LL #2 - Why I resisted self-compassion for so long

Hi, everyone and welcome to an other love letter. If you're new here, welcome. And if you're already part of the sexyfied family, welcome back. Today, I wanted to share why I resisted self-compassion for so long and how I stopped doing it. So last week we discussed how to start stepping out of self hate. And the often overlooked step of self awareness. So the next step would be self-compassion or self-respect depending on how you see things, we'll talk about that in another episode. But before we start with big ideas and concepts. First, let's recognize that you did a great job already. 


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You did a great job surviving your childhood. If your childhood had traumatic events, you survived it and you're still here. Somehow functioning because you're listening to this podcast. And even if it didn't, you still survived the mess of the playground, people at school, the broken friendships, the mean classmates... who said being a child was easy? And your survived that. 


You did a great job surviving your teenage years. One foot in childhood, one foot in adulthood and you in the middle. Can we talk about how uncomfortable that is? One foot in, one foot out. Hormones waking up, body changing... And you trying, to figure out how you want to live in the middle. You survived that. 


You did a great job, surviving a twisted world, telling women all the time, whatever they do, or no matter how hard they try, they will never be enough. It's messy. It's scary. And yet, you're still here. You could have dropped everything. You survived. 


You did a great job living your early adult years, trying to make sense of all this mess around you and figure out what you want to do with your life. Discovering you learned a lot of useless crap and tried to let it go. Sometimes with success. And sometimes less success. 


You are doing a great job living in this weird time we're living in. With an amazing world full of possibilities when you are on the lucky side of the planet. And so much contrasts on the other. Like what the actual fuck. Just the fact that you are here and haven't given up already is amazing. 


And you are doing a great job committing to more self-awareness even, if it's just by listening to this podcast. So you did, and you are still doing a great job. 


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And yet. Maybe there's a little voice somewhere saying "how dare you acknowledge you did a great job? Who do you think you are? You're so full of yourself. Pretentious, boastful, little piece of crap. If you dare to own for one second, you're more than an insignificant and unworthy insect, you will end up with a big balloon of ego as your head, and nobody will like you anymore". Yup. That's kind of a really mean self-talk. So maybe when we talk about self-compassion, a part of you is like " Sorry, not an option for me". 


I'll tell you in a next episode what is really going on behind the curtain of our mean self-talk. But for now, one question. 


Would you yell at a child who just learned how to walk that they suck. They should know how to run already. I hope you're not doing that. You would celebrate them and encourage them to keep going. 


This would help them build their self-confidence, their curiosity, their willingness to learn, their creativity, what they can do, what they can achieve in whatever shape or form. And, in the end, as grownups, aren't we just children in adult suits ?. 


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Celebration creates confidence and trust in your abilities. Because celebrations help you see that you did great. Whatever you did. You succeeded because you did the thing. You survived that meeting just because you reached the end of it. You sent that email that felt challenging. You made it to your yoga mat. You survived your shitty day at work. You listened to great music. You had an amazing conversation with a friend. 


Gratitude is great. Celebration is amazing. 


Because celebration celebrates how you did the thing, instead of the thing happening. Feel free to do both, though. If your gratitude practice makes you feel good, go ahead. Just popping that out for people who don't resonate with gratitude. 


And guess what... when you celebrate, you start showing yourself self-compassion. Talk about a hack. And when you do that on a regular basis, suddenly you can start having compassion for all the parts of yourself that had been left in the dark for so long. All the parts you felt disconnected from. And when you start having compassion for all the parts of yourself... boom. Just like that, self-hate loosens its grip on you. Bit by bit. 


You can get celebrated by others. It's always good to receive something nice from others. But let's not forget one thing. 


You can get as much outside validation as you want, if you don't validate your experience, AKA if you don't celebrate yourself, it will never be enough. Inner validation is you taking care of your beautiful wall, painting it, cleaning it. Outside validation is the painting you can hang on it. You can also have a beautiful place without any paintings, just saying. But the painting will be definitely nicer on the clean wall. 


So start celebrating yourself regularly. Maybe thinking about three things that when well, in your day before going to sleep. Take the time to think about them. And feel them into your body. You. Did. That. And just that, it's something to celebrate. And watch your process and fault. 


With love and pleasure, because being alive is sexy, welcome to your sexyfied life. 


If you found this episode, interesting, feel free to share it with a loved one, and I'm sure you already know what to do to spread the sexified magic to the world. So thank you in advance for subscribing to the podcast and rating it on your favorite podcast platform. Thank you so much for tuning in today and I'll see you next time.