Have A LOT of Self Compassion.

Photo Credit: vvonstruen

Today is day 3 in my series:  The 7 Ways to Find the Work that Makes Your Heart Sing.   Yesterday in #2, I talked about Treating Your Life Like A Mystery Novel and really getting curious about what makes your tick.

 Today follows nicely with Number 2 (although these are in no particular order).  The 3rd tip is:

Have a Little A LOT of Self Compassion.

In fact without number 3, number 2 is pretty useless.  If you don't have a little compassion for yourself you won't be able to move forward into the ideas, thoughts that come forward from your great detective work you started yesterday.

What does self compassion mean? Yep--it is something that is a bit foreign to us.

Self compassion is:

• Loving yourself no matter what,
• Letting go of the shoulds, 
• Looking past the rules and comparisons
• Just appreciating where you are and allowing yourself to be fully who you are.

As you go through this process...stuff comes up, (and by stuff I mean: dreams, ideas, thoughts, plans) maybe it is stuff you have forgotten about, maybe it is stuff you convinced yourself was wrong, maybe it is stuff you just never even thought of.  Regardless when this 'stuff' appears welcome it.  As Tara Brach says, "welcome it to tea" Sit down with your dreams and ideas and welcome them in to your life.

Too often, we push them aside and ignore them because they are too great, too overwhelming, too ridiculous, too scary!!  Today we are going to great those ideas with self compassion and love.  Take notes, write it down, pay attention to what comes up for you.  What ideas, thoughts, plans are the scariest?  What are the most ridiculous, which ones have you built the most excuses around (those are all usually signs that you are on to something!!

What do you think about these tips?  We are almost half way through!  Anything exciting coming up for you?  I would love to hear--if you don't want to share publicly on the comments below--feel free to e-mail me at nancy@nancyjanesmith.com