Kindness from WITHIN.
If you follow me on Instagram you may have seen my story yesterday about my hummus making journey :)
If not here's a recap.
I caught myself once again being hard on myself for not getting the perfect consistency and therefore began the negative self talk belittling my attempt at a perfect product.
This may sound silly but stay with me here.
Once I caught myself in this negative headspace I thought, why are you punishing yourself for attempting something different (I am still working out how to use my Thermo Mix). This is not a new revelation, this is a learnt behaviour that is weaved through my every day life. The negative voices can be loud or subtle but they have been there for as long as I can remember. This time it's different though, I can now pause and recognise when this comes up for me and then change the path those thoughts lead to.
This may sound a little foolish cooking and getting hard on myself when it doesn't work out. But I'm just using this as an example of the many different ways we can fall into patterns that are not serving us and the life we wish to live.
The power of this is now after many years of allowing myself to find stillness and silence and connected to that inner being, the within, I can harness these moments and flip the dialogue to kindness.
Recognising and then evolving. Working with the neuroplasticity of the beautiful brain we have a create new neural pathways that connect to kindness.
It's in the pause that we can truly make these changes. From a negative thought about an attempt at a new recipe to the negative thoughts about our bodies to the way we treat ourselves and our inner world. All these moments deserve kindness. So I invite you the next time you default to a negative thought about yourself to pause and reflect re-write those impulses with kindness and see what blooms.
Another practical dialogue you can use with yourself is a technique created by the incredible Byron Katie (I encourage you to read her book, Loving What Is).When those thoughts run through your head ask yourself these questions.
Is it true?
Can you absolutely know that it's true?
How do you react, what happens, when you believe that thought?
Who would you be without the thought?
A Connecting To Kindness Meditation will be up on my Insighttimer account in the coming days for you start to rebuild those pathways and free yourself from the constraints of negative mindset.
From the Within,
Sx