3 Steps to Soothe the Brutal Inner Critic | S1E004

Linda Orsini: 00:00:08

Hello and welcome to A Call for Love. I believe the most powerful gift you can offer yourself is to give and receive love more freely. I'm your host, Linda Orsini, meditation guidance spiritual coach. Everyone has the desire to be seen, heard, respected and loved. The journey to becoming more connected to your greater purpose lies within the ability to live from the deep source of love within you. Let's begin.

Linda Orsini: 00:00:42

Welcome, I'm so happy you're here. Today I want to share with you a practice that's really close to my heart. And it's called mindfulness, self compassion. If you are into mindfulness, you will have come across this concept. As a yoga teacher and mindfulness guide, I really encountered many people. And throughout the practices, I just noticed how hard everyone is on themselves. We are just so critical of ourselves, we're so hard on ourselves. And if we actually wrote out our thoughts on paper, and how we talk to ourselves, if we were to use those same words, we would never ever have any friends. If we use those words on others. Our self talk, our inner critic can be just absolutely brutal. So I always encourage ourselves and others, to really be mindful to really offer ourselves self compassion. And I had a neighbor, Liz, who was so sweet. She said to me, what she didn't really understand what self compassion was. She thought, Well, does that mean feeling sorry for yourself? And I said, thank you for offering that question up to me, because it just goes to show me that I have a clear concept of what self compassion is, but not everyone else does. So I would like to really place this into a practical example.

Linda Orsini: 00:02:08

Just before the holidays, I was invited to a beautiful evening of music and meditation, through frequency and vibration with Cynthia Konopka. And she had hosted it at her condo building. And in her invitation, which was very beautiful. It said, come for this beautiful evening. She's a violinist and vocal singer. She says, come for this beautiful evening. You can have pictures around the tree. And also during meditation, you may get a little cool. So feel free to bring a blanket. And if you know anything about me, whenever I hear cold, and blanket, I think cozy because my whole objective in life is to be cozy. I just like being comfortable. It's just who I am. So when I heard that I took it upon myself to ignore the prospect of picture taking in front of a tree, and I decided to wear my new pink bunny outfit. And when I say pink bunny, it's I love yoga attire. And I had bought a really pretty cozy warm pink jacket. So I call it my pink bunny. So I took it upon myself to wear that to the occasion. I parked I dropped, walked into the building. And I was like, Oh, this is really, really beautiful. And I walked further down the hall and I opened the room to where we were where Cynthia was offering the event. And it was absolutely stunning. And it was gorgeous. And my jaw dropped. Because all around me were people, women beautifully dressed in gorgeous gowns, very well prepared for a beautiful evening, and I in my pink bunny outfit was absolutely horrified. I know it's not a big problem in in all the problems that are going on in the world. But what it did to my self esteem was a big problem. So I looked around, and I didn't know what to do. I kind of looked down at myself, and I thought wow, Linda, you really mess that up. You did not dress appropriately for this. But because I had just arrived and the event was beginning very soon, I couldn't really turn back and I didn't want to turn back. I was really looking forward to the evening. I really beat myself up because I was not dressed appropriately nor prepared for this beautiful event. This is where mindfulness self compassion really came into play. Have, I had to dig deep and say to myself, Linda, are you going to be miserable Are you going to bring this occasion and, and the glorious event around you are you going to allow it to bring yourself down. And I didn't want it to because I'm a very positive and upbeat person. So I thought, you know, I can overcome this, I will just grin and bear it, I will allow my joy to supersede how I look. And I proceeded in the evening, but it was really clear that I was not prepared for the evening. For what it deserved. Actually, it was a really beautiful evening, and quite eloquent. And I felt very self conscious. So this is the components of mindfulness, self compassion, which is founded on Kristin neffs work. And there are three principles, they do not have to go in any particular order. But these are the three core values of mindfulness, self compassion, and the first one is a sense of presence. It's a sense of mindfulness. So it's tapping into what your thoughts, emotions, and your sensations are feeling without resistance or avoidance. So it's really being present everything that's going on within you. And because I was so unhappy with myself and feeling so self conscious, as I said before, I wanted to really label all my feelings. So I decided not only was I all those, but I also felt foolish, I felt really actually humiliated and even mortified to a certain extent. With naming these emotions, I could I love what my other sister says, she says, name it to claim it. And I felt like naming and labeling these emotions will just allow me to soften into the mindfulness of them. So I feel self conscious, so I feel embarrassed. These are my feelings, what am I going to do with them? In mindfulness, we can often blow the situation out of proportion, which was what I was doing my ruminating thoughts, which often whenever we ruminate our thoughts, it narrows our focus and exaggerates our experience. So my ruminating thoughts were like, how could you do this, you knew that when they said pictures in front of a tree, it could mean that you wanted to dress something, dress a little better, you knew this, Linda, and you did not act upon it, you chose to focus on what you wanted. And hence, this is where you are right now. And I was going through all these ruminating thoughts.

Linda Orsini: 00:07:49

Now, this was what I was wearing. But for you, you might find another circumstance that you can relate to in another area of your life, where you're in an event, or in a place where you feel embarrassed for whatever reason. And this is what I was going through. Everyone else was laughing and having a great time, no one else seemed to notice or even care about me except myself. So I acknowledged that I was feeling about that about myself. And then I love this next core practice of mindfulness, self compassion, and that is self kindness. You know, I knew what I was feeling. It was probably, it was absolutely blowing out of proportion. So I wanted to offer myself loving kindness. So instead of attacking and berating myself for being inadequate, I decided that I was going to comfort myself, my bruised ego, and just soothe myself with loving kindness. My mother, who has since passed, she always was such an advocate of lipstick. And I realized, wow, I didn't put any lipstick on, I have lipstick in my purse. Why don't I just sneak to the ladies room, have put some lipstick on, it always made my mum feel better. So it will make you feel better. So off I went, I applied my lipstick. And I chuckled actually, I when I looked in the mirror, I just thought of my mum, and that really warmed my heart. So really soften the edges of what I was experiencing at the moment.

Linda Orsini: 00:09:24

In any case, I went back to the party. And of course, because I had this new look, I was starting to really enjoy myself and I could let it go. But then we started walking around and we started mingling more and I started feeling self conscious again. And the last component is common humanity. So I had to remind myself that everyone makes mistakes and dressing inadequately for the occasion is not the end of the world. There's much many more much more impressing issues. is going on in the world, then how I was dressing. And I felt kind of shallow that I was so concerned about this. But it was just, and this is the thing, this is what I was going through, I was judging myself, I was going back like a ping pong ball. Why are you feeling that like this is so shallow to think like this, but then feeling out of place and feeling self conscious. So I was really ying yang, back and forth. In this mindset, when I had to tell myself, that feeling embarrassed at the end of the day, is, is the least concern I should be really worrying about. Because no one else is really going to remember or care. I am not my body. I am the soul within my body. It's not what I'm wearing on the outside. It's the vibration that's resonating from from within me. So I began to really concentrate on being loving, kind, and feeling part of this experience together. Because when I recognize that other people may make mistakes, I can forgive myself. Wow, is that ever hard to forgive yourself? I'm not sure which is easier, forgiving others are forgiving yourself. That is definitely another topic I will dive into on another episode. Because I think that's just something worth reflecting upon. But in this case, I decided that with these three components of being mindful to all my emotions, really offering myself loving kindness and comfort and soothing myself, and reminding myself that everyone makes mistakes. It's really not the end of the world. I was able to move forward. And I actually had such a beautiful evening. The women were just so invigorating and uplifting. My dear friend Maggie Habiba from photography boutique, she says to me, she's a beautiful photographer. And in fact, she has done all the pictures on my website. And on my podcast, she says to me, oh, Linda. So you look like the pink bunny, let's take some photos. And we she took some just some beautiful photos because she has such a big heart. And it was just such a beautiful evening. Not only was it a beautiful evening to be in such beautiful vibration with other women. But it really was an experience for me. I went from happy to sad from embarrassed to Okay, to joyful to self critical. I was always going back and forth. And I thought, well, this is just a really safe place to practice mindfulness, self compassion among women who are going to support me and love me, no matter what. It was a really beautiful learning experience. But it really gave me an opportunity to put into practice what I preach, which is not always easy, because I did chuckle a couple of times, thinking if I was across from my friend who's telling me this story, what advice would I give her. And you're probably thinking of how you comfort your friends how you comfort people who you care about. The challenge here, or the mindfulness practice here is can you offer those same words of loving kindness, compassion and support to yourself, as you do to others, and my friend and neighbor, Liz, and that's what I told her.

Linda Orsini: 00:13:47

Mindfulness, self compassion is really being the kind of human being that is loving, kind and supportive to others, as to yourself, because when we fill our cup up, we have more to offer others. When we practice self love, we can be more kind and loving to others. And that's what a call for love is. This whole example, is a call for self love, which could be even more challenging than loving others. As you move forward, are you going to remember when you are berating yourself or very critical of yourself to practice self love? It's a call for self love. By practicing mindfulness, self compassion. Reach out to me, let me know examples and stories that have happened to you. And I support you and I love you on your journey as I learn and always continue to remind myself to To be grounded in self love, from my heart to yours, Namaste