Being Kind Helped Her Lose Weight
But it's about more than clickbait, it's about happiness.
As some of you know, I’ve been kind of focused this last year on finding happiness or contentment or something . . . despite the things that happen in our lives.
This past week was my birthday, and it was lovely to have a birthday and still be alive and able to try to be better as a person, right? This past week, Shaun also had his third skin cancer removed. He’s had three in a year, all different kinds, which I tease him is the sort of overachieving we don’t need from him.
It snowed a lot. We were unable to go to a couple things we had planned to, and I realized how much I miss actually seeing people and have the freedom to do that. We don’t have this freedom right now because Xane’s mom only takes the for 24 hours or so. And we don’t like being super far away from Xane for a long time and leaving them alone even though they are 14 because of the things that are going on with them.
As always, I started stressing about money, how to make sure I keep earning it, how to make sure that I can also find purpose at the same time through my news blog, which doesn’t earn money but takes a lot of time, how I can still write my own novels. Then I was annoyed at myself for stressing. Hardly very compassionate, right?
And even though Shaun is amazing, I was a bit lonely one night while he was out helping someone. He had to get his last helpings in before his two weeks of no lifting anything over 7 pounds.
So, I went down a YouTube wormhole and found this video, which has a ridiculously clickbait title (that I’ve stolen a bit of) for something so gorgeous and deep and honest and moving. It’s long, but I hope you’ll check it out in segments, which is what I ended up doing. It’s with behavioral change specialist, Shahroo Izadi who wrote The Kindness Method
She was an addiction counselor who had her own issues with food. She also had issues with self-compassion. Basically, what she’s saying (this is very reductive and I apologize) is that being kind to yourself, giving yourself the same grace and love and understanding that you give your friends or you cats, helps you to reprogram your thoughts and self and life.
Every time that she “failed” a bit, she’d use that an opportunity to think about why she did that behavior. Instead of judging herself about it and going into a shame spiral about ordering pizza at 4 a.m., she’d think about what was causing her to want that pizza and giving herself the space to make that mistake rather than hunkering down into a “I suck. I can’t do anything right” mindset.
Her publisher, Pan MacMillan, gives quick tips about how to cultivate self-kindness on this blog post here.
I took a screen cap of the last two because I really like one of them and the other one is about pretending it’s your birthday, which was relevant for me last week.
According to Marianna Pogosyan Ph.D., writing for Psychology Today,
“As a concept derived from Buddhist psychology, self-compassion entails treating oneself with kindness and care, like we would treat a dear friend. Kristin Neff, one of the leading self-compassion researchers, has identified three main components of self-compassion: self-kindness, feelings of common humanity, and mindfulness.”
Pogosyan writes,
“Self-kindness refers to acting in kind and understanding ways towards ourselves. For example, instead of being critical (I’m so disorganized! I’ll never be successful!), our inner voice is supportive and warm (It’s OK that I missed the deadline. I worked hard and I’ll make it next time). A sense of common humanity is the recognition that everyone makes mistakes and no one is without their weaknesses. Accepting that we are not alone in our suffering comforts us with feelings of inclusivity rather than alienation. Finally, mindfulness offers a “meta-perspective” on our hardships, helping us to not exaggerate our distress and become engulfed by it.”
This week, I had to do a lot of that as we missed events, as I misspelled a person’s last name, as I tried to remember to do things like hydrate and not waste my time stressing about not having enough time (what a cycle!) and remembering to be grateful for all that I have, for the fact that Shaun is still here and does sweet things like randomly walk into the office kiss my head and say, “Hey baby” before he walks back out. And as I remembered that kindness is a strength, not a weakness.
Sometimes being kind to ourselves and to others is such a radical act in this world. It shouldn’t be.
LINKS TO LEARN MORE
Ted Talk by Harvard psychologist Susan David about being kind to yourself from 2020.
An article at Recovery Warriors by Mirjam Mainland, MS about “7 Ways to Be Kind to Yourself.”
Kristin Neff’s Self Compassion website.
LINKS TO IZADI
Shahroo Izadi:
Instagram: https://bit.ly/3IpPG0C
Twitter: https://bit.ly/3IpQbI2
Website: http://bit.ly/3I7ExjA
This was unbelievably timely! After two months of post-holidays diet and exercise, I made the mistake of getting on the scale and discovering I’d lost 0 pounds--sans any major splurges. Frustration and self disgust spiral followed, though I know better.
I’ve entered a stage in middle age where trimming up has become exponentially harder and often feels impossible. Difficult, because my identity has been a bit wrapped up in fitness.
A great reminder to be kind to ourselves as life takes turns!