June 9, 2025 • 34 mins
🎙️ Episode 13: Compassion
This week, we’re digging into self-compassion—not just as an idea, but as a practice we’re actively building at home.
Our starting point: “We will teach you compassion by practicing compassion with ourselves first; then with each other.” Because if we want to raise kind, resilient kids, it starts with how we treat ourselves.
We each took Dr. Kristin Neff’s Self-Compassion Test 💝 to see where we’re growing—and where we’re stuck. Greg thinks about self-compassion often, but practices it poorly. Danielle scored high on self-kindness and self-judgment. We talk through what that means and how we’re each working to shift.
Then we each designed a small experiment:
- 🟨 Danielle’s Pause Pass: a little laminated card she holds up when she’s overwhelmed. It’s her way of saying: “I’m not shutting down. I’m resetting.”
- 🧠 Greg’s Public Naming: saying out loud when he’s starting to veer off track, so he can catch himself before spiraling.
We also explore the difference between tender and fierce self-compassion, how our kids absorb the way we talk to ourselves, and why this modeling really matters.
Because the way we treat ourselves teaches our children how to treat themselves.
- 🎧 Listen to Episode 13: Compassion
- 💝 Take the Self-Compassion Test (under 5 minutes)
- 🟨 Make your own Pause Pass – a simple visual tool for “I need a moment.”
- 📘 Atlas of the Heart by Brené Brown – where our definition of compassion begins
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Welcome to The Most Important Thing.
I'm Danielle DeMarco Neufeld. And I'm Greg Neufeld, and
together we're exploring how ambitious busy families can
build culture at home. Because after all, family is the
most important thing. Welcome back, everybody.
Hi, Greg. Hey, Danielle, welcome back.
I'm. Excited to talk today about
compassion. This is the fourth episode in
(00:21):
our series on wholehearted parenting.
That's right. And so the line today is we will
teach you compassion by practicing compassion with
ourselves first, then with each other.
So really this episode today is on self compassion.
Self compassion. That's right.
How often do you think about self compassion?
I think about it a lot. I'm surprised to hear that.
(00:43):
Please tell us. I think about it a lot and I
practice it very poorly. OK.
That's my personal assessment before we took any assessment.
Understood. Yeah, the idea of permanence is
a big one for me, where when something is going on, I'm like,
oh, this is going to be this way.
Forever my favorite three PS Martin Seligman's three PS.
(01:05):
That's right. Permanence, personalization and
pervasiveness. Yeah, something for another
time. Cool.
Understood. And so how does that relate to
self compassion then, that it's going to be this way forever?
Because it's not OK. And when I'm going through it,
whether it's a difficult problemwith work, we're solving, a
(01:25):
problem that I just haven't solved yet, or not feeling my
best, I think that every time I encounter one of these, I can't
see before it or after it. I can only see what I'm in.
Interesting. Already out of the gate.
That's so helpful for me to understand because something
that I know about you is you really don't like not feeling
(01:46):
your best. I do not like not feeling my
best. I think that I'm a little bit
better at that. I attribute that to being a
woman and having a cycle and they're just days where I feel
like crap and they typically come monthly.
And between pregnancies and having a cycle, I think that I'm
much more in acceptance around not feeling my best.
(02:08):
But I didn't know that it reallyhad to do with this idea of
permanence for you, that it's maybe of concern that it's never
going to change. That's right.
And so that's why it feels so intensely bad.
Yeah, and most everything that Iencounter feels it effects my
mind. It's not if my body was sore or
(02:30):
tired or I wasn't able to do something in the gym, that's not
going to bother me as much. But if there's something that is
particularly, you know, delivering brain fog or a
feeling of just lethargy that tome, I cannot get out of and I
will be there endlessly previously Googling, now ChatGPT
ING or grokking or Redditing to try to get to the other side of
(02:53):
it. It's the troubleshooter in me.
And I want instant results. And if I'm not getting instant
results, then I think, oh, wow, this is what life is like
forever more. I will be feeling this way.
And then the next morning I'll wake up and I'll be like, oh,
that changed. Or an hour later.
That sounds tough. I am excited to talk through
(03:14):
self compassion and maybe we canfind some tools to help with
that. I would love that.
Cool. OK.
You know, for me, I want to raise compassionate kids.
And it wasn't until a couple of years ago that I realized what
Brene is saying is so true that it has to start with me and that
if I'm not kinder to myself, I'mnever going to be able to raise
(03:36):
children that are kind to themselves and therefore kind to
other people. One of the statements, I don't
even know what you would call it, one of the statements that
really stuck with me over the past couple of years is how you
speak to your child will become their inner voice.
And at first, I was like really jarring to me on multiple
levels. One, because I do think that a
(03:56):
lot of my inner critic and negative self talk comes from my
parents or other adults in my life.
And then also recognizing that Ineed to be really careful with
my words, with my own children and how tough I am on them or
how negative or critical I can be because I already see it
starting to equate to self talk for them.
(04:19):
So this just really makes me want to double down on this
road, this journey of self compassion, because I think that
it really is intergenerational. Well, do you want to break the
cycle or you just want to help our kids see the cycle?
No, I want to break the cycle for sure.
I mean, even just the. So we're going to take a test
(04:41):
today that I took last week, butI also took five years ago.
And I'm excited to share that I've meaningfully progressed
when it comes to self compassion.
There's still a lot of work to do, but I have focused on
deliberate practice in this areaand I am seeing results.
So that's huge. Yeah.
It is my hope that changing the way that we talk to ourselves
(05:03):
can have a ripple effect throughout our family.
Yeah, so Renee's working definition of compassion comes
from her latest book, Atlas of the Heart.
It is the daily practice of recognizing and accepting our
shared humanity so that we treatourselves and others with loving
kindness and take action in the face of suffering.
It is a practice of doing, not just feeling, and it is based on
(05:25):
the beauty and pain of shared humanity.
It's a lot there and a lot to unpack.
Most of her definition comes from the work, at least in my
understanding. Most of her definition comes
from the work of Kristin Neff, who's one of the world's leading
researchers on self compassion. And she breaks it down into 3
core elements that are echoed inRenee's definition.
The 1st is self kindness, treating yourself like you would
(05:47):
a friend. The second is common humanity.
Remembering that struggle is part of being human.
Again. Call back to family stories,
right? How important it is to build
this understanding of common humanity for yourself and for
your whole family. And three, mindfulness, noticing
your pain without getting swept away by it.
So Kristen, I've created a self compassion test to help people
(06:10):
see specifically where they are hard on themselves across these
three layers and where they are already strong.
So we've linked to it in the show notes and Greg and I each
took the test and I'd love to talk about our results.
Yeah, let's do it. OK, great.
Let's talk about your results first.
OK sounds good. So my overall score I got a
2.56. OK, so that's like right on the
border of what they would call moderate self compassion.
(06:32):
You're just getting started, butyou're not down in the dumps.
That's right. So that's your overall score.
And then as far as the sub skills are concerned, self
compassion involves higher levels of positive self
responding and lower levels of negative self responding.
So ideally when you look at this, you would have positive
(06:53):
levels in like high numbers close to five in self kindness,
common humanity and mindfulness and lower numbers in self
judgement, isolation or over identification, right?
So with that baseline, what whatcomes up for you?
What sticks out for you across these different parameters?
I have low scores in common humanity and self kindness and I
(07:14):
have higher scores in over identification and self
judgement and my mindfulness score is actually pretty good.
OK, so let's just talk about what I took away from common
humanity. Would love to hear.
It doesn't help me to know that other people struggle.
I love that. That's so honest.
Does not help me whatsoever. OK, I do not care.
(07:35):
OK, so fast that's. Fascinating to me.
OK. Yeah, good to know.
Because I have a a really good sense of how I should be
operating. You guys, he's a #4 on the
Enneagram, which is the terminally unique and I am just
seeing so much 4 coming up rightnow.
I have a good sense of how I should be operating and and when
I'm not operating at that level I can usually diagnose why.
(07:58):
It's the when I'm not able to diagnose why that really bothers
me. I'll call my situation to be a
neuro atypical levels of depression where it's very well
managed but it still shows up. And what I mean by depression is
a feeling of depression like I am pressed down, like it is low
(08:22):
energy. And when I can't figure out why
I'm having low energy, it is truly a story of troubleshooting
the device and operating system that I'm working with and not
knowing how to troubleshoot. Any device, a computer, a phone
or my body bothers me to know it.
Drives you nuts. Yeah, no, I can.
(08:42):
I can understand that. I have not dealt with depression
in my life, but I have dealt with anxiety, and that is also a
very isolating feeling, yeah, where it doesn't matter to me
that anybody is going through itor has gone through it before.
It feels like I'm the only one in that moment.
Yeah. Now if I think about it, on the
(09:05):
flip side, when I'm feeling really, really great, I'm not
like, oh man, I'm feeling so great that nobody else can touch
me and I am just feeling better than anyone else out there.
I probably should be thinking about that because the other
side of this coin is that I get lots of energy when I'm self
optimized. So what what you're saying is
(09:27):
that no one else like explain that one more time you are
thinking about other. People, when you feel good or
you're not, no. Of course, not so on either end
of the spectrum. But I probably should be
thinking about wow. I'm, you know, I'm so lucky to
be able to be. It's like if I'm going to be
taking the good of wow, I feel so great when I'm self optimized
with the bad sometimes because Ican't self optimize 100% of the
(09:51):
time, I'm going to feel lousy. I should be a little bit more
grateful for the times when I have that.
I hear you, no shoulds, but it'sa great notice and maybe one
that deserves further reflection.
Yes. OK, So what else?
What else jumps? Out of you so so.
And you, you gave these results to GPT and yeah, I did and.
(10:12):
GPT suggestion was to join a peer community and also to share
selectively when I'm struggling.I haven't found either of those
that like the Reddit stuff that I do.
Searching online for answers like that actually is what I see
in a peer community. And if I see other people that
are like, yeah, this is going onfor me, then that usually does
make me feel better. So I don't disagree with that.
(10:34):
Quite. Yeah, that feels like common
humanity. Yeah, I want to move on to self
kindness because I do know that I would benefit from practicing
more self kindness, OK? And GPT had this really nice
reframe that I liked a lot. And it says strength isn't the
absence of slip UPS, it's the ability to repair with warmth.
(10:54):
So let me talk about that one for a second.
When I'm feeling not myself, I know after a couple of minutes
of deep thinking that this too shall pass, right?
And that usually does help me. But repairing with warmth is a
really nice way to frame it where I can give myself certain
things that I need extra sleep, limiting my eating window so
(11:17):
that I can fast or pushing it a little bit harder on the
exercise to sweat it out. And that is the warmth that I
need to give myself. So I do like that reframe.
So I'm done with that. And in moments of overwhelm, say
out loud, this is hard, I'm here, I've got me.
(11:38):
Maybe this is something you got too, but it says to make a
kindness kit. Now I don't think I'm going to
do this, but it's pretty cute tomake a pre written note to
yourself, a favorite scent, A grounding object, and use it
when you notice you're spiraling.
Sounds like my pause pass. That's exactly what I came up
with yesterday. Yes.
Interesting. I I really like this quote.
It actually reminds me of last episode on courage and embracing
(12:02):
mistakes and life as one big learning opportunity.
Can you read the quote again about slippage?
Strength isn't the absence of slip UPS, it's the ability to
repair with warmth. Yeah.
That's great. And it come to me that also
says, like, you know, accepting failures as part of the process
and focusing on continuous improvement.
(12:23):
Yeah, with warmth, with warmth, with warmth, without judgement.
And then this is I guess a sub bullet there, but treat recovery
from low energy days as a sacredpart of my rhythm, not a
disruption to be pushed through.Oh yeah, I like that a lot.
I do too. That's a good one, yeah.
So I'm going to resolve to just refer back to this on those
(12:47):
days, I'll set a little reminderand see how it how it shows up
when I can think about repairingwith warmth as opposed to not
being so nice to myself. So that's self kindness.
I love that sometimes I think I secretly encouraged us to start
this podcast so that I could getyou to take all the quizzes that
I want. And have you been so
(13:10):
introspective? It's definitely a bonus.
This is an elaborate scheme, I said.
The other day. To figure out how to post photos
of our children online. The new Fetos are pretty cute.
They. Are so cute.
They are. Well, you know, I think we're a
little biased in that respect, but yeah, should we talk about
mine? Yeah, absolutely.
OK. So my results I got a 3.48 which
(13:31):
is just at that. So I'm still in the same like
level 2 as you with moderate self compassion but closer to
enlightenment that. Feels, that feels like a very
high score. Oh.
Yeah, well, like I said, I I really have put in a lot of work
on this over the past couple of years and I've been aware of my
inner voice. And so the thing that really
jumps out for me is that I got high scores in self kindness and
(13:53):
self judgement. So while I know how to be
compassionate to myself, my inner critic is also very
strong. This really resonates with me
because inside my brain there really is a lot of cacophony
where it's like all these nice things being said and I'm going
through the motions and listening to myself and my
higher power and sharing affirmations.
(14:14):
And then there's also this really loud inner critic that is
not very kind and very controlling and it can come out
of nowhere. So it says you may swing between
kindness and criticism, especially when you feel
responsible for others. Hello, parenting.
That's right, Right. My goodness.
Yeah. I, I think that the my I'm
definitely my go to nature when it comes to parenting in moments
(14:37):
of stress is control. Absolutely.
And that inner critic can come up really harshly after moments
of control with the kids. And so as far as there are two
things that I really like as faras suggestions for how to make
them less balanced and maybe strengthen the kindness part and
reduce the judgement part. And the first one is when you
(14:59):
have that judgement, pair it with kindness.
So I messed that up and I'm allowed to mess that up.
I'm learning, right? And then the second one, which I
really love and I'm going to remember is to practice fierce
self compassion. So Kristen Neff differentiates
between tender self compassion, which is that being with
ourselves in a compassionate way, like the way that a friend
(15:21):
would, and then fierce self compassion, which is acting in
the world, protecting, motivating myself and setting
boundaries. Boundaries will be our next
episode, so we will definitely meet focusing on that then.
But this idea of fierce compassion takes it a step.
I think it's actually like the thing that's going to tip the
(15:43):
scales in favor of self kindnessbecause if you think about my
head, you know, the, the positive things and the negative
things, kind of fighting with one another to kind of drop the
bomb, if you will, with the fierce self compassion is really
that third element that I think I'm looking for to tip the
scales in favor of kindness. So taking action and setting
(16:06):
boundaries for myself in a compassionate way.
Yeah, I I wonder we're making this podcast for ambitious
families. I imagine that part of the other
side of ambition is low self compassion.
So I hope that I, I think that what we're sharing here is
relevant or should be relevant to to everybody, not just to the
(16:29):
two of us. That's my sense.
Is that yours too? Yeah, I think so.
I mean, I don't hate my inner critic.
I guess my inner critic has driven a lot of discipline and a
lot of positive outcomes in my life.
But I wonder especially I'm 39, I have an established career, I
have my husband and my children and we're like kind of the
(16:51):
things that are I've made-up thepie, if that makes sense.
I've made-up the I've built out what I would like to build out
in my life. And now I wonder if I can learn
to do that in a more kind, positive and and graceful
manner. If before I really like white
(17:14):
knuckled the 1st 35 years of my life.
Right. But no matter how kind and
graceful and let's say enlightened you achieve on this
scale, I don't think they would ever pull back from your
ambition. Like I don't think it's possible
to score, you know, perfectly onthis test.
And I think that's scoring perfectly on this test doesn't
(17:36):
mean that you've pulled back on in terms of ambition or you
know, that you don't have anything driving you anymore,
right? You're not taking mental health
days left and right and being like, oh, self-care.
No, no. But maybe doing it for a higher
purpose, maybe this feeling of common humanity, perhaps you are
seeing yourself and your work asa vessel, Right.
So you're seeing yourself as a vessel.
(17:57):
You are doing the work to have reverberations throughout the
world. Could be that I'm very.
I'm not there yet, but I've heard other people talk about it
like that. Yeah.
So this is interesting because we have a scenario here where
we've both taken this quiz for the purposes of sharing on
podcast, but ideally at at home,people would be taking this quiz
(18:19):
to share with one another and talk about how they can support
one another. So we should probably talk about
that too. How can I support you in any of
these areas that that you're feeling like you, you want more
and you're capable of more, but you're just not getting it out
of yourself. Thanks for asking.
Two things come to mind. One, help me figure out how to
sleep through the night because my inner critic is so harsh at
(18:39):
3:00 AM and I've really had trouble not falling asleep but
staying asleep lately. And there's just a lot of
unnecessary nonsense that goes through my brain at that time of
night that I find when I am lucky enough to sleep through
the night, it's just not there. So that's one.
And then the other is support mein my latest endeavor that I
(19:02):
came up with yesterday, which isin my skirt right now, called my
then I'm calling my pause pass. It's my little laminated
reminder that has a bunch of affirmations on it.
But I also told everyone in our family that when I take it out
and hold it up, it's almost likea referee in a soccer game
giving out like a yellow card saying this is my replacement
(19:22):
for another intergenerational term.
I'm done. Which is the thing that I say
over and over when I'm just totally tapped out with the
children or with you when there's screaming and music and
requests and all of the things. So this is both a physical
reminder for me and a reminder to our family.
But on the back of it, it are affirmations and statements that
(19:46):
I can say like I am feeling overwhelmed right now.
I need a moment to calm down instead of I'm done.
And reminders to myself for different breaths that I can do
like a hand on heart and belly breath or a double inhale breath
and a reminder that I'm not shutting down.
I am resetting. I mean, it's so cool that you
know that about yourself and that you can.
Well, let's see, it's only been 24 hours, but I can tell you,
(20:09):
and I told you this already, that like, I feel so powerful
having this in my pocket. It almost reminds me of like in
elementary school when the teacher would just like shut off
the lights. You know what I mean?
Like to stop the madness And youhave your, your sensory
processing is very heightened, especially when it comes to
(20:33):
things like high pitched voices,music, loud noises, anything
that is startling or jarring. So in a way that pass, we should
also turn out the lights when that comes out, you know, or
whatever the equivalent of that is.
Because I think that's what you're naming too, is that like
it's not just you're done and that you need to go and take
some space from it, but it's also like, please respect me and
(20:54):
make the space. Help me make the space for
myself. Yeah.
And I think that that is, it's ahelp me allow.
So help me practice self compassion, if you will.
I don't really need help from you or from the kids to give
myself to give myself grace. As we've discussed, I'm pretty
high in the, in the loving kindness or the self kindness
aspect. I need to pause.
(21:17):
I need to stop the high frequency, the the cacophony.
I don't even know what else to call it the guy I need to to
stop like my sense, I get sensory overload and then I get
very controlling and rigid. And that's not great for our
family, but it's also really notgreat for me because I beat
myself up on it about it afterwards.
(21:39):
And so let's see how this works.But this is my experiment.
It has to do with self compassion, which is having this
little laminated card in my pocket.
That's one a reminder of things that I can do to practice self
compassion. But 2 Something where when I am
not necessarily able to verballytell you all what I need to just
take it out and hopefully that you can respect me.
(22:01):
No, that's great. I I think it's I think we can
all use that as a the signal forfor what it is.
Yeah, I mean immediately Hunter and Jade and Maverick asked for
one too, so I made one for each of them.
I haven't made one for you yet. Maybe you you would like one as
well. Maybe I'm thinking that the
experiment that I need is to build in public the work to
(22:24):
performance in public. So, you know, when in baseball a
pitcher is throwing a perfect game and like, no one's supposed
to talk about it, Yes. Yeah, that stresses me out just
talking, just thinking about it.Well, I kind of need the
opposite of that because the thedays without an incident or the
days without feeling low or whatever, like I want the
encouragement to keep it up. And I also want the
encouragement to, to say, Hey, Greg, like it's great that you
(22:48):
are feeling so good, but you're also, I noticed, you know,
getting a little bit too rigid when it comes to how you snapped
at the kids this morning or something like that.
And like, those are good noticestoo.
Because that's the trade off forme in in, in my life is I can
feel really good and not have asmuch, let's call it it's not
fun, but it's like extracurriculars, you know?
(23:12):
I like to call it coloring outside the lines.
Coloring outside the line. Yeah, I'd love for you to
reframe that thought of fun because I think that there are
ways that you can have fun without.
We're not talking about alcohol here, right?
We're usually talking about justlike eating dessert with the
kids, but where you can not havea hangover, right, Not having a
physical hangover. I'm sorry if I'm being too
(23:36):
pushy, you can tell me. You can tell me if I'm being too
pushy. But do you think that there is
an opportunity for you to work on acceptance when you are in
those stages as well of? Course, but acceptance doesn't,
acceptance doesn't teach me the lesson that I feel like I still
need to be taught because acceptance is not interpreting
any of the causes. And so being a scientist and
(24:00):
like still working towards 'cause when you and I met, like
I didn't have this, this knowledge and awareness of, of
what works for me and what doesn't.
And I built it up over the 10 years and I still build it like
everyday. I'm still learning what works
and what doesn't. And now I'm, I'm, I think I'm
able to have more fun as a member of this family and still
(24:23):
and color outside of the lines there without coloring outside
of the lines by like eating dessert with the kids, because
that's going to make me feel notso good in the morning, right?
And so I want to learn to do thecoloring here outside the lines
and keep it over here so that I'm able to color outside the
lines with the kids, you know, and with you.
And that's the, that's the thing.
It's like, I'm all or nothing. I go really ham on it all.
(24:46):
I'll have a day where it's like,oh, it's Saturday, I'm going to
eat 4000 calories and you know, like make the kids smoothies and
drink half of that too. And then I'm going to make some
other concoction. And then, you know, I'm going to
like drink 2 pots of coffee and stay up late and work on this.
And then I go to bed and I wake up and I'm like, that was a
horrible idea. Why couldn't I have just like
played on the Slack line with the kids and like had my normal
(25:06):
day of food? Yeah, I hear you.
I also hope so dearly for you that you can learn that that's
just part of you and it's not necessarily something that you
need to change. Like you're not going to be a
better human if you have 100 daystreak of perfect eating.
(25:30):
I I mean, I guess let me let me try to let me try that again.
I think it is unrealistic to think that you will never have a
day of feeling not so great everagain, of course.
And so I want to encourage you to be open to acceptance of
(25:51):
those days as opposed to I'm going to learn from this day and
I'm going to try to have as manydays in a row of feeling good
before I have another one of these days, so.
That's not actually what I'm saying.
What what I'm saying is the the part that I need help with is
not like taking out the coloringbook and just like shredding
through all 90 pages at once. Like leaving a little bit on the
(26:13):
table for tomorrow. Yeah.
How can I help you in those moments?
Because yeah, I mean I, I. Just need to name it out loud
what I'm doing and what my goal is for the day.
Like you don't notice because you don't know if I'm if I'm
like eating a ton of food or not.
You have no idea. And I'll be like, Oh my God, I
slept like, you know, so hot last night, this and that.
And like, why did I eat like that?
And you're like, what are you talking about?
Like I didn't even notice. So I just need to name that.
(26:34):
The thing that I need to do for myself is when I'm in my
feelings see that as an opportunity for a warm on ramp.
Yeah back as opposed to yelling at myself.
Yeah that's that's that's the opportunity for self compassion.
So there's the building in public, which is like, hey, like
I'm having a lot of fun today. I feel like I'm a little bit at
risk of going off the rails. Can you help me make sure that
(26:55):
you know I'm just naming it out loud?
Like can you make the? Kids, can you?
Make the kids smoothie today so that I don't end up drinking
half of it. Uh huh, I understand.
And then and that's I think that's the building public part.
And then the self compassion is when when I inevitably, you
know, wake up one day and I'm not feeling my best, just be
like, OK, the data reset data like warm back into, you know,
(27:16):
ease back into the to the place of being good, like no problem,
no problem. That sounds beautiful.
Cool, yes, I wonder. So for me, I would just have
like a little body movement, like boop, I'm gonna like hop
back in the I'm gonna hop back in.
Yeah, I'm starting to color outside the line.
So I'm just gonna help me hop back in, right?
(27:37):
You know, like a little signal like that.
But I don't know. That's that's where my brain
goes. I like it.
I like to hop back. In Yeah.
OK, cool. I'm happy to hold your hand
while you hop back. In and I have all the tools to,
you know, perform at my best no matter what.
It's it's more about beating myself up that when I have to
use some of those tools that I don't like to use.
I understand there's not a perfect cure, right?
(28:00):
Everything comes with, it's withit's, it's a list of pros and
cons, right? There are drawbacks.
Yeah, who? Modeled self compassion for you
or did not growing up? My mom was very good at self
compassion. I'm just reflecting at both my
parents games on the tennis court and my dad tried to hold
back the frustration when he would get frustrated, but he
(28:24):
inevitably would and would like talk to himself and like cursing
himself, like under his breath and things like that.
And my mom be like, oh, Barbara.And it was so cute.
And that's great. Yeah, and and, you know, even if
she was like, damn it, you know,or threw, threw something out
like that, she never lost her cool.
She never threw a racket. She was such a good sportsman
with, you know, with the team. She would be apologetic to her
(28:44):
teammate if she was playing double S, but never would like
feel like she was letting anybody down.
I just thought that she was really good about that.
And she's a person that I probably should have modeled
more from earlier in life. She was always focused on going
to bed early and getting good sleep and eating well.
And, you know, my dad was in great shape, but he would go to
bed late and he would eat ice cream right before bed.
(29:05):
And he would, you know, definitely, definitely wasn't
the person that I wanted to thatI realized in my side I should
have modeled after. But I did because he was, he was
the dad. He was the man.
And I was growing up to be a mini version of him.
So it's a good, it's a good lesson to to look for the, you
know, both genders and their pros and cons, no matter what
(29:28):
the child is. I like it.
Well, it's not too late. How about for you to be like
Barbara? Yeah, that's right.
I got to think about that. Yeah, that's good.
What about for you? But sure, we want to go there.
Gigi. Yeah, for sure.
My grandmother was a very kind and simple woman, right?
She was so compassionate. I don't, I don't think she was
(29:48):
necessarily too self compassionate though.
For me, I would say that it's something my mom struggles with
and it's probably something thather mom struggled with.
Again, back to the intergenerational stuff, my dad
is definitely more of a self compassionate person I would
say, but a quietly self compassionate 1.
(30:10):
Yeah. When you talk about your mom,
and when I think about my dad, Ithink of them both as having a
playful nature and kind of like a childlike curiosity, a fun
loving nature if you will, whichis our family value of the
month, right? And so I think there's something
to that. I think there's something to
this idea of playfulness and having self compassion, not
(30:30):
taking life too seriously and being kind to ourselves.
Yeah, I agree. So moving on, moving on.
As far as experiments, it soundslike we're committing to quite a
few things already. I'm going to keep using my pause
pass and I'm going to help you hop back in the lines.
And I'm going to name when I'm having a a wild and crazy day
(30:52):
and that I want to have a littlebit of Co accountability just to
make sure I don't go to ham. And when you do go?
And when I do go ham, just warm right back into that place where
I can ease myself back into my normal course of business
without the permanence of it's going to last forever.
(31:17):
And I'm going to work on my fearself compassion, not just
stopping with this balance of self kindness and self
judgement, but really tipping the scales into self kindness by
taking action and setting boundaries appropriately.
I like it. Yeah, One thing I heard for the
kids, well really for all of us that I thought could be
interesting also is naming the inner critic.
(31:39):
So Destructo Danielle or something like that.
You know, like practicing modeling that ourselves, this
really comes down, it comes fromIFS into integrated family
systems, which is a terrible name for a wonderful practice.
But just talking about the separate parts of us and the
inner critic can be one of thoseparts, right?
But it is not the highest self that we hold.
(32:01):
And so naming it can give us some distance from it and could
help with that pervasiveness. One of the other piece, right?
Knowing that maybe the inner critic is part of me, but it is
not all of me. And so we can play around with
some type of naming it when it comes up for ourselves and any
of the children. Yeah.
(32:22):
Are there any examples of our children exhibiting some of the
things that we don't love about ourselves that we just want to
name out as well when those showup?
You know, it's hard for me, I don't know that they are stating
outwardly their harshness on their on themselves.
Like I can. I can definitely think about
Jade and the way that she sometimes interacts with the
(32:43):
world, like making herself small, that it seems like her
inner critic is coming up and maybe we can get curious about
that looking at it through a self compassion lens.
And then, you know, when I made Hunter a pause pass, she changed
all of hers. So she changed all the things on
the back of of hers as far as like the different things that
she wanted it to say. And so I think that she has a
(33:07):
pretty good idea actually of what helps her feel calm and
self compassionate. It's.
Wonderful. Yeah, one of them, I told you
that she said I wanted to say I am loved and I am lovable.
And I said, Hunter, what does lovable mean?
And she said it means that people can love me, not like boy
(33:27):
love, but that like people in myfamily, like I can have that
love. I thought that was really cute.
Yeah. She's picking it up somehow.
Yeah. Do you think that we could post
a template of a pause pass for anyone who wants to?
Make it sure. I don't know if it's.
It seems like it's a silly little.
Thing a silly little thing, but I think you know just a template
of change your image, change your words, here you go.
Sure I can. I can post a video too of like a
(33:49):
little of what it looks like. I laminated them, yeah.
Because why not? I know I like to laminate.
It's much more serious when it'slaminated.
Can't pull out a pause pass if it's not laminated.
I agree. It's great.
OK. I think I'm excited.
I think that this is a it's a really important practice and it
starts with us. And the the most important thing
is that we model it. That's right.
(34:12):
Yep. I think that the most important
thing about compassion is that it has to start with us, because
you cannot pour from an empty cup.
OK, well. So fill your cup.
Fill your cup but not too full and if it if you go back for
refills. If it's overflowing, you need a
pause pass or to hop back insidethe lines I'd.
(34:34):
Say, Danielle, I'm going back for a second.
Yes, OK, great. Love you, goosey love.
You goosey. Hey guys, if you're still here,
you're definitely our kind of person.
Thanks for spending this time with us on The Most Important
Thing. If this episode resonated with
you, we'd love for you to followus wherever you get your
podcasts and share it with someone else.
(34:56):
Building family culture on purpose.
Welcome to The Most Important Thing.
I'm Danielle DeMarco Neufeld. And I'm Greg Neufeld, and
together we're exploring how ambitious busy families can
build culture at home. Because after all, family is the
most important thing. Welcome back, everybody.
Hi, Greg. Hey, Danielle, welcome back.
I'm. Excited to talk today about
compassion. This is the fourth episode in
(00:21):
our series on wholehearted parenting.
That's right. And so the line today is we will
teach you compassion by practicing compassion with
ourselves first, then with each other.
So really this episode today is on self compassion.
Self compassion. That's right.
How often do you think about self compassion?
I think about it a lot. I'm surprised to hear that.
(00:43):
Please tell us. I think about it a lot and I
practice it very poorly. OK.
That's my personal assessment before we took any assessment.
Understood. Yeah, the idea of permanence is
a big one for me, where when something is going on, I'm like,
oh, this is going to be this way.
Forever my favorite three PS Martin Seligman's three PS.
(01:05):
That's right. Permanence, personalization and
pervasiveness. Yeah, something for another
time. Cool.
Understood. And so how does that relate to
self compassion then, that it's going to be this way forever?
Because it's not OK. And when I'm going through it,
whether it's a difficult problemwith work, we're solving, a
(01:25):
problem that I just haven't solved yet, or not feeling my
best, I think that every time I encounter one of these, I can't
see before it or after it. I can only see what I'm in.
Interesting. Already out of the gate.
That's so helpful for me to understand because something
that I know about you is you really don't like not feeling
(01:46):
your best. I do not like not feeling my
best. I think that I'm a little bit
better at that. I attribute that to being a
woman and having a cycle and they're just days where I feel
like crap and they typically come monthly.
And between pregnancies and having a cycle, I think that I'm
much more in acceptance around not feeling my best.
(02:08):
But I didn't know that it reallyhad to do with this idea of
permanence for you, that it's maybe of concern that it's never
going to change. That's right.
And so that's why it feels so intensely bad.
Yeah, and most everything that Iencounter feels it effects my
mind. It's not if my body was sore or
(02:30):
tired or I wasn't able to do something in the gym, that's not
going to bother me as much. But if there's something that is
particularly, you know, delivering brain fog or a
feeling of just lethargy that tome, I cannot get out of and I
will be there endlessly previously Googling, now ChatGPT
ING or grokking or Redditing to try to get to the other side of
(02:53):
it. It's the troubleshooter in me.
And I want instant results. And if I'm not getting instant
results, then I think, oh, wow, this is what life is like
forever more. I will be feeling this way.
And then the next morning I'll wake up and I'll be like, oh,
that changed. Or an hour later.
That sounds tough. I am excited to talk through
(03:14):
self compassion and maybe we canfind some tools to help with
that. I would love that.
Cool. OK.
You know, for me, I want to raise compassionate kids.
And it wasn't until a couple of years ago that I realized what
Brene is saying is so true that it has to start with me and that
if I'm not kinder to myself, I'mnever going to be able to raise
(03:36):
children that are kind to themselves and therefore kind to
other people. One of the statements, I don't
even know what you would call it, one of the statements that
really stuck with me over the past couple of years is how you
speak to your child will become their inner voice.
And at first, I was like really jarring to me on multiple
levels. One, because I do think that a
(03:56):
lot of my inner critic and negative self talk comes from my
parents or other adults in my life.
And then also recognizing that Ineed to be really careful with
my words, with my own children and how tough I am on them or
how negative or critical I can be because I already see it
starting to equate to self talk for them.
(04:19):
So this just really makes me want to double down on this
road, this journey of self compassion, because I think that
it really is intergenerational. Well, do you want to break the
cycle or you just want to help our kids see the cycle?
No, I want to break the cycle for sure.
I mean, even just the. So we're going to take a test
(04:41):
today that I took last week, butI also took five years ago.
And I'm excited to share that I've meaningfully progressed
when it comes to self compassion.
There's still a lot of work to do, but I have focused on
deliberate practice in this areaand I am seeing results.
So that's huge. Yeah.
It is my hope that changing the way that we talk to ourselves
(05:03):
can have a ripple effect throughout our family.
Yeah, so Renee's working definition of compassion comes
from her latest book, Atlas of the Heart.
It is the daily practice of recognizing and accepting our
shared humanity so that we treatourselves and others with loving
kindness and take action in the face of suffering.
It is a practice of doing, not just feeling, and it is based on
(05:25):
the beauty and pain of shared humanity.
It's a lot there and a lot to unpack.
Most of her definition comes from the work, at least in my
understanding. Most of her definition comes
from the work of Kristin Neff, who's one of the world's leading
researchers on self compassion. And she breaks it down into 3
core elements that are echoed inRenee's definition.
The 1st is self kindness, treating yourself like you would
(05:47):
a friend. The second is common humanity.
Remembering that struggle is part of being human.
Again. Call back to family stories,
right? How important it is to build
this understanding of common humanity for yourself and for
your whole family. And three, mindfulness, noticing
your pain without getting swept away by it.
So Kristen, I've created a self compassion test to help people
(06:10):
see specifically where they are hard on themselves across these
three layers and where they are already strong.
So we've linked to it in the show notes and Greg and I each
took the test and I'd love to talk about our results.
Yeah, let's do it. OK, great.
Let's talk about your results first.
OK sounds good. So my overall score I got a
2.56. OK, so that's like right on the
border of what they would call moderate self compassion.
(06:32):
You're just getting started, butyou're not down in the dumps.
That's right. So that's your overall score.
And then as far as the sub skills are concerned, self
compassion involves higher levels of positive self
responding and lower levels of negative self responding.
So ideally when you look at this, you would have positive
(06:53):
levels in like high numbers close to five in self kindness,
common humanity and mindfulness and lower numbers in self
judgement, isolation or over identification, right?
So with that baseline, what whatcomes up for you?
What sticks out for you across these different parameters?
I have low scores in common humanity and self kindness and I
(07:14):
have higher scores in over identification and self
judgement and my mindfulness score is actually pretty good.
OK, so let's just talk about what I took away from common
humanity. Would love to hear.
It doesn't help me to know that other people struggle.
I love that. That's so honest.
Does not help me whatsoever. OK, I do not care.
(07:35):
OK, so fast that's. Fascinating to me.
OK. Yeah, good to know.
Because I have a a really good sense of how I should be
operating. You guys, he's a #4 on the
Enneagram, which is the terminally unique and I am just
seeing so much 4 coming up rightnow.
I have a good sense of how I should be operating and and when
I'm not operating at that level I can usually diagnose why.
(07:58):
It's the when I'm not able to diagnose why that really bothers
me. I'll call my situation to be a
neuro atypical levels of depression where it's very well
managed but it still shows up. And what I mean by depression is
a feeling of depression like I am pressed down, like it is low
(08:22):
energy. And when I can't figure out why
I'm having low energy, it is truly a story of troubleshooting
the device and operating system that I'm working with and not
knowing how to troubleshoot. Any device, a computer, a phone
or my body bothers me to know it.
Drives you nuts. Yeah, no, I can.
(08:42):
I can understand that. I have not dealt with depression
in my life, but I have dealt with anxiety, and that is also a
very isolating feeling, yeah, where it doesn't matter to me
that anybody is going through itor has gone through it before.
It feels like I'm the only one in that moment.
Yeah. Now if I think about it, on the
(09:05):
flip side, when I'm feeling really, really great, I'm not
like, oh man, I'm feeling so great that nobody else can touch
me and I am just feeling better than anyone else out there.
I probably should be thinking about that because the other
side of this coin is that I get lots of energy when I'm self
optimized. So what what you're saying is
(09:27):
that no one else like explain that one more time you are
thinking about other. People, when you feel good or
you're not, no. Of course, not so on either end
of the spectrum. But I probably should be
thinking about wow. I'm, you know, I'm so lucky to
be able to be. It's like if I'm going to be
taking the good of wow, I feel so great when I'm self optimized
with the bad sometimes because Ican't self optimize 100% of the
(09:51):
time, I'm going to feel lousy. I should be a little bit more
grateful for the times when I have that.
I hear you, no shoulds, but it'sa great notice and maybe one
that deserves further reflection.
Yes. OK, So what else?
What else jumps? Out of you so so.
And you, you gave these results to GPT and yeah, I did and.
(10:12):
GPT suggestion was to join a peer community and also to share
selectively when I'm struggling.I haven't found either of those
that like the Reddit stuff that I do.
Searching online for answers like that actually is what I see
in a peer community. And if I see other people that
are like, yeah, this is going onfor me, then that usually does
make me feel better. So I don't disagree with that.
(10:34):
Quite. Yeah, that feels like common
humanity. Yeah, I want to move on to self
kindness because I do know that I would benefit from practicing
more self kindness, OK? And GPT had this really nice
reframe that I liked a lot. And it says strength isn't the
absence of slip UPS, it's the ability to repair with warmth.
(10:54):
So let me talk about that one for a second.
When I'm feeling not myself, I know after a couple of minutes
of deep thinking that this too shall pass, right?
And that usually does help me. But repairing with warmth is a
really nice way to frame it where I can give myself certain
things that I need extra sleep, limiting my eating window so
(11:17):
that I can fast or pushing it a little bit harder on the
exercise to sweat it out. And that is the warmth that I
need to give myself. So I do like that reframe.
So I'm done with that. And in moments of overwhelm, say
out loud, this is hard, I'm here, I've got me.
(11:38):
Maybe this is something you got too, but it says to make a
kindness kit. Now I don't think I'm going to
do this, but it's pretty cute tomake a pre written note to
yourself, a favorite scent, A grounding object, and use it
when you notice you're spiraling.
Sounds like my pause pass. That's exactly what I came up
with yesterday. Yes.
Interesting. I I really like this quote.
It actually reminds me of last episode on courage and embracing
(12:02):
mistakes and life as one big learning opportunity.
Can you read the quote again about slippage?
Strength isn't the absence of slip UPS, it's the ability to
repair with warmth. Yeah.
That's great. And it come to me that also
says, like, you know, accepting failures as part of the process
and focusing on continuous improvement.
(12:23):
Yeah, with warmth, with warmth, with warmth, without judgement.
And then this is I guess a sub bullet there, but treat recovery
from low energy days as a sacredpart of my rhythm, not a
disruption to be pushed through.Oh yeah, I like that a lot.
I do too. That's a good one, yeah.
So I'm going to resolve to just refer back to this on those
(12:47):
days, I'll set a little reminderand see how it how it shows up
when I can think about repairingwith warmth as opposed to not
being so nice to myself. So that's self kindness.
I love that sometimes I think I secretly encouraged us to start
this podcast so that I could getyou to take all the quizzes that
I want. And have you been so
(13:10):
introspective? It's definitely a bonus.
This is an elaborate scheme, I said.
The other day. To figure out how to post photos
of our children online. The new Fetos are pretty cute.
They. Are so cute.
They are. Well, you know, I think we're a
little biased in that respect, but yeah, should we talk about
mine? Yeah, absolutely.
OK. So my results I got a 3.48 which
(13:31):
is just at that. So I'm still in the same like
level 2 as you with moderate self compassion but closer to
enlightenment that. Feels, that feels like a very
high score. Oh.
Yeah, well, like I said, I I really have put in a lot of work
on this over the past couple of years and I've been aware of my
inner voice. And so the thing that really
jumps out for me is that I got high scores in self kindness and
(13:53):
self judgement. So while I know how to be
compassionate to myself, my inner critic is also very
strong. This really resonates with me
because inside my brain there really is a lot of cacophony
where it's like all these nice things being said and I'm going
through the motions and listening to myself and my
higher power and sharing affirmations.
(14:14):
And then there's also this really loud inner critic that is
not very kind and very controlling and it can come out
of nowhere. So it says you may swing between
kindness and criticism, especially when you feel
responsible for others. Hello, parenting.
That's right, Right. My goodness.
Yeah. I, I think that the my I'm
definitely my go to nature when it comes to parenting in moments
(14:37):
of stress is control. Absolutely.
And that inner critic can come up really harshly after moments
of control with the kids. And so as far as there are two
things that I really like as faras suggestions for how to make
them less balanced and maybe strengthen the kindness part and
reduce the judgement part. And the first one is when you
(14:59):
have that judgement, pair it with kindness.
So I messed that up and I'm allowed to mess that up.
I'm learning, right? And then the second one, which I
really love and I'm going to remember is to practice fierce
self compassion. So Kristen Neff differentiates
between tender self compassion, which is that being with
ourselves in a compassionate way, like the way that a friend
(15:21):
would, and then fierce self compassion, which is acting in
the world, protecting, motivating myself and setting
boundaries. Boundaries will be our next
episode, so we will definitely meet focusing on that then.
But this idea of fierce compassion takes it a step.
I think it's actually like the thing that's going to tip the
(15:43):
scales in favor of self kindnessbecause if you think about my
head, you know, the, the positive things and the negative
things, kind of fighting with one another to kind of drop the
bomb, if you will, with the fierce self compassion is really
that third element that I think I'm looking for to tip the
scales in favor of kindness. So taking action and setting
(16:06):
boundaries for myself in a compassionate way.
Yeah, I I wonder we're making this podcast for ambitious
families. I imagine that part of the other
side of ambition is low self compassion.
So I hope that I, I think that what we're sharing here is
relevant or should be relevant to to everybody, not just to the
(16:29):
two of us. That's my sense.
Is that yours too? Yeah, I think so.
I mean, I don't hate my inner critic.
I guess my inner critic has driven a lot of discipline and a
lot of positive outcomes in my life.
But I wonder especially I'm 39, I have an established career, I
have my husband and my children and we're like kind of the
(16:51):
things that are I've made-up thepie, if that makes sense.
I've made-up the I've built out what I would like to build out
in my life. And now I wonder if I can learn
to do that in a more kind, positive and and graceful
manner. If before I really like white
(17:14):
knuckled the 1st 35 years of my life.
Right. But no matter how kind and
graceful and let's say enlightened you achieve on this
scale, I don't think they would ever pull back from your
ambition. Like I don't think it's possible
to score, you know, perfectly onthis test.
And I think that's scoring perfectly on this test doesn't
(17:36):
mean that you've pulled back on in terms of ambition or you
know, that you don't have anything driving you anymore,
right? You're not taking mental health
days left and right and being like, oh, self-care.
No, no. But maybe doing it for a higher
purpose, maybe this feeling of common humanity, perhaps you are
seeing yourself and your work asa vessel, Right.
So you're seeing yourself as a vessel.
(17:57):
You are doing the work to have reverberations throughout the
world. Could be that I'm very.
I'm not there yet, but I've heard other people talk about it
like that. Yeah.
So this is interesting because we have a scenario here where
we've both taken this quiz for the purposes of sharing on
podcast, but ideally at at home,people would be taking this quiz
(18:19):
to share with one another and talk about how they can support
one another. So we should probably talk about
that too. How can I support you in any of
these areas that that you're feeling like you, you want more
and you're capable of more, but you're just not getting it out
of yourself. Thanks for asking.
Two things come to mind. One, help me figure out how to
sleep through the night because my inner critic is so harsh at
(18:39):
3:00 AM and I've really had trouble not falling asleep but
staying asleep lately. And there's just a lot of
unnecessary nonsense that goes through my brain at that time of
night that I find when I am lucky enough to sleep through
the night, it's just not there. So that's one.
And then the other is support mein my latest endeavor that I
(19:02):
came up with yesterday, which isin my skirt right now, called my
then I'm calling my pause pass. It's my little laminated
reminder that has a bunch of affirmations on it.
But I also told everyone in our family that when I take it out
and hold it up, it's almost likea referee in a soccer game
giving out like a yellow card saying this is my replacement
(19:22):
for another intergenerational term.
I'm done. Which is the thing that I say
over and over when I'm just totally tapped out with the
children or with you when there's screaming and music and
requests and all of the things. So this is both a physical
reminder for me and a reminder to our family.
But on the back of it, it are affirmations and statements that
(19:46):
I can say like I am feeling overwhelmed right now.
I need a moment to calm down instead of I'm done.
And reminders to myself for different breaths that I can do
like a hand on heart and belly breath or a double inhale breath
and a reminder that I'm not shutting down.
I am resetting. I mean, it's so cool that you
know that about yourself and that you can.
Well, let's see, it's only been 24 hours, but I can tell you,
(20:09):
and I told you this already, that like, I feel so powerful
having this in my pocket. It almost reminds me of like in
elementary school when the teacher would just like shut off
the lights. You know what I mean?
Like to stop the madness And youhave your, your sensory
processing is very heightened, especially when it comes to
(20:33):
things like high pitched voices,music, loud noises, anything
that is startling or jarring. So in a way that pass, we should
also turn out the lights when that comes out, you know, or
whatever the equivalent of that is.
Because I think that's what you're naming too, is that like
it's not just you're done and that you need to go and take
some space from it, but it's also like, please respect me and
(20:54):
make the space. Help me make the space for
myself. Yeah.
And I think that that is, it's ahelp me allow.
So help me practice self compassion, if you will.
I don't really need help from you or from the kids to give
myself to give myself grace. As we've discussed, I'm pretty
high in the, in the loving kindness or the self kindness
aspect. I need to pause.
(21:17):
I need to stop the high frequency, the the cacophony.
I don't even know what else to call it the guy I need to to
stop like my sense, I get sensory overload and then I get
very controlling and rigid. And that's not great for our
family, but it's also really notgreat for me because I beat
myself up on it about it afterwards.
(21:39):
And so let's see how this works.But this is my experiment.
It has to do with self compassion, which is having this
little laminated card in my pocket.
That's one a reminder of things that I can do to practice self
compassion. But 2 Something where when I am
not necessarily able to verballytell you all what I need to just
take it out and hopefully that you can respect me.
(22:01):
No, that's great. I I think it's I think we can
all use that as a the signal forfor what it is.
Yeah, I mean immediately Hunter and Jade and Maverick asked for
one too, so I made one for each of them.
I haven't made one for you yet. Maybe you you would like one as
well. Maybe I'm thinking that the
experiment that I need is to build in public the work to
(22:24):
performance in public. So, you know, when in baseball a
pitcher is throwing a perfect game and like, no one's supposed
to talk about it, Yes. Yeah, that stresses me out just
talking, just thinking about it.Well, I kind of need the
opposite of that because the thedays without an incident or the
days without feeling low or whatever, like I want the
encouragement to keep it up. And I also want the
encouragement to, to say, Hey, Greg, like it's great that you
(22:48):
are feeling so good, but you're also, I noticed, you know,
getting a little bit too rigid when it comes to how you snapped
at the kids this morning or something like that.
And like, those are good noticestoo.
Because that's the trade off forme in in, in my life is I can
feel really good and not have asmuch, let's call it it's not
fun, but it's like extracurriculars, you know?
(23:12):
I like to call it coloring outside the lines.
Coloring outside the line. Yeah, I'd love for you to
reframe that thought of fun because I think that there are
ways that you can have fun without.
We're not talking about alcohol here, right?
We're usually talking about justlike eating dessert with the
kids, but where you can not havea hangover, right, Not having a
physical hangover. I'm sorry if I'm being too
(23:36):
pushy, you can tell me. You can tell me if I'm being too
pushy. But do you think that there is
an opportunity for you to work on acceptance when you are in
those stages as well of? Course, but acceptance doesn't,
acceptance doesn't teach me the lesson that I feel like I still
need to be taught because acceptance is not interpreting
any of the causes. And so being a scientist and
(24:00):
like still working towards 'cause when you and I met, like
I didn't have this, this knowledge and awareness of, of
what works for me and what doesn't.
And I built it up over the 10 years and I still build it like
everyday. I'm still learning what works
and what doesn't. And now I'm, I'm, I think I'm
able to have more fun as a member of this family and still
(24:23):
and color outside of the lines there without coloring outside
of the lines by like eating dessert with the kids, because
that's going to make me feel notso good in the morning, right?
And so I want to learn to do thecoloring here outside the lines
and keep it over here so that I'm able to color outside the
lines with the kids, you know, and with you.
And that's the, that's the thing.
It's like, I'm all or nothing. I go really ham on it all.
(24:46):
I'll have a day where it's like,oh, it's Saturday, I'm going to
eat 4000 calories and you know, like make the kids smoothies and
drink half of that too. And then I'm going to make some
other concoction. And then, you know, I'm going to
like drink 2 pots of coffee and stay up late and work on this.
And then I go to bed and I wake up and I'm like, that was a
horrible idea. Why couldn't I have just like
played on the Slack line with the kids and like had my normal
(25:06):
day of food? Yeah, I hear you.
I also hope so dearly for you that you can learn that that's
just part of you and it's not necessarily something that you
need to change. Like you're not going to be a
better human if you have 100 daystreak of perfect eating.
(25:30):
I I mean, I guess let me let me try to let me try that again.
I think it is unrealistic to think that you will never have a
day of feeling not so great everagain, of course.
And so I want to encourage you to be open to acceptance of
(25:51):
those days as opposed to I'm going to learn from this day and
I'm going to try to have as manydays in a row of feeling good
before I have another one of these days, so.
That's not actually what I'm saying.
What what I'm saying is the the part that I need help with is
not like taking out the coloringbook and just like shredding
through all 90 pages at once. Like leaving a little bit on the
(26:13):
table for tomorrow. Yeah.
How can I help you in those moments?
Because yeah, I mean I, I. Just need to name it out loud
what I'm doing and what my goal is for the day.
Like you don't notice because you don't know if I'm if I'm
like eating a ton of food or not.
You have no idea. And I'll be like, Oh my God, I
slept like, you know, so hot last night, this and that.
And like, why did I eat like that?
And you're like, what are you talking about?
Like I didn't even notice. So I just need to name that.
(26:34):
The thing that I need to do for myself is when I'm in my
feelings see that as an opportunity for a warm on ramp.
Yeah back as opposed to yelling at myself.
Yeah that's that's that's the opportunity for self compassion.
So there's the building in public, which is like, hey, like
I'm having a lot of fun today. I feel like I'm a little bit at
risk of going off the rails. Can you help me make sure that
(26:55):
you know I'm just naming it out loud?
Like can you make the? Kids, can you?
Make the kids smoothie today so that I don't end up drinking
half of it. Uh huh, I understand.
And then and that's I think that's the building public part.
And then the self compassion is when when I inevitably, you
know, wake up one day and I'm not feeling my best, just be
like, OK, the data reset data like warm back into, you know,
(27:16):
ease back into the to the place of being good, like no problem,
no problem. That sounds beautiful.
Cool, yes, I wonder. So for me, I would just have
like a little body movement, like boop, I'm gonna like hop
back in the I'm gonna hop back in.
Yeah, I'm starting to color outside the line.
So I'm just gonna help me hop back in, right?
(27:37):
You know, like a little signal like that.
But I don't know. That's that's where my brain
goes. I like it.
I like to hop back. In Yeah.
OK, cool. I'm happy to hold your hand
while you hop back. In and I have all the tools to,
you know, perform at my best no matter what.
It's it's more about beating myself up that when I have to
use some of those tools that I don't like to use.
I understand there's not a perfect cure, right?
(28:00):
Everything comes with, it's withit's, it's a list of pros and
cons, right? There are drawbacks.
Yeah, who? Modeled self compassion for you
or did not growing up? My mom was very good at self
compassion. I'm just reflecting at both my
parents games on the tennis court and my dad tried to hold
back the frustration when he would get frustrated, but he
(28:24):
inevitably would and would like talk to himself and like cursing
himself, like under his breath and things like that.
And my mom be like, oh, Barbara.And it was so cute.
And that's great. Yeah, and and, you know, even if
she was like, damn it, you know,or threw, threw something out
like that, she never lost her cool.
She never threw a racket. She was such a good sportsman
with, you know, with the team. She would be apologetic to her
(28:44):
teammate if she was playing double S, but never would like
feel like she was letting anybody down.
I just thought that she was really good about that.
And she's a person that I probably should have modeled
more from earlier in life. She was always focused on going
to bed early and getting good sleep and eating well.
And, you know, my dad was in great shape, but he would go to
bed late and he would eat ice cream right before bed.
(29:05):
And he would, you know, definitely, definitely wasn't
the person that I wanted to thatI realized in my side I should
have modeled after. But I did because he was, he was
the dad. He was the man.
And I was growing up to be a mini version of him.
So it's a good, it's a good lesson to to look for the, you
know, both genders and their pros and cons, no matter what
(29:28):
the child is. I like it.
Well, it's not too late. How about for you to be like
Barbara? Yeah, that's right.
I got to think about that. Yeah, that's good.
What about for you? But sure, we want to go there.
Gigi. Yeah, for sure.
My grandmother was a very kind and simple woman, right?
She was so compassionate. I don't, I don't think she was
(29:48):
necessarily too self compassionate though.
For me, I would say that it's something my mom struggles with
and it's probably something thather mom struggled with.
Again, back to the intergenerational stuff, my dad
is definitely more of a self compassionate person I would
say, but a quietly self compassionate 1.
(30:10):
Yeah. When you talk about your mom,
and when I think about my dad, Ithink of them both as having a
playful nature and kind of like a childlike curiosity, a fun
loving nature if you will, whichis our family value of the
month, right? And so I think there's something
to that. I think there's something to
this idea of playfulness and having self compassion, not
(30:30):
taking life too seriously and being kind to ourselves.
Yeah, I agree. So moving on, moving on.
As far as experiments, it soundslike we're committing to quite a
few things already. I'm going to keep using my pause
pass and I'm going to help you hop back in the lines.
And I'm going to name when I'm having a a wild and crazy day
(30:52):
and that I want to have a littlebit of Co accountability just to
make sure I don't go to ham. And when you do go?
And when I do go ham, just warm right back into that place where
I can ease myself back into my normal course of business
without the permanence of it's going to last forever.
(31:17):
And I'm going to work on my fearself compassion, not just
stopping with this balance of self kindness and self
judgement, but really tipping the scales into self kindness by
taking action and setting boundaries appropriately.
I like it. Yeah, One thing I heard for the
kids, well really for all of us that I thought could be
interesting also is naming the inner critic.
(31:39):
So Destructo Danielle or something like that.
You know, like practicing modeling that ourselves, this
really comes down, it comes fromIFS into integrated family
systems, which is a terrible name for a wonderful practice.
But just talking about the separate parts of us and the
inner critic can be one of thoseparts, right?
But it is not the highest self that we hold.
(32:01):
And so naming it can give us some distance from it and could
help with that pervasiveness. One of the other piece, right?
Knowing that maybe the inner critic is part of me, but it is
not all of me. And so we can play around with
some type of naming it when it comes up for ourselves and any
of the children. Yeah.
(32:22):
Are there any examples of our children exhibiting some of the
things that we don't love about ourselves that we just want to
name out as well when those showup?
You know, it's hard for me, I don't know that they are stating
outwardly their harshness on their on themselves.
Like I can. I can definitely think about
Jade and the way that she sometimes interacts with the
(32:43):
world, like making herself small, that it seems like her
inner critic is coming up and maybe we can get curious about
that looking at it through a self compassion lens.
And then, you know, when I made Hunter a pause pass, she changed
all of hers. So she changed all the things on
the back of of hers as far as like the different things that
she wanted it to say. And so I think that she has a
(33:07):
pretty good idea actually of what helps her feel calm and
self compassionate. It's.
Wonderful. Yeah, one of them, I told you
that she said I wanted to say I am loved and I am lovable.
And I said, Hunter, what does lovable mean?
And she said it means that people can love me, not like boy
(33:27):
love, but that like people in myfamily, like I can have that
love. I thought that was really cute.
Yeah. She's picking it up somehow.
Yeah. Do you think that we could post
a template of a pause pass for anyone who wants to?
Make it sure. I don't know if it's.
It seems like it's a silly little.
Thing a silly little thing, but I think you know just a template
of change your image, change your words, here you go.
Sure I can. I can post a video too of like a
(33:49):
little of what it looks like. I laminated them, yeah.
Because why not? I know I like to laminate.
It's much more serious when it'slaminated.
Can't pull out a pause pass if it's not laminated.
I agree. It's great.
OK. I think I'm excited.
I think that this is a it's a really important practice and it
starts with us. And the the most important thing
is that we model it. That's right.
(34:12):
Yep. I think that the most important
thing about compassion is that it has to start with us, because
you cannot pour from an empty cup.
OK, well. So fill your cup.
Fill your cup but not too full and if it if you go back for
refills. If it's overflowing, you need a
pause pass or to hop back insidethe lines I'd.
(34:34):
Say, Danielle, I'm going back for a second.
Yes, OK, great. Love you, goosey love.
You goosey. Hey guys, if you're still here,
you're definitely our kind of person.
Thanks for spending this time with us on The Most Important
Thing. If this episode resonated with
you, we'd love for you to followus wherever you get your
podcasts and share it with someone else.
(34:56):
Building family culture on purpose.
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