Action starts with self-compassion

I am sitting at a desk in my bedroom writing this to you. In a little less than an hour, a group of people will join me on Zoom for Big Paper Planning Day, and together we will plan out the next 12 weeks of our life. On Sunday, again, I will sit here at this desk and facilitate the same experience—holding conversations with people all over the world on what it means to try and how it feels to pursue the life we want.

This is my job, yes. 

And. 

You can imagine how absurd it feels right now.

The truth is, I feel ridiculous promoting the idea of life design and planning in the face of so much suffering and injustice. There is a large part of me that wonders whether there's any point in trying at all. 

This part of me is, I believe, frozen solid at 22 years old. That's how old I was on August 7, 2017, the day my Dad died. In moments like this, when grief is everywhere and beauty is hard to find, it is this 22 year old part of me that cries out for attention. It's her words that spill out onto my morning pages, her fears and doubts that cloud my mind. 

It is in these moments, when I am feeling helpless and scared, that I come back to the idea of control. 

What is in my control, and what is outside of it? Where do I have influence over the results I see, and where might I need to loosen my grip?

It starts, for me, with self-compassion. I learned the practice of self-compassion from the brilliant Rachel Simmons. Rachel hired me just weeks after my Dad passed away, and at 23 I packed up my life, moved to New York and subsequently accompanied her across the country on a book tour. 

At each stop, I sat in the audience and participated in a self-compassion meditation with Rachel. Together we breathed, placing our feet on the floor and a hand on our chest.

I learned in those auditoriums that the practice of self-compassion starts with mindfulness. What is happening? What am I experiencing right now, in this moment? Without editorializing or assuming what others are thinking, mindfulness asks us to name the experience—are you feeling grief? Anger? Have you eaten? As Rachel would say, if there were a microphone in your head, what would it pick up?

From mindfulness, we move to common humanity. How many other people in the world, either right now or throughout our shared history, have felt what you are feeling in this moment? How many have thought the thoughts you are thinking, or asked the questions you are asking? So much of compassion begins and ends with the reminder that we are never the only one.

Finally, self-compassion asks us to practice self-kindness. This is that old therapy exercise, you likely know it: Talk to yourself like you'd talk to a friend. And not just any friend, Rachel would say. What would you say to your sweetest friend? That friend you could never imagine saying an unkind word to? The friend who you have an unwavering positive regard for, who you'll always give the benefit of the doubt? Say that, now, to yourself.

It is only from a place of self-compassion that we can take action in alignment with our values and reclaim our power over what we can control. Although it feels like self-criticism and shame should motivate us forward, research on human behavior shows us that this is not the case. Demonstrating compassion to ourselves widens our capacity to experience compassion for other people. 

That 22 year old part of me, frozen in grief and heartache, needed to hear this then and she needs the reminder even now: There is always something I can do. There is always a way that I can help, whether that's by calling my representatives or checking in on a friend or advocating for something I believe in. Or, maybe, by doing my job and showing up to lead an experience like Big Paper Planning Day for the people who trust me with that responsibility.

I don't have the answer. I might be getting it wrong.

But what I know is that together we co-create the world. I recognize our shared responsibility to one another. And I believe that any practice of change rests on our capacity to experience compassion, both for others and for ourselves.

Thank you for reading.

Some links:

✷ I keep coming back to Deepa Iyer's Social Change Ecosystem Framework. 

✷ On a roadtrip last week, my boyfriend and I enjoyed this podcast from Sports Explains The World about the Lithuanian fight for independence and its crossover with The Grateful Dead.

✷ Here are some free meditations from Dr. Kristen Neff, whose research on self-compassion is foundational to our understanding of its power.

⚛ Mini Lab: Tools, Trends & Experimental Ideas ⚛

I spent a few days this week at DC Startup Week, meeting and networking with founders and investors all over the city. Want to guess how I learned about it?

ChatGPT.

Last week, as I worked late into the afternoon on a pricing strategy and new services page, I opened up ChatGPT and asked it for help. “I’d like you to be my pricing strategy consultant,” I said. “Here’s what I’m selling and why it matters. Can you interview me?”

The AI tool then offered me a list of questions to answer, which I returned the next morning. From there, we chatted back and forth, outlining a services page and brainstorming lead generation strategies to bring in my ideal 1:1 client (you can learn more about working with me 1:1 here — yes, we can use AI in our work together). When I told Chat that I lived in DC and wanted to work with more local clients, it suggested DC Startup Week.

Long story short, if I hadn’t experimented with ChatGPT, I wouldn’t have known about this event and wouldn’t have the opportunity to connect with so many amazing business owners and ideas people all week.

So the question leading this week's experiment is: How might you spark a conversation with AI? It doesn’t have to be about asking it to write your content or take over your job — there are ways to leverage this incredible technology to spark your own imagination and point you to resources you didn’t even know existed.