Ep. 10 - Self-Compassion Minute

The Self-Compassion Minute is a super short message of hope and inspiration to help you through your day. It's a new series that I hope to drop once a week, separate from my regular podcast episode which uploads on Wednesdays (except for this week).

The messages are meant to serve as examples of a more compassionate way of working through your struggles. Although the voice is mine, imagine you are speaking these words to yourself.

Today's Self-Compassion Minute is for those times you wonder if you have it in you to keep pushing through your fears. This is especially relevant if you're working to break a particularly painful pattern of behavior. You've been doing courageous work, but you feel like every time you process and push through one level, a fresh level of fear appears.

As always, your fear response kicks in, but this time your body's call to retreat seems really strong. You're tired of always doing growth work. It can't be "working" if you keep butting up against more fears, right?

This clip is for you.

Growth fatigue has come up quite a bit lately in conversations with clients, and in my own growth work as well.

This is where self-compassion can be really powerful.

Self-compassion means being there for ourselves during painful times, without judgment or harsh self-criticism, acknowledging our humanness with kindness and compassion, and reminding ourselves of what we're trying to do.

We often mistakenly believe self-compassion means giving ourselves an out. In fact, there is a growing body of empirical evidence suggesting that those who practice self-compassion during difficult times bounce back faster, are more emotionally resilient and spend far less time in rumination.

Doing this work actually strengthens our resolve to continue moving TOWARD our goals.

As Kristin Neff, Ph.D. states, this is when we choose to be our best ally or our worst enemy.

Take a listen, and then email me or DM me on Instagram (contact info below). I'd love to hear what you think. Until then, have a beautiful day.

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Self-compassion resources:

Website: Kristin Neff, Ph.D: https://self-compassion.org/

Article: "The 5 Myths of Self-Compassion: What Keeps Us From Being Kinder to Ourselves?" by Kristin Neff, Ph.D. (originally published in Psychotherapy Networker)

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Original intro/outro music by JMW.

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To learn more about what I do, my coaching philosophy and how to work with me, email me at [email protected] or visit my website at https://kariwatterson.com.

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For more mindset thoughts and tips, follow me on social media:

Instagram: @kari_mindsetcoach
Twitter: @KaWatterson