Self-Compassionate Living Newsletter, February 2026
"Let us not forget that the little emotions are the great captains of our lives, and we open them without realizing it."
Vincent Van Gogh
“Ultimately, we have just one moral duty: to reclaim large areas of peace in ourselves, more and more peace, and to reflect it toward others. And the more peace there is in us, the more peace there will also be in our troubled world.”
Etty Hillesum
"I am careful not to confuse excellence with perfection. Excellence, I can reach for; perfection is God's business."
Michael J. Fox
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!
Last month, I began talking about “subtle little buggers”, the name my mentor Tony D’Souza gives to the subconscious thoughts and emotions that control so much of our lives. This month, I’ll expand on this paradigm and, hopefully, offer more information to help you on your journey toward greater self-compassion.
To review:
Unfortunately, survival has been built into us in such a way that it is more important than thriving. This means that our organic, natural programming is to satisfy our survival “needs” before we spend any energy on thriving or doing the things that allow us to live in Joy, Peace, and Contentment (JPC).
Alternatively, you probably want to thrive, to live your daily life feeling Joy, Peace, and Contentment (JPC). Notice that means moving beyond the inherent drives you feel and focus on the intentions to prioritize your personal mental, emotional, and spiritual well-being, …and yes, those intentions can be challenging.
The challenge comes from the powerful forces that push us toward survival, or, more often, a sense of survival*. Generally, the pushes are conscious experiences, such as “I’ve got to do the dishes,” or “I need to get this work done.” However, we don’t usually recognize the subconscious thoughts that generate the feelings of pushiness, the subtle little buggers.
Self-compassion asks us to pay attention to the hidden (subconscious) little buggers pushing us, and then to consciously act in ways that support our goals for authenticity and thriving, even if that authenticity and thriving don’t satisfy our survival/sense-of-survival drives.
Obviously, self-compassion is delicately balancing surviving and thriving. (I call this balancing game Thrivival.)
I then talked about being honest with ourselves, acknowledging the feelings and thoughts that drive them, and admitting they are there, not just subconsciously resisting them by using some form of mental fight-flight-freeze to save us from the negative feelings. This means recognizing that the feelings are there and allowing them to reside in our bodies, even when they feel uncomfortable. Fortunately, when we allow those feelings to exist within us, we can learn from them; we can recognize the thoughts that drive them and work with those thoughts rather than just the actions. We treat the source, not just the feelings.
First: Confusing Actions and Managing Your Mind.
An idiom we hear repeatedly is “Actions speak louder than words,” and in daily life (especially with other people), it seems correct. However, it does not address the core issue, the causation of the actions: the thoughts. Remember the formula from an earlier newsletter:
My thoughts generate my feelings.
My feelings compel my actions.
My actions create my life.
Thus, according to that formula, the root problem with actions that speak louder is the thoughts that drive them. If we want to improve our actions in the world, self-compassion suggests it’s best to learn and practice managing our minds. Of course, this mind management is challenging and frequently seems impossible. Yet philosophers and spiritual teachers throughout history have given us guidance and shown the way.
I suspect most people don’t like doing the work, though. Instead of doing the work, it’s easier to let the survival mind control most of our actions, which is the way survival wired us to behave.
Yet survival doesn’t care whether we are living authentically; it only cares that we are not dead. So, if you want to live authentically and constantly endeavor toward your highest ideal, then you’ll probably have to expend some energy moving out of the inertia of survival.
Easier said than done.
Yep! This mind-management business is much easier to talk (or type) about than to do. Brain mechanically, the Limbic System (the part I call the survival brain) is wired to be the boss of the rest of our brain/body system; it even has that nickname in some neurobiological jargon: the boss. Thus, when we—especially the frontal cortex (another part of the brain and where we exist)—want to control our focus or intention, the survival brain resists and tries to stop us from doing something unfamiliar or beyond its control. Unfortunately, because the survival brain has no capability for rational thought, it can’t discern if an intention is helpful or harmful. Instead, it automatically assumes that the thoughts are harmful and attempts to shut down the “miscreant” brain activity. Fortunately, in daily life, the survival brain only thinks it’s the boss. We can train it to behave more the way we want, and that training is our Stillness practice: the work.
Practicing Stillness trains our brains to be more accepting of thoughts, feelings, and actions, so we are the person we really, Really, REALLY want to be, our authentic self. However, if you remember learning a new sport, skill, or instrument as a child, you know the practice is challenging.
Why is stillness practice so difficult?
Our survival brain is wired to immediately identify threats and benefits to our physical survival, and because it has no capacity for logical thought, it is unable tell the difference between a physical threat or benefit and a mental/emotional threat or benefit; with either, it reacts instantly with the only tools it has: fight, flight, freeze (which generally feel negative), grab & hold (which generally feel positive); there is no other way for it to react. However, as you know, in daily life, we rarely run into physical threats or benefits (excluding the uncontrollable, such as car accidents or asteroids hitting us), yet we experience mental threats and benefits every day just by talking with people or listening to the news. We know that a thought in our brain is threatened when threats and benefits instantly generate positive or negative feelings (usually negative). That resistance is the difficulty we experience when we intentionally bring our attention to a specific point of focus.
Fortunately (here’s the good news), the survival brain also has a specialty we can use to help us manage our minds: it can reference memories.
Memories and using them for self-compassion.
Each time we practice our stillness, we center ourselves on being present and grounded. As we do it, and after we finish, our brains form memories of having completed that difficult task without dying. Yes, I know that sounds funny, yet it’s true. We practiced being still and centered on our choice of focus (“our choice” is important and I’ll write about it in another newsletter), and then we don’t die. Thus, the next time we practice, it is slightly (sometimes only 1/10 of 1 percent) easier to repeat.
Here’s an example. Let’s say you set the intention to be still and sit quietly with God or the divine presence for 20 minutes a day, and you choose the birds singing as your point of focus. At first, it’s nice because the birds sound lovely, and it feels relaxing to just sit. Then, after a few minutes, you start to feel restless. Your survival mind resists just sitting (the action) because, let’s face it, it’s usually boring to just be still and constantly bring yourself back to listening to the singing; that boredom flies around your skull and never resolves. Yet, your intention is to sit with the divine for 20 minutes a day, so you do it and form a small memory of sitting with no harm coming to you. After the first day and its boredom, the second day feels worse because your survival brain remembers the boredom, yet you do it, finish, and your brain forms another small memory. On the third day, your brain now has two small memories of doing it and not dying of boredom, so it reduces the resistance by a minuscule amount; you may not even notice the slightly easier experience, though. On the fourth day, you now have three memories, and they begin to stack and strengthen one another. After two weeks, it’s still not fun, but you do it because your survival brain knows you’re not going to die, and after two months, the resistance has almost disappeared. Your daily stillness practice becomes “just something you do”.
If, during all this resistance and personal growth, you’ve watched your thoughts, you’ll also notice a gentle detachment growing. Your brain isn’t taking the boredom and resistance as seriously. That detachment is extremely beneficial for being self-compassionate.
You are doing excellent!
Mental detachment and self-compassion.
Mental detachment simply means that no thought stored inside your brain controls your emotional well-being. You may not like the thoughts; however, you also don’t automatically do what they command you to do. Instead, you begin to pause and evaluate how accurately the thought reflects your authenticity. This is, of course, easier typed than done. Yet, your stillness practice is the brain exercise that forges the ability to simply notice that you have thoughts in your brain; they are not true nor false; they are simply thoughts, or more accurately, brain activity floating through your skull. Thus, when you do the work—your stillness practice—you make it easier to navigate life and the chaos it generates, especially in ways that minimize your potential for suffering. Detachment is a fantastic skill to learn and practice, especially for being self-compassionate!
Please note: practicing probably won’t save you from the human condition or its automatic suffering, though. Sometimes, without your knowledge or warning, your brain forms attachments that set you up for suffering, whether you want it or not. Instead, practicing stillness builds the ability to detach from suffering, so it does minimal harm to your well-being even though it doesn’t feel pleasant in your body.
My personal experience.
Denver, Colorado, has been unseasonably warm this winter. Yet a huge cold front moved across the nation in the third week of January, and Denver dropped from warm sunshine to normal (for Denver) cold (20-25 degrees F, or -8° to -5°C). The day before the cold front hit, it was warm and sunny (45°F or 7 °C), and after lunch, I checked my calendar for upcoming appointments; I had one coaching call that afternoon. Then my dog and I went to the backyard to play in the sun for a couple of minutes.
Upon stepping outside, I felt the warm sunshine on my face, and I immediately forgot about my afternoon appointment. My brain and body formed an instant attachment to that warm pleasure. Next, my brain told my body, "We’ll go for our usual walk at 3 PM." I went back to my office and worked for another 55 minutes. Then I stood up to leave, and my calendar binged that I had an appointment in 30 minutes.
“AAARRRGGGGHHHHHHH!!!!”, my brain yelled! Then, mentally, it immediately started grabbing onto any excuse it could come up with to get that time in the sunshine. “I know the client. We’ve got a long connection. He’ll understand if I ask for a 30-minute delay”, my brain pleaded. And then 5 more rationalizations and excuses came rushing into my thoughts.
Fortunately, in that small fold of time, I also grounded myself; I brought myself back to being present and decided I wanted to be a person who met his commitments. I would not call my client. I would not change the appointment time. Upon that decision, I felt a powerful disappointment that morphed into anger; anger at the client for setting the appointment 30-something days previously.
I know that isn’t logical, so remember that the survival brain generates emotions and has no capacity for logical thought. To the survival brain, it makes sense to blame the client for my forgetting about the appointment. That’s the way the survival brain works: it generates feelings (negative in this instance) and then doesn’t take responsibility for them. Instead, it blames some external target to dodge owning the suffering it creates.
To make matters worse, occasionally, suffering is a byproduct of biology and cannot, without thousands of hours of mental practice (such as in meditation), be avoided. My brain/body latched onto the thought of a pleasurable walk in the sunshine and then fought like a madman to keep that positive feeling.
My body suffered. It wasn’t life-threatening; it was a forceful displeasure my brain created from the threat to the thought it had grabbed of a pleasurable walk.
In my experience, some suffering cannot be avoided (again, without 6-8 hours a day of mental practice, such as in meditation—I meditate 20 minutes every day, not hours a day). When I am grounded or present and wanting to be self-compassionate, I allow my brain/body to experience that suffering while also watching different parts of my brain/body system use their built-in survival modes (fight, flight, freeze, grab & hold) against the suffering. I simply watch all this brain and body activity unfold in my brain/body system. It feels like I’m an outside observer watching thoughts and feelings float through my brain/body, and as I watch, the negative feelings begin to fade.
When I started using this awareness I learned in meditation, it wasn’t easy. However, as I practiced, especially in my daily meditation and walks, it became easier. Now, I feel like I’m grounded about 95% of the time—I hope that feeling is close to accurate. However, as I get older, it seems more difficult to stay detached from the myriad subtle little buggers floating through my brain/body system. I attempt to keep (grab & hold) my awareness (being present) by practicing meditation every day and going for walks 4–6 times a week. Yet, it feels like I fail more easily than I used to. I don’t know whether I'm failing or just setting my standards higher as I notice more things. It doesn’t matter, to be honest. What matters to me is that I continually strive to be the ideal Blair I want to be (my Christ nature, my Buddha nature, my true self, my authenticity, the Stoic sage, etc.). It’s an effort, I admit. Yet, it is the way I want to show up in the world, so it’s worth it.
Next Month
In next month’s newsletter, I’ll probably continue to discuss becoming aware of our subtle little buggers only because that’s been a considerable focus of my personal mental examination lately.
If you have a particular topic you’d like to see discussed, please reply and suggest it to me.
On a Personal Note
My goal to create a video series called “An Introduction to Practicing Self-Compassion" is still progressing slowly. I mentioned last month the difficulty I was experiencing with the AI image creation. For now, I have decided not to use AI-generated images in the video series. I think I am going back to my original plan of using two camera angles to discuss the points of practicing self-compassion, and, on occasion, I’ll use an image if it moves the video forward. Thank you for being patient with this creation.
Your replies of encouragement, support, and love mean a tremendous amount to me; thank you! I thank God for this community. Each of you has been an inspiration to me. Thank you! As Ram Dass said, "We are all just walking each other home.” We are stronger when we help each other. Thank you for being so helpful!
Self-Compassion Discussion & Inspiration Group
2 or 3 days before each discussion group, I send an invitation notification for the upcoming meeting. I want to respect your privacy, so I will not send notifications about upcoming discussion group meetings automatically unless you ask to be notified. If you would like to be reminded of the biweekly Self-Compassion Discussion & Inspiration Group meetings, please reply to this newsletter, and I’ll add your name to the notification list. This reminder notification list does not sign you up to attend; it only signs you up to be notified of the next biweekly meeting.
The Self-Compassion Discussion & Inspiration Group has been enormously inspiring for me and, according to participants, for them as well. Please join us for the next one on Saturday, February 7th, from 10 to 11:30 AM MST.
The next two Self-Compassion Discussion & Inspiration Group meetings are scheduled for Saturday, February 7th, and Saturday, February 21st, from 10:00 AM to 11:30 AM MST. I invite you to join us. Please click this link or visit the Self-CompassionateLiving.com website to register.
In each meeting, after a brief introduction, we observe 10 minutes of silent stillness, followed by a discussion of any self-compassion-related topics raised by participants. I may also spend about 10-15 minutes unpacking the themes that emerge in the discussion.
I humbly ask for a $10- $15 donation per session; however, all are welcome. I will not turn anyone away for financial reasons.
In conclusion
By this point, you've probably realized that self-compassionate living is about building a new relationship with your brain, specifically by managing your mind to create your life rather than just reacting to it. 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-four years. I'm sharing it with you, hoping it helps 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.
I appreciate you!
Blair
*I have made a glossary for many of the words I use in these newsletters, my classes, and coaching. You can find the glossary here: https://blairashby.com/glossary.html.
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