Click the above for an inspirational little podcast from me about being gentle with yourself. It touches all the topics of this week’s prompts and I hope will give you a little hope as you walk into the week.

What’s The Gentle Choice?

“Be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here.”

-Max Ehrmann

One of the questions I get asked most frequently in workshops is, “But don’t I have to be a little mean to myself to get ahead?” Or, “if I don’t discipline myself, how am I going to grow?” I’m always taken aback by the question because it reveals SO MUCH about the lie we have all been sold: we are bad and not enough and only through criticism, punishment, and discipline will we be made good and whole.

But let me ask you this: has breaking yourself down over your life-time helped you? Like, for real? Or does it make you feel soul-level bad, brittle, and sort of spiteful towards this entire world? Has cruelty from others helped you get “ahead" in a way that doesn’t feel excruciating and non-sustainable?

As I’ve been going through my break-up I’m trying to take my own advice and not force or criticize myself into healing. Instead of asking my tried and true question (what’s wrong with me?), I’m asking myself, “how can I be gentle with my feelings?” “Someone just broke my heart, do I really need to break my own?”

This isn’t to say I’m avoiding the lessons I can learn from this pain. But that’s a separate task. If what we are talking about is healing, then the truth is, the slower we go, the easier we go, the faster we’ll get there because so much of the soul repair we are doing is nurturing the parts of ourselves that have already been punished. We can’t help those parts by giving them more of the same. These past few weeks I’ve been challenging myself to choose the gentle way. Which leads me to…

This Week’s Prompt and Intention: