Self-Compassionate Living Newsletter, July 2025
"He must not try to understand—only to observe. Understanding would come later, or not at all."
Arthur C. Clark, "Childhood's End"
"In a world of endless distractions—social media, autoplay, constant scrolling—it’s too easy to become the passenger in the car.”
Steve Aoki
“The ultimate value of life depends upon awareness and the power of contemplation rather than upon mere survival.”
Aristotle
Thank you for subscribing to the Self-Compassionate Living Newsletter! You can create and cultivate self-compassion by learning and practicing it. Engaging with a supportive community usually makes it easier. You signed up to receive this monthly newsletter as part of that effort. I will endeavor to inform and inspire you, and together, we will explore ways to treat ourselves better. Thank you for inviting me to join you on your journey!
In last month’s newsletter, I said I was going to talk about Awareness, and I added the word “again.” I am going to discuss Awareness (again) and expand on this topic a little by also exploring Being Present and stillness.
If you’ve taken my Creating Self-Compassion class, participated in my Self-Compassion Discussion & Inspiration Group, worked with me privately, or taken my Critical Thinking and Communication class at RMETI, you've likely heard me say numerous words about Awareness and Being Present. The reason I continually discuss these two concepts is that I have found they are the two fundamental skills necessary for self-compassion. Additionally, all the other abilities helpful in being self-compassionate build upon Being Aware and Being Present. I believe that practicing awareness and presence will naturally lead to self-compassion. In other words, I believe that self-compassion is a consequence of being aware and being present.
Definitions
These definitions are from my Glossary for Learning Self-Compassion and Communication on my website; you can find it here: Blair’s Glossary for Learning Self-compassion and Communication.
Awareness
or Mindfulness, Paying Attention, Recognizing, Being Present, Self-observation
- The ability to acknowledge events and acknowledge your mind’s reactions to those events while staying detached from the pressures you feel from those events and reactions.
- Staying present to all your thoughts triggered by and about your experience and your thoughts about the triggered thoughts.
- Conscious recognition of the thoughts, emotions, feelings, behaviors, actions, activities, and situations you are experiencing while also noticing the additional layers of thoughts about your initial conscious recognition.
- Watching events happening to yourself as if you were watching someone else, while also watching your body’s reactions to the experiences as you watch the events.
Being Present
or Awareness, Conscious Intention, In the Moment, Presence
- The deliberate practice of keeping one’s focus on the current moment.
- The intentional act of bringing your mind back to now after it drifts off to predictions, analysis, or memories.
Please note that these two concepts seem similar. They are not the same. The main difference is intention. One can be present without being consciously aware. A good example of this would be a dog. Dogs are adept at being present and physical survival-brain-driven aware, while they are not consciously aware at all.
For example, I used to be a professional sound engineer, and I’d occasionally bring my dog to my recording studio. One day, I had a rock band setting up for a recording session, and my dog slept on the edge of the carpet surrounding the drum set. The drummer would hit a single drum, then turn the drum head tension keys to tune the drum, and a minute later hit the drum again to check the tuning. The dog woke up after every drum hit, occasionally snarled, and then went right back to sleep for 52 seconds when the next drum hit came. This went on for an hour as the drummer tuned the kit.
The dog never moved to a quieter location, such as the control room, my office, or the back room, and did not signal to go outside. The dog was not consciously aware that it was causing its suffering; instead, it unconsciously tolerated the disruptions.
Suffering Happens When Our Personal Reality and Objective Reality Aren’t Congruent, and We Want Them To Be
Suffering is any time you feel negative emotionally (unless it’s chronic or chemically induced). That means if you feel emotionally negative, such as sad, angry, jealous, enraged, or grieved, your body is suffering. Now, it’s essential to recognize that suffering isn’t inherently bad or wrong, although it generally feels bad and wrong. It simply means that your brain’s desires for reality and objective reality aren't aligned, and your unconscious brain/body is trying to change objective reality to match your brain’s desired reality, and the changes aren’t occurring.
As a side note, this is important to understand because once we recognize we’re suffering, acknowledging that we're suffering frees us to identify the miscreant thoughts that resist reality. With that acknowledgment, we can start working on the thoughts rather than wasting energy trying to change objective (and frequently unchangeable) reality. In other words, if we are present to our brain/body’s experiences, we can use them as hints on where to look for the distortions causing the suffering.
The key is paying attention (Awareness and Being Present).
(Some shameless promotion here) I am holding a summertime Creating Self-Compassion class. During this class, I spend a lot of time discussing areas of our lives where we can practice being aware. The class will take place from July 10th to August 14th, 10:30 AM to 12:00 PM MDT. I will post the registration link below. Please invite your friends or family, or attend yourself if you'd like a refresher. (Now, back to our regularly scheduled newsletter.)
Awareness of Layers of Judgment in Our Brains
Last month, I discussed the Survival Brain, which is my term for the Limbic System. One area of the Survival Brain I didn’t expand upon due to space was automatic reactions or habits, and they are integral to understanding the gifts of awareness and being present. As we observe our minds, especially during our stillness practice, we begin to notice that our brain is incredibly busy the majority of the time. Upon further examination of that brain activity, we soon realize that our brain generates thoughts in response to something triggering them. As we continue to observe our brain’s activity, we notice that our brain reacts to its own judgments about its thoughts. In other words, it judges its own reactions. Initially, there are two reactions: the triggered initial reaction and the secondary judgment of the initial reaction. Two layers of reaction. (The reaction layers tend to go deeper than two; that is a topic for a future newsletter, though.)
This means that many of the negative emotions we feel are a consequence of the secondary judgments we have on our initial reactions. In other words, our brain punishes itself for its automatic thoughts. Here is an example from a recent experience I had while out at breakfast with my wife.
(For some story context, I don’t usually like added salt on or in my food.)
Waiter: “Your pork chop, eggs, and potatoes, sir.”
After the server left, my wife and I began to eat.
Sophia: “How’s your food?”
Blair (with an irritated-sounding voice): “The pork chop is excellent! The eggs are perfect! The potatoes are way too salty!”
Notice I missed the two gifts due to the irritation I felt about the imperfect potatoes.
Sophia: “Bummer! Do you want to send them back?”
I heard the concern in Sophia’s voice, and I reviewed the irritated sound in my voice. Fortunately, I was somewhat present, and I used what I noticed as a clue to check in with myself. My irritated feelings were expressions of the hunger-induced bad mood my body was experiencing. Unfortunately, I wasn’t as centered as I like to be. I signaled to the server. I was going to get new, less salty potatoes!
Then I noticed again how irritated I felt. Hmmm… twice in twenty seconds?! Perhaps it’s time to slow down the processes I've set in motion. I paused. I retasted the potatoes again, and they were still too salty. I paused again. I took a sip of my drink and began releasing the irritation. I couldn’t stop the “too salty” thoughts; they are automatic reactions. I don’t have to do what they are pushing me to do, though.
The server starts walking over.
I ask myself, what do I really, Really, REALLY want? In a capitalistic society, it’s my “right” to perfect potatoes. In my heart, I experienced something else. The restaurant looked disheveled; it was the end of the day for a breakfast cafe. The server looked exhausted despite her friendliness.
I thought, “Might it have been a busy day for her? Do I really want to add to her woes?” my brain continued. “Yes, I feel irritated, yet I don’t want to add irritation to her day. If I did that, I’d feel worse!”
My brain finished with this thought, “She’s worked hard enough. I don’t want potatoes that much anyway. Just ask for a drink refill and compliment her.”
See how I was thinking normal, automatic thoughts, reacting to them, and then rationalizing the decisions I made based on those thoughts and reactions. In objective reality, I had no idea as to what kind of day she’d had. Yet, I was making decisions based on my brain’s imagined stories about her day.
(I’m told by philosophers and spiritual teachers that all humans do this. Wow! Our brains can be convoluted, can’t they?)
She came over to us, and I asked for a drink refill, told her how great she was doing, and told her the …half-truth. The pork chop was great, and the eggs were fantastic.
My wife and the server seemed to have seen right through my subterfuge. The server asked, “How about the potatoes?”
Now, we come to being present to be self-compassionate.
Being Present to Your Experience
The server asked, “How about the potatoes?” I paused, and my brain started racing.
“Do I tell her the truth? If I do, I’ll feel bad because I imagine she’s exhausted, and she will want to correct the issue, and I’ll feel bad for adding to her exhaustion. She asked though, so what do I say?”
This point in my internal monologue is critical to being self-compassionate. Self-compassion isn’t about making myself feel better. Instead, it’s being true to yourself and feeling better because of that self-truthfulness.
I can only be truthful with myself if I am present to what I am experiencing. In that moment, I was experiencing conflicting emotions based on the stories my brain had invented about her experience that day. It was all in my head! I did not know objective reality or her reality!
I chose to treat myself well and honor her as best as I felt I could. I shared my opinion about the potatoes kindly and asked her not to replace them, as I was satisfied with the eggs and pork chop. I honored myself and feel like I honored her, at least in my predictions about what she was experiencing (I don’t know because I don’t know what was happening in her brain). All I know is I want to be honest about my experience while being respectful of others.
It's a tricky balance sometimes.
We make it easier on ourselves when we commit to treating ourselves well mentally. To do that, it helps to be present to our immediate and long-term thoughts and experiences.
Hopefully, you can see that a commitment to your highest ideals and being present is necessary. In my breakfast story, if I weren’t present, my brain would have just lied to her to “make” my survival brain believe that she is feeling everything is okay, even if it meant unintentionally sacrificing some of myself. (That sentence is a hint about the layers of awareness we can practice.)
When I commit to being consciously present to my brain and body’s experiences, I set the intention to care for myself, even when it involves navigating internal or external difficult conversations.
As in Stillness, So in Life
Once again, if you have a daily commitment to stillness, you will learn to recognize the conflicting pulls within you with almost every thought and situation. You will also learn to navigate those challenges self-compassionately because you will recognize that conflicting thoughts happen before conflicting situations. Thus, navigate the thoughts, and it’s easier to navigate the situations.
Whether your Stillness discipline is Centering Prayer, Meditation, Tai Chi, yoga, walking, knitting, puzzling, swimming, sitting on the porch listening to the birds, or anything else that gives you dedicated time to watch and learn about your brain (without media), you will begin to see your brain as separate from you. It is a tool you use; it is not you.
When you discover that insight, you get more agency in your life because you will no longer be your brain’s servant, doing whatever it commands. Instead, you’ll learn to manage your mind so that you can direct it to create your life, rather than reacting to life.
Next Month
In next month’s newsletter, I’m thinking I’ll talk about the brain gym of stillness… maybe. If someone has a particular topic you’d like to see discussed, please reply and suggest it.
On a Personal Note
I have written the scripts and recorded the first video for the Introduction to Self-Compassion that I promised you when you signed up to receive this email. Since starting the video series project, I’ve learned so much about my own journey that I no longer feel the scripts that I’ve finished are complete. So I am delaying the release again until at least August. I am rereading and refining the scripts, as well as adding more images to enhance the content's informativeness and engagement. (I am first and foremost an artist, and this video series is my current art project.) Thank you for continuing to walk with me on this path.
As Ram Dass said, "We are all just walking each other home.” We are stronger when we help one another.
As Ram Dass said, "We are all just walking each other home.” We are better when we help each other.
Self-Compassion Discussion & Inspiration Group
The next biweekly Self-Compassion Discussion & Inspiration Group is Saturday, July 12th, from 10 AM to 11:30 AM MDT.
After a brief introduction, we’ll do 10 minutes of stillness, and then we’ll discuss whatever comes up from the participants. The last discussion group was remarkable!
I ask for a $10 to $15 donation per session; however, I will not turn anyone away for financial reasons. I have some scholarship money available.
Please join us for the next Self-Compassion Discussion & Inspiration Group meeting on Saturday, July 12th, from 10 AM to 11:30 AM MDT. If you would like to join us, please click this link or visit our website and register here.
Additionally, I am holding a Creating Self-Compassion class this summer. It will occur six times, meeting once a week from July 10th to August 14th from 10:30 AM to 12:00 PM MDT. Please tell your friends about it. The signup for the class is at this link: Creating Self-Compassion.
In conclusion
By this point, you've probably realized that self-compassionate living is about building a new relationship with your brain, specifically with managing your mind to create your life instead of just reacting to life. Self-compassion begins with mind management, allowing you to live with greater joy, peace, and contentment (JPC) and experience fewer negative emotions. I have learned the information I share in these newsletters from spiritual teachers, philosophers, and psychologists during the last thirty-three years. I share it with you, hoping it will help you practice self-compassion. Please utilize the material that resonates with you and explore and learn about your mind. You can create the life that you want to live.
See you next month, and may the rest of this month be peaceful.
Thank you for inviting me to walk with you.
Blair
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