
Speaker 1: saying something to yourself that's so harsh, so unforgiving, that
Speaker 1: if someone else said it to you, you'd walk away,
Speaker 1: you'd never speak to that person again. And yet you
Speaker 1: say it to yourself every day, as if it's normal,
Speaker 1: as if it's deserved, as if that's just what people
Speaker 1: do with themselves. But it's not. It's what we've learned
Speaker 1: to do, and what we've learned we can unlearn. But
Speaker 1: here's what I want to consider. That critical voice isn't you.
Speaker 1: It's a habit, a pattern, a voice that was installed
Speaker 1: by experiences, by expectations, by people who didn't know how
Speaker 1: to love you the way you needed to be loved.
Speaker 1: It's not your truth, it's your conditioning. And conditioning can
Speaker 1: be changed not by fighting the critic, but by developing
Speaker 1: a different voice. A voice of compassion, voice that speaks softly,
Speaker 1: a voice that notices when you're struggling and leans in
Speaker 1: instead of pulling away. A voice that says, I see you,
Speaker 1: your doing your best, and that is enough. I want
Speaker 1: to share something personal. When I was younger, I used
Speaker 1: to believe that if I was kind to myself, I
Speaker 1: would become complacent, that self criticism was the engine of
Speaker 1: my growth, that if I let go of the harsh voice,
Speaker 1: I would fall apart, and for a long time that
Speaker 1: belief kept me stuck in a cycle of shame and striving.
Speaker 1: I would push myself to exhaustion, collapse, shame myself for collapsing,
Speaker 1: and then push again. It wasn't until I started practicing
Speaker 1: self compassion, really practicing it, not just understanding it intellectually,
Speaker 1: that I realized the opposite was true. Kindness didn't make
Speaker 1: me lazy. It made me brave. It gave me the
Speaker 1: courage to try things I might have failed at because
Speaker 1: I knew that failure wouldn't destroy me. It freyed me
Speaker 1: from the prison of perfectionism, and it allowed me to
Speaker 1: feel my feelings without running from them. That was the
Speaker 1: real gift, Not productivity, but presence, not achievement, but a liveness.
Speaker 1: And I wonder if you've had that experience too, that
Speaker 1: moment when you catch yourself saying something to yourself that's
Speaker 1: so harsh, so unforgiving, that if some one else said
Speaker 1: it to you, you'd walk away, you'd never speak to
Speaker 1: that person again. And yet you say it to yourself
Speaker 1: every day as if it's normal, as if it's deserved,
Speaker 1: as if that's just what people do with themselves. But
Speaker 1: it's not. It's what we've learned to do, and what
Speaker 1: we've learned we can unlearn. Compassion, in its simplest form,
Speaker 1: is suffering with not fixing, not advising, not judging, just
Speaker 1: sitting with someone in their pain and saying, I see you,
Speaker 1: this is hard and you're not alone. Can you say
Speaker 1: that to yourself? Can you look at your own struggle
Speaker 1: and your own imperfection and say, this is hard and
Speaker 1: I'm here for myself. I want you to think about
Speaker 1: a moment recently when you were struggling. Maybe it was
Speaker 1: a hard conversation, Maybe it was a mistake at work,
Speaker 1: Maybe it was a moment of loneliness or self doubt.
Speaker 1: What did you say to yourself in that moment? Did
Speaker 1: you offer yourself the same tenderness you would offer a friend,
Speaker 1: or did you pile on more judgment, more blame, more criticism.
Speaker 1: Did you add to this pain instead of easing it.
Speaker 1: Most of us, if we're honest, would have to say
Speaker 1: say we added to it. We made the pain worse
Speaker 1: because we thought that was how we would learn. We
Speaker 1: thought the criticism was necessary. We thought if we were
Speaker 1: kind to ourselves we'd become lazy or complacent. But the
Speaker 1: opposite is true kindness opens the door to growth, criticism
Speaker 1: closes it. Self compassion isn't self indulgence. It's not letting
Speaker 1: yourself off the hook or ignoring your responsibilities. The psychologist
Speaker 1: Kristin Neff defines self compassion as three things. Self kindness
Speaker 1: instead of self judgment, common humanity instead of isolation, and
Speaker 1: mindfulness instead of over identification. In other words, be gentle
Speaker 1: with yourself, remember that every one struggles, and hold your
Speaker 1: pain without being consumed by it. When you practice self compassion,
Speaker 1: you're not saying your problems don't matter. You're saying you better,
Speaker 1: and that makes all the difference. Think about the last
Speaker 1: time you made a mistake. Maybe it was something small,
Speaker 1: a careless comment, a forgotten task. Maybe it was something bigger,
Speaker 1: a wrong decision, a broken relation, a failed attempt at
Speaker 1: something that mattered. When you thought about it, what was
Speaker 1: your first reaction? Was it compassion or was it something
Speaker 1: more like? How could I be so stupid? What's wrong
Speaker 1: with me? I should have known better? That reaction, that harsh,
Speaker 1: immediate judgment, is the opposite of compassion, and it doesn't
Speaker 1: help you do better next time. Research shows that self compassion,
Speaker 1: not self criticism leads to better performance, more resilience, and
Speaker 1: greater willingness to try again after failure. When you're kind
Speaker 1: to yourself about a mistake, you learn faster because you're
Speaker 1: not wasting energy on shame. You're free to look at
Speaker 1: what happened clearly and make a different choice next time.
Speaker 1: And you're also free to forgive yourself, which is something
Speaker 1: many of us find incredibly difficult. I think about all
Speaker 1: the things we carry, the regrets that visit us at
Speaker 1: three am, the mistakes we replay over and over as
Speaker 1: if punishing ourselves could somehow undo them. The guilt we
Speaker 1: hold on too, like a stone in our chest. And
Speaker 1: I want to ask you, is that guilt serving you?
Speaker 1: Is the self punishment helping or is it just adding
Speaker 1: more weight to an already heavy load. You deserve to
Speaker 1: put some of that down, not to forget what happened,
Speaker 1: but to stop hurting yourself for it, to say I
Speaker 1: did the best I could with what I knew at
Speaker 1: the time, and I'm going to be different now. But
Speaker 1: I don't have to keep leading for the past. Let's
Speaker 1: try a practice. I want you to place your hand
Speaker 1: on your chest, feel the warmth of your palm against
Speaker 1: your body, feel your heart beat underneath. This is your hand,
Speaker 1: this is your heart, This is your life. Now say
Speaker 1: to you yourself silently. May I be kind to myself.
Speaker 1: May I accept myself as I am. May I have
Speaker 1: the courage to grow. May I find peace in this moment.
Speaker 1: Let those words settle, and if you like to repeat them,
Speaker 1: feel free. May I be kind to myself. May I
Speaker 1: accept myself as I am. May I have the courage
Speaker 1: to grow. May I find peace in this moment? Think, Think, think,
Speaker 1: May the let those words sink in. Not as wishes
Speaker 1: or prayers, as permissions. You are giving yourself permission to
Speaker 1: be human, to be imperfect, to be in process, to
Speaker 1: be growing and stumbling and trying again. That is what
Speaker 1: being alive looks like. And you are doing it beautifully,
Speaker 1: not perfectly, not without pain, but beautifully because every time
Speaker 1: you choose kindness over criticism, you are building something inside yourself,
Speaker 1: a foundation of self love that no failure can shake,
Speaker 1: and that foundation will hold you through every season of
Speaker 1: your life. Think about a child learning to walk. They fall,
Speaker 1: they get up, they fall again, they get up again,
Speaker 1: and no one, No one looks at that child and
Speaker 1: says Why can't you walk yet? What's wrong with you?
Speaker 1: Every one else can walk? You must be lazy or stupid.
Speaker 1: We cheer them on, We celebrate every wobbly step. We
Speaker 1: hold out our hands and say you can do it. Here.
Speaker 1: Can you give yourself that same encouragement? Can you be
Speaker 1: the parent to your own soul that you need it
Speaker 1: when you are small? There's a Japanese art form called
Speaker 1: kinsuki repairing broken pottery with gold. When a piece of
Speaker 1: pottery breaks, instead of throwing it away or hiding the cracks,
Speaker 1: they fill them with gold. The cracks become part of
Speaker 1: the beauty. The break becomes part of the history. The
Speaker 1: peace becomes more beautiful because it was broken, not in
Speaker 1: spite of it. And I want you to see yourself
Speaker 1: the same way. Cracks, your breaks, your failures. They're not
Speaker 1: evidence of your inadequacy. They're evidence of your life. And
Speaker 1: when you meet them with compassion instead of shame, they
Speaker 1: become gold. You're journaling prompt today, write a letter to yourself,
Speaker 1: not from your critical voice, from your compassionate voice. What
Speaker 1: would the most loving part of you say to the
Speaker 1: part that's struggling. What would it say about your mistakes,
Speaker 1: your fears, your imperfections. What would it want you to know?
Speaker 1: If writing a letter feels like too much, try this.
Speaker 1: Speak out loud, as if you're talking to a beloved friend.
Speaker 1: Tell yourself what you need to hear. Say the words
Speaker 1: you've been waiting for someone else to say, and let
Speaker 1: yourself receive them. Let them in. You don't have to
Speaker 1: earn them. They're yours simply because you're here. Think as
Speaker 1: you want. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.
Speaker 1: Whatever you wrote, whatever you've felt, hold it gently. You
Speaker 1: don't have to believe it right away. You don't have
Speaker 1: to transform overnight. You just have to be willing to
Speaker 1: try to catch the critical voice and say, not now,
Speaker 1: I'm practicing something different, and to replace it, even briefly,
Speaker 1: with kindness. That's all. Compassion is a practice, a moment
Speaker 1: of softness in a world that often demands hardness, a
Speaker 1: booman of warmth in a life that sometimes feels cold.
Speaker 1: And those moments add up. They change you slowly in
Speaker 1: ways you might not notice at first, But one day
Speaker 1: you'll catch yourself being kind to yourself and you'll think, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm doing it, I'm actually doing it, and that will
Speaker 1: be enough. As we close our time together. I want
Speaker 1: to acknowledge something showing up for yourself sitting here, doing
Speaker 1: this practice, exploring your inner world. That takes courage. It
Speaker 1: would be easier to stay busy, It would be easier
Speaker 1: to numb. It would be easier to keep moving and
Speaker 1: never stop long enough to feel what you're feeling. But
Speaker 1: you chose to be here, and that choice matters more
Speaker 1: than you know. It matters because every time you choose
Speaker 1: presence over distraction, you choosing yourself, and you deserve to
Speaker 1: be chosen by yourself, especially by yourself. I hope the
Speaker 1: series has been a gentle companion for you. I hope
Speaker 1: the stillness you found here follows you into your days.
Speaker 1: And I hope you remember always that you are worthy
Speaker 1: of your own compassion, not because you've earned it, because
Speaker 1: you exist, and that in itself is a remarkable thing.
Speaker 1: You are a miracle of biology and time and chance.
Speaker 1: You are here, alive, conscious, feeling, and that is extraordinary.
Speaker 1: Don't let the critic tell you otherwise. Listen instead to
Speaker 1: the quieter voice, the one that has been there all along,
Speaker 1: beneath the noise, the one that says, simply, gently, beautifully,
Speaker 1: you are enough. You have always been enough. Thank you
Speaker 1: for being here with me. Thank you for your honesty,
Speaker 1: your openness, and your willingness to sit in the stillness.
Speaker 1: I'll see you again soon. Until then, be gentle with yourself.
Speaker 1: You're doing better than you think. This episode was crafted
Speaker 1: with a I assistance, guided by real human intention, to
Speaker 1: help you cultivate compassion toward yourself.