Hello from Switzerland
It’s easy, too easy, to dismiss the richness of my life.
Right now, I’m on a train in Switzerland 🇨🇭 headed for a mountainside retreat with brainy, community-minded, big-hearted people. Just my type!
In this moment, I’m holding a mini computer in my hands wirelessly connected to the web, and my belly is full of yummy “European-spicy” (code word for not spicy at all) bibimbap I had earlier today with a coaching client who found me on Google.
Turns out she’s a kindred spirit, and I’d never have met her 4,000 miles from home if I didn’t dare putting myself out there as a coach, again and again for close to a decade, at times painstakingly and often awkwardly and sometimes tearfully.
4,000 miles from home, while on reprieve from the habitual loop of my usual worries and mental ruts — as the train quietly moves through green pastures and spring blossoms — I’m thinking about self-compassion.
“Ugh, I know I’m supposed to be nice to myself, but I just feel so guilty when I feel bad,” a different client said to me the other day.
I’d so been there myself!
Frustration leading to self-recrimination fueling a spiral of doom and gloom.
Which begs the question:
Why is it so hard to be compassionate with ourselves, when we have it so, objectively, exquisitely good?
Life is hard — even when you live in a first world country, have a comfortable home, have good income and no serious illnesses.
Even when you’re fundamentally safe and better off than the billion+ people who go to bed hungry every night.
We can talk about the evolutionary biology of our brains and the inevitability of disappointments in an ever-changing world.
We can talk about the rampant epidemic of loneliness, isolation, and disconnection from humanity, nature, and ourselves.
We can also talk about the quandary of being conditioned by society to prioritize critical thinking and suffering because we conflate our incessantly critical thinking with reality.
I’m living my dream right now.
And I remind myself — I’m allowed to feel tender towards all the messy and raw parts of me.
Joy doesn’t cancel out the ache of anxiety.
Gratitude doesn’t erase the sting of old stories.
Abundance doesn’t mean immunity from mental loops.
What helps — at least a little — is remembering that self-compassion isn’t about excusing, denying, or sugarcoating anything.
It’s about acknowledging that we all suffer no matter what our outer circumstances look like, and we all deserve compassion.
And directing some of that compassion towards ourselves can be as simple as a hand over heart, one slow breath, and saying thank you to all versions of us — past, current, and future.
