A Way to Tame the Inner Critic

Hi, and welcome to your Daily Mindfulness. Today, we're going to explore how to ease the inner critic and develop self compassion and kindness, both in meditation and in our lives. So when we train in self compassion, it can be really transforming. So an analogy, imagine living in a house with someone who's constantly following you around the house, criticizing you, berating you and judging you. So you can imagine the energy of the house becoming pretty tense, uneasy and demoralizing.

Right? Well, it's been said that our mind is our true home because although we can leave our houses, we carry our minds with us wherever we go. And as much as we might try to escape it, numb it or struggle with it, it's just always with us. And many of us are living with constant feelings of unworthiness and stress and inner struggle because that inner voice is really harsh and mean. But we can train in bringing a friendly attitude towards ourselves and we can change out in a world into a place of ease, rest and kindness. So to continue the analogy, imagine your mind could become like a house with a warm, crackling fire and a loving, supportive friend to live with.

You know, someone who speaks to you with respect and kindness, who's always there for you when you down. This home is a place where you can relax, gain strength and feel love. So how can we change things? Well, the way that we often speak to ourselves inside our own heads can have a pretty harsh and cold tone to it. Especially if we make a mistake or something's gone wrong. So I invite you to try a practice this week, start deliberately practicing self-talk that sounds warm, friendly, and kind.

Let your inner voice take on the tone of a supportive coach or friend. If you catch that in a voice sounding harsh, see if you can take a pause, maybe a breath and then change the tone back to warm and kind. Try saying, encouraging things to yourself like, Hey, good on you for giving that a go honey, or, Hey, you really gave that your best shot mate. Now, of course, if you don't find those terms of endearment helpful, like honey or mate, just drop them. So you can experiment and play with this and find out what feels right for you.

Now, especially anytime that you're having a hard time, really try using the tone of voice you'd use if you were speaking to a loved one who was hurting. Yeah. Say soothing things to yourself, just, just mentally inside your head, like, you know, take it easy darling or, well, this is a really tricky moment, you know, may I be kind to myself in this tough time. So it might feel a little awkward at first to speak to yourself in this way. But if you think about it, it's even stranger to be verbally abusive or mean to ourselves.

We'd never talked to our friends like that. So this week. Focus on befriending yourself instead of berating yourself. And through cultivating this kind of mindful self-compassion, we can find soothing, ease and calm within ourselves. And of course, when you're kind to yourself that will ripple out and be a gift to everyone, you know, and everyone you meet.

So thank you for your practice and I look forward to continuing cultivating this attitude of self-compassion in today's meditation.