Self-compassion is one of the most challenging skills to master.

Most people have the idea that we must beat ourselves into action.

You might be afraid that if you are compassionate with yourself, you will not get off the couch. You will eat ice cream, watch silly cat YouTube videos, and never lift a finger to work again.

You may think that it is necessary to whip yourself into action, otherwise you would get nothing done!

When you think that you must beat yourself into action, the emotional repercussion does not make you work any more efficiently, and does not create the results you want.

Yet, it is challenging to let yourself off the hook!

It feels very scary to make the leap in changing your thoughts and emotions because you are terrified that your eating habits will get worse.

In fact, the harder you are on yourself, the more you will soothe yourself with food, and the slower it will take to reach your goals.

You will also miss out on enjoying the journey.

If you can’t enjoy the process, then reaching the goal will be only for the goal itself.

When you get to your goal you will feel better, but only momentarily.

If you think that you will only feel better once you get to your goal weight, you are deceiving yourself.

New problems will arise. (Those feelings will be there!)

When you think you will feel better once you have lost all of your extra weight and made your food sensitivities vanish, you will be more apt to self-loathe your way to that goal.

That way of thinking is always the thought behind diets and this is why they never work long-term.

The more often you are in the space of beating yourself up, the more miserable you will feel.

When you feel awful, you are more likely to soothe yourself with comfort food that is full of sugar and flour.

Comforting yourself with food will then become the reason to beat yourself up.

Have compassion for yourself wherever you are in your journey. It will speed up the process and you get to enjoy the ride!

Self-compassion is the opposite of the self-loathing and self-soothing cycle.

Self-compassion is going directly to supportive healthy self-care.

It is still taking healthy actions but fueling them with positive energy instead of negative energy!

It can be challenging to be kind to yourself, so I find it helpful to remember that self-loathing eventually spills onto everyone else.

When you are hating yourself and are miserable, you are far more impatient with others.

Your internal world reflects your external world. Knowing this will hopefully compel you to end that cycle within yourself

For some crazy reason, you think that being mean to yourself is OK, but you would never treat other people the way you treat yourself.

Do you want to be a better wife, mother, sister, employee, or business owner?

If you want to show up in the world kinder, more compassionate and permanently thin, it begins with your internal world.

When you start to be compassionate with yourself, everyone else will follow. You are teaching everyone how to treat you, based on how you treat yourself!

It is clear that self-loathing is entirely useless?

Now, how do you even begin to change?

Let’s start with how you got here in the first place.

It starts with the idea that negativity and punishment solve problems.

If you see someone misbehaving do you instantly think he or she needs a hug?

Of course not! He or she must be beaten or stoned to death. At least put them in jail!

How do you get to compassion with all of this negativity running in your brain?

It is undoubtedly NOT by judging and loathing yourself.

It is by practicing being compassionate and curious. I find it fascinating to watch how my mind reacts to things.

When you can be more aware of your thoughts, this will create some space.

When you get some distance from your brain, it is beneficial to write all your thoughts on paper and look at them.

When I work with clients, and we look at their patterns of thinking, they often say,

“How silly I can’t believe I think like that!”

Looking at your thoughts and deciding if they are supportive or not is the work you must do and it’s not this vast scary deal!

In fact, it can be funny!

Awareness is your first step and that is extremely powerful!

Your thoughts will start to shift instantly as you see how ineffective they are.

With the shift in your perspective, your behaviors will change as well.

It may feel scary to give up the “I have to be disciplined” mentality.

It will feel very uncomfortable to allow yourself to live from a place of self-kindness.

Self-compassion doesn’t mean getting rid of negative thoughts altogether, it means having compassion for your negative thoughts.

Begin your day knowing that your tendency is to head to self-loathing and know that this is OK!

Know that self-loathing thoughts can be there and chatter in your ear, but you can decide to still be compassionate!

The shift here is not getting rid of all negativity, it’s adopting acceptance and compassion for your negative thoughts instead of reacting to them.

When you have compassion for yourself for where you are at today, then your thoughts will shift effortlessly.

You must learn to be compassionate towards yourself if you want a peaceful state of mind.

I teach weight loss and food sensitivity freedom with compassion because I have found that this is the only way to change permanently.

When you turn your thoughts to self-compassion and love, change will be a natural transition.

The difficult and unsustainable path is thinking you must loathe yourself to food freedom.

It feels counter-intuitive, but I haven’t found any other permanent solution!

Take a look at where you are in your life and what you are thinking and feeling.

If you are looking for growth and progress, you must start here.

• Nothing is wrong, and no one is broken.

• You are doing your best with what you know.

• You begin where you are and where you are at is perfect.

• Your life has gone exactly how it was supposed to go, with the good and the bad.

• Everyone, including you, is allowed to experience his or her life exactly as it is meant to.

• You are not alone.

• You are worthy.

• Your thoughts and feelings are just that thoughts and feelings... not the truth.

Now that you practiced self-compassion do you have more energy or less energy?

Now what?

If you truly believed nothing is wrong and you are perfect exactly where you are today, what would you do next?

This is the difficult part.

You are probably arguing with me that no, this is all wrong, and I am miserable where I am at.

Notice, this is self-loathing creeping in.

What if you were open to believing that nothing has gone wrong and where you are at in your journey is perfect?

What would you do with your day tomorrow?