Episode 11 - the Attitudes of Mindfulness, Compassion

In the last in this current series, where we discuss the Attitudes of Mindfulness, we cover kindness and compassion. Alan and Kelly talk about that most difficult of emotions self-compassion, and practical tips on practising this critical aspect of our lives.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:15

Hello and welcome to another edition of the Lose Your Mind podcast with Alan and Kelly. Today we're going to do the very last of the mindful attitudes that we've been doing. And if you've been paying attention, as you should have been doing to all of our podcasts before, you'll have known that we'll have been going through all of those mindful attitudes. And today we're going to talk about compassion. The very final one. Yeah, I think of all the attitudes we've talked about, I think this is the hardest one for people to get their heads around. And what when we talk about compassion, we should probably just define it as well. Because, you know, I think very often we think about self-compassion or compassion for others. But people tend to focus on the latter. They tend to think of compassion as being something for other people, uh, but not for themselves. And uh I think what mindfulness does is it eventually gets you to be kinder to yourself. Um, and one of your famous sayings is about stripping away all the layers. So this is a classic example of stripping away all the layers of all the criticisms that you give yourself, and just take that all back to the bare wood, so to speak, and say, you know what, I actually look and feel a lot better than than I think I do.

SPEAKER_01 2:12

It does. It's very important that we strip those layers back. And I think with mindfulness, we're bringing awareness, aren't we, to the experience, to where we are. And I think with compassion, once you're aware of um where you are, the compassion enables you to connect. So compassion is just building on that connection with yourself, with the outside surroundings. And I was listening to something not too long ago about compassion because I think we all find it difficult to just give ourselves that space to be caring and loving towards us. But quite often when you face the shame, and this isn't guilt, it's it was this whole sort of TED talk around um when you sit with the shame of like how you feel, or if you feel embarrassed by something. For example, um, when I was younger and my mum had mental health issues, for example, I could not put any compassion around that at all because it was viewed as a shameful thing, I suppose. Like you want to hide what other people think, um, you don't want people to know. But when you're open and vulnerable and you can sit with that and you make space to allow the connections and the compassion to come in, don't you? But it all starts with that awareness and then like sort of building on it so that you can be compassionate because you wouldn't speak to yourself um intentionally in a bad way, but you wouldn't go out on the street and give someone a hard time for not doing something, would you? But we quite often criticize ourselves all the time, and we're just not really able to be kind if you don't if you don't give space for that compassion, I suppose.

SPEAKER_00 3:58

Yeah, I mean you're right about um the things that we say to ourselves we would never dream of saying to somebody else. You know, I mean, the amount of times I just told myself I'm useless or I can't do this, I can't do that. And you wouldn't say that to a friend or a family member. You would just maybe you might think that, but you'd choose different words and you know, just be a little bit more encouraging, I suppose. Um, and yeah, that that vulnerability thing, um, and that does, I mean, there's that Brene Brown video, isn't there? The power of vulnerability, and you know, she's got um quite an amusing way of of um bringing that across. But you know, what she's saying is if you're vulnerable, it can help you connect, and then when you get that connection, then you get the compassion too, you know, between you and somebody else, or between you and yourself.

SPEAKER_01 4:55

Yeah, she um I love her actually, Brennan Brown, and she did another uh video which was talking about self-compassion versus self-esteem. So, quite the summary of it was that quite often people can get confused that self-compassion and self-esteem are the same thing. But with self-esteem, you've got that judgment, that striving, because you're wanting to get somewhere. So your self-esteem essentially is measured on what you've done or where you sit in the pecking order of people at work or at school, whereas self-compassion is that love and kindness towards yourself, isn't it? And that's why within the mindful attitudes and why rightfully so it's been added on and is now part of them, um, is also sometimes called generosity, isn't it? Because it's being generous to yourself with your own time. And yeah, I think we are all looking for connection. Everybody wants to feel connected to something or someone, and I don't think you can fully be connected to anything unless you make space to feel connected to yourself.

SPEAKER_00 6:00

Yeah, absolutely. Um, I think you're right on that self-esteem thing. I hadn't really thought about that, but I was thinking, you know, self-esteem is about, in a sense, dragging yourself up to a certain position, isn't it? As you say, comparing with other people, um, whereas self-compassion is all about saying, well, it's okay where I am. You know, whatever I might think of myself, what others might think of me, it's okay, and that you know, it's okay not to be okay. Um, which is important.

SPEAKER_01 6:36

Yeah, because I think a lot of people, if you said self-compassion, um would think of that as selfish, wouldn't they?

SPEAKER_00 6:48

Yeah, and sel self-indulgent as well.

SPEAKER_01 6:51

Yeah, that's a better word for it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:53

Well, no, I mean selfish is right. I I suppose, yeah, you could you could argue that people might have a distorted view of themselves by saying, you know, well, I'm okay when they're not okay. So it might be, you know, I'm you know, it could be like a murderer, you know, it says, Oh, it's all right, you know, I've I've got a reason for that, you know, I had a terrible upbringing, and you know, but but it's so there are obviously moral limits, aren't there, you know, but um it it's not it's not about being selfish, it's about being open to what is the truth and saying that's okay. And it doesn't mean you you can't build your self-esteem and aim for something else, but as we've always we always say on mindfulness and the attitudes is start where you are.

SPEAKER_01 7:43

We must, because that's the only place we can come from, isn't it? Like John Cabot's always, we only have moments to live, and they're the moments we're in now.

SPEAKER_00 7:53

This is true, and these moments are flying by, aren't they?

SPEAKER_01 7:57

I know, and I think if we don't practice self-compassion and allow space for that, I mean, why is it that we always fixate on the things that we haven't done? So, for example, even with me trying to get my own business off the ground, there might be things that I've done well, and I was discussing this with someone last week, but I'm always fixating on I haven't finished that, I haven't done this, and giving myself a hard time because we cling on um to those thought patterns, don't we? But yeah, if you're talking to someone else, like if you were saying to me, oh, I've done X, Y, and Z, but I haven't done this yet, the first thing I would say is, Oh, well, look at what you have done, that's amazing, or oh, that's that's great. But to internalize and speak to yourself in that way, it just doesn't because sadly, it isn't the natural way currently. Hopefully, over time things will change as more people open up to mindfulness and see how important this is. I mean, hopefully the whole way the world exists could turn around and it would just be a natural thing. So people are more kind and loving and open. Um, but sadly, back to the layers that I do love talking about, we have we all build over time. Those layers, those layers are, don't they?

SPEAKER_00 9:16

Yeah, and I think it's in our evolution too. We we are wired to the negative because especially when we're under stress, we're looking out for negative things because we want to fix them and move on. So you automatically focus on the things that you might not have finished, you know, because they might your brain might be saying, that's holding me back, not the things you've done really, really well. But as you say, you know, another person might say to you, you've done amazingly well with that, you know, and now you've just got a bit more to do. Do you know what I mean? It's just a different framing thing, isn't it? But yeah, well, we're at well, unfortunately, we're at the mercy of you know, our natural selection, aren't we? And it's being aware of that, and then you can I think the mind has incredible potential, and if we can use it the way we should be using it, you know, there's no limit really.

SPEAKER_01 10:08

Yeah, because we have to let ourselves love wholeheartedly, don't we? And you can't do that without self-agrement. So we've obviously spoken about the attitudes, haven't we? Um, and we've worked the way through them. But I think it's really important that we touch on those other attitudes because it's a bit of a journey in itself, really, isn't it? Each attitude you're trying to practice, whether that be self-compassion or patience or non-judgment, they all interlink into each other. And when you think about self-compassion, you can wrap all those other attitudes in. Um, you need to have a little bit of patience with yourself, you know, you need to come at it with a beginner's mind, you know, without striving. And that's why we've gone through this journey of explaining each and every one. Hopefully, everyone that's listening can kind of see our message and how we try to explain um the importance of mindfulness by breaking it down. And um, we've obviously come to the last of the attitudes in our sort of first series, if you like, that going forward we're going to be sort of sharing more things, aren't we? With to include meditation and other tips and ways of being mindful. So I don't know if you had any other thoughts on the attitudes we've done so far, including self-compassion that you wanted to share.

SPEAKER_00 11:34

What you mean, wise words of wisdom? Wise words of wisdom is um well, I would just like to say that I've I've really enjoyed this season of Mindful Attitudes. I think it's a great way to explain to people what mindfulness is all about. Once you get past the first usual thing of, well, it's not about clearing the mind and it's not about being zen all the time. Um, you know, it is about understanding yourself better and understanding what reality is. And so, and I and I think there's a lot of we've discussed this as we've gone through the series, there's a lot of overlap between each one, and that's the way life is anyway, isn't it? You know, nothing is ever clearly delineated from everything else. So I just think we've um I hope we've had a good stab uh going through all of these things and explaining them, and it's been engaging for people. What we'd really like to do um in the next set of these sessions of these podcasts is to do some practical stuff and have some, you know, more discussion about, you know, where where does it you know, where can it really help you? Where does it go wrong? How can you, you know, how can you come up, get over difficulties with this kind of stuff? Because I think that's what we're all facing in life, aren't we? We can read the theory, um, but we also have to get on in practice, and it's not always as easy as you think.

SPEAKER_01 13:06

You know, yeah, so essentially we've set the foundations, and then going forward, we're gonna share what we know to help those listening. I mean, there's so many different things, isn't there? Like movement, things that you do, daily journaling, music, meditation, practice. So over the coming weeks and months, we'll be sharing a little bit more with you so that you can explore practice in this and making it part of your daily life. And you'll always have the attitude episodes to refer back to as and when you need.

SPEAKER_00 13:37

They'll always be there, won't they?

SPEAKER_01 13:39

They will. So I think we've probably covered how important it is to be compassionate toward yourself, as difficult as it is, but it's all about practice and it's all about just coming back to it time and time again as many times as you need to, and just showing yourself a little love, not being an ashamed of the way that your life has panned out and just being open with who you are, because each one of us is individual, and for that, we're all amazing.

SPEAKER_00 14:11

We are indeed. You yeah, I mean, we should listen to the self-talk, shouldn't we? If you could, you know, and you hear somebody say, just listen to yourself, you know. Maybe you should just listen to yourself a little bit and even do a little bit of um practical, um, formal meditation. You can sit down and think, well, what thoughts are going through my head? What are the patterns of those thoughts? Are you criticizing yourself and is it fair criticism? Because most of the time it isn't, you know, life's tough and we should give ourselves a break.

SPEAKER_01 14:40

I know we all think that we're not enough at some point.

SPEAKER_00 14:44

Yeah, it's a killer.

SPEAKER_01 14:46

And uh, my favorite sentence in the book, The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse, which I've shared a billion times with however many people I can, is when he says, Um, what's your best discovery? And then he responds that you're enough as you are. And I can finally say it without crying now, which is a bit of a nipple, but I think because we go through life possibly thinking that we're not enough, yeah. It's really difficult to be like bring that self-compassion, is it? Isn't it? And just accept, no, I I'm okay. I'm like, I'm doing all right.

SPEAKER_00 15:20

So that's right.

SPEAKER_01 15:22

We all feel it, I'm sure.

SPEAKER_00 15:24

And what a lovely way to bring this to a close.

SPEAKER_01 15:28

I agree.

SPEAKER_00 15:29

Well, we're all enough, really, underneath it all. So thank you so much, Kelly, for these uh sessions. And thank you to everybody for bearing with us and listening and uh look out for some more lose your mind podcasts coming up in the future.

unknown 15:47

In season two.

SPEAKER_00 15:49

In season two. Bye for now.

unknown 15:51

Bye.