Authenticity, Awakening, compassion and trust, freedom, Inspiration, Joy, Mindfulness and Meditation

How kindness might change your life

As some of you may know, over the past 15 years I have been privileged to sit in a big armchair and speak regularly with a gifted Jungian analyst. This is not because I believe I’m so messed up that I need professional help, but because I believe in offering myself a safe and compassionate space to work out my fears and issues – so that they don’t take over my life.

Why am I telling you this now?

A few weeks ago I was on a Zoom call with this analyst and having a very challenging day – feeling overwhelmed by the the state of my world and the world in general – and so in desperation I asked her a question that perhaps all of us have asked this year: “what is it all for and why are we here and what is the POINT?!”

In her wise way she told me that everyone’s answer may be different, but she believed that it had something to do with kindness.

That at the core of it all was the journey of learning to be kind to ourselves and to each other.

That simple.

I wasn’t sure in that moment how I felt about that answer. It seemed far too easy a response for a world and a life that at times seem unbearably messy and complicated. So I sat with it, mulled it over as I drank my tea, rested into the simplicity of it on my walk in the woods.

And finally I felt the truth and the warmth of it surging into my heart.

I became aware in that moment of all the ways that I wasn’t kind – especially to myself.  I could see how even when life was at it’s most challenging, I seemed to take that opportunity to be the most unkind to myself. And it was an unconscious habit I’d been honing for a long time.

And I know how it feels, how much lighter my life and world feels, when I AM kind to myself.

So for me, something needed to change.

There is well-worn saying out there that bears repeating here:

‘If you can’t be kind, be quiet.”

And we most definitely can apply this to ourselves – not just that we should be kind to others but that we can first and foremost be kind to ourselves.

The mean voice in your head that tells you you are not enough – it needs to start being kind or it needs to shut up. Because all the nasty things it’s telling you – they are simply not true.

So not only is this voice unkind, it’s also lying to you.

I have had conversations with my negative voice, and recently they go like this:

Voice: “You can’t do that, it’s impossible, you will fail, you will never be good enough, you are too fat, too lazy, too old and you will never be anything or do anything important.”

And sometimes, this can go on for weeks and I don’t even realize that I’m telling myself these cruel, false things. Relentlessly, on repeat, mowing me down day by day.

Me: “Oh you’re such a liar. Be quiet and go away. You cannot live here if you’re going to tear me down all day. Seriously, shut up. And also – goodbye.”

Because there is no more time or room for this negative, unkind, debilitating voice in my head or in my life.

This voice does not speak the truth.
So it’s over.
I am awake now.
This voice is not in charge anymore, I am.

I know that my ego would like me to believe that kindness – especially when offered to myself – is weak, insipid and even stupid. This is how it keeps the negative beliefs churning away in my mind and running (and sometimes ruining) my life.

These days I am literally taking back my life one kind word at a time.

So please, let all your words in your head be kind.
No judgement or guilt or merciless nitpicking, just relentless tenderness.
Maybe Jewel and my therapist were right along, and

In the end, only kindness matters.

Sing it with me.

After I have banished the voice of fear and judgement and perfectionism (sometimes I have to do this several times a day), I replace it with: “Shona, you got this. You are already doing it. It’s OK to rest and recharge, to nap. You do not have to do it all perfectly or do it the way Betty is doing it. You are already and always have been enough. Keep going, I believe in you. And Shona, I’m telling you this because I love you.”

“Empowerment is realizing how you are the one who needs to say the things
that you’ve waited your entire life to hear.” – 
Matt Kahn

And that’s it – simply put. Once you start being kind to yourself, you will feel an enormous weight being lifted off your shoulders. You will feel free.  You will feel like you’re waking up from a dream and perhaps you will even understand the point of it all.

And, as a side-effect, in offering kindness and compassion to yourself, it becomes far easier to offer those things to others. Because you know how, and you’ve had practice.

So who’s in charge in your head? The voice of fear and lack and criticism, or the voice of hope and love and kindness?

The choice is our own, and always has been.
And this also takes time and patience and practice…so keep offering yourself relentless tenderness.

I hope that together we can build a better world for all of us, inside and out, by choosing kindness every time.

 

Authenticity, Awakening, courage, Joy, Mindfulness and Meditation, Women's Work

My struggle to be grateful and how it changed my life

Six years ago, as I was preparing to leave my corporate job and struggling to figure out how and when and why it was all going to work out, I was moved to rekindle my life- long love affair with meditation.

In my struggle to have it all, and do it all (you probably know this story: I tried to work full time at a demanding corporate job, commute into the city, enroll the girls in every evening activity going, and have the perfect home and the perfect outfit) I had become so detached from who I really was and what I really wanted that I felt almost numb.

I knew that one of the easiest ways to reconnect with myself was through the peace and presence of meditation and that when beginning a meditation practice, one of the best ways in is through cultivating genuine gratitude.  I knew that living in gratitude would open my heart and guide my thoughts through the challenges that lay ahead.

What I had not anticipated was how difficult it was going to be for me to feel grateful…for anything.

So, faced with a troubled marriage, mounting debt, numbing depression and a career crisis (so let’s say it felt like my life was literally teetering on the edge of destruction) I sat and tried to connect with what I was grateful for. And it was so unexpectedly hard.  For so long I had allowed myself to focus on what was wrong: wrong with the house, with my husband, with my children, with their school, with the town I lived in, with my work, with the car, with my life, with everything.

I had allowed myself to get into the habit of looking for flaws, and so my life was always full of problems and nothing was ever good enough just as it was.

I rarely experienced the joy of just resting in the life I had built and embracing it with all it’s beauty and cracks.   I can only guess how difficult I must have been to live with at this time, for I can certainly see now how miserable I was making myself and probably everyone around me in my carefully honed pursuit of all that was not just so.

As I sat on my meditation cushion, sometimes with tears streaming down my face, wondering how in the world I had gotten so off course, I kept reaching for gratitude, because I was determined that I was not going to live this way any longer.

I started with things that seemed obvious, but which I unquestionably took for granted. I started with simply being grateful that I had a place to call home.  That my children were healthy.  That we had great neighbors and lived in a safe community. That I had clean water to drink…and coffee.  These are things we can so easily take for granted, but for many they are luxuries to aspire to.

And I kept listing and repeating in my meditations: “I am grateful for this…I am grateful for that….”  And it took a long time, literally weeks, to actually feel what I could identify as genuine gratitude.  I had really gone to the dark side.

I could list the things I was grateful for but it wasn’t reaching my heart.

In truth, for a long time my meditations went like this: “I am grateful for my home…but it needs new flooring and the front door needs painted and my husband hasn’t fixed the railing on the porch yet and here’s another thing about him that frustrates me…”  Yes — it was ugly. But still, I was not willing to live in my self-created darkness anymore.  Only I could dig myself out of this hole.

So I would replace my thoughts with: “I am grateful for my home, with it’s big windows to let in the sun, with it’s old turn of the century charm, which was restored and renovated by my husband, who worked hard at it and did a good job, and I am grateful for that too.”

And then finally, after weeks, probably months, of working at it, I started to feel the energy of gratitude in my body.  It was a gentle hum.  It finally reached my heart and opened it to all the beauty in my life.  Gratitude slowly lifted me out of the black hole I was in, it loosened the crushing grip of my negative thoughts.

Finally, it was gratitude that gave me the power, the light, and the inspiration to find my way forward.

To realize I already had so much in my life that was so good, and I wanted to cherish every single bit of it.

I tell this story in the hope that it may inspire you, if you are in a dark place, to reach for gratitude.  And also to remind myself of the strength and courage it takes to change – to change our thoughts, to change long-standing habits that no longer (or perhaps never) served us, to change our lives.  And to assert that no matter how long you’ve traveled in the wrong direction, you can always turn around.

With gratitude,

Xo Shona