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In my observations, most of us grow up learning to see ourselves as a series of problems to fix and improve upon. Sure. Self improvement is rather helpful at a certain point in life. But at another point, it becomes the major obstacle. The unrelenting desire to improve can easily lead to a fixer mentality where life is just a series of problems to solve. It’s not that this is bad or anything like that, it’s just that it’s rather limited. A far more powerful approach is to see: “There are no problems to fix, only opportunities to deepen in love and understanding.” Until recently, when working with clients I would automatically find myself framing the situation from a fixer mindset; what’s the problem, let’s find the solution. I liked to have my sessions be as efficient as possible. I didn’t like to get bogged down in small talk. I wanted to go straight for the jugular, find the root of the problem and change it. This sounds good on paper but in practice it was missing something which was leaving me feeling dry and the clients weren’t having as great results as possible. It was missing compassion in the form of gentleness and genuine care and curiosity into what led them to see the world as they did. I was only able to see this recently because until recently, I was never able to see that anyone actually cared about me. Even though my family was very loving in certain ways, in other ways, I was emotionally deprived as a kid and sort of just left to my own devices to deal with stuff. No one really ever just told me explicitly, clearly and from a place of genuine care “Nick you’re loved just as you are, cared for, and it’s perfectly beautiful to feel whatever you feel.” Naturally, there was a lot of projection of blame from people unable to take responsibility for their own feelings. This isn’t anyones fault, we just simply aren’t taught about this stuff. We are actually encouraged to blame and divert responsibility in many cases. Blame and pushing away responsibility is certainly reinforced by our legal system. It’s really rare to meet people who don’t blame something or someone for the way they feel. People who just sincerely care. People who love without motives, hidden agendas, and invisible expectations. For me, it took a recent deeply loving and intimate relationship with such a human to be able to see that there wasn’t anything to fix about myself or others. I felt like someone genuinely cared about me and didn’t demand anything from me. So I was able to start genuinely caring about myself and letting go of all the demands to change and be different. And in my sessions with clients, it’s a lot of more fun, enjoyable, intuitive, and empowering for the client. I also just enjoy chatting and supporting the growth of self-kindness, compassion, and care. Not in an outer-layer form like treating the body with a massage. More in an inner way that just allows ourselves to be as we are without demands to be different. So my approach has softened a lot and now focuses more on just supporting self compassion and kindness.
In my experience, just being kind and compassionate to ourselves is actually more than enough. If you are wondering how we can practically just allow ourselves to be as we are without demands, I find that deepening in understanding of ourselves really helps. And if you’d like support cultivating that inner compassion and kindness - just email back here :-) I’ll leave you with something you can just sit with and contemplate for a while: Ask - “Where, within my self, can I be more kind and compassionate?” And just open yourself to seeing the answer. It will reveal itself when the willingness to see it outweighs the unwillingness to see it. When you find something seemingly devoid of kindness, something helpful is to see it as love-in-disguise and then open yourself to seeing what’s underneath superficial appearance. For example for me, emotional detachment was a way for my mind to protect me from being hurt. So it was really an act of love in the best way the mind could at the time. It’s just that now, it no longer serves me and a more loving approach is available. So it’s all really just love - it’s just a matter of recognition and understanding. With love, Nick P.S. If this was forwarded to you, then you are welcome to click here and subscribe for future newsletters.
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