Self-Compassionate Living Newsletter, March 2026
"Practice makes progress."
Alder
“Without devoting attention, we don’t experience care, and we can’t extend care. You might say that paying attention to another person is our highest form of love.”
Amishi Jha
"Before I can tell my life what I want to do with it, I must listen to my life telling me who I am... Discovering vocation does not mean scrambling toward some prize just beyond my reach, but accepting the treasure of true self I already possess."
Parker Palmer
“Real liberation comes not from glossing over or repressing painful states of feeling, but only from experiencing them to the full.”
Carl Jung
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 the last two months’ newsletters, I’ve been talking about “subtle little buggers”. The name my mentor, Tony D’Souza, gave to the subconscious thoughts and emotions that control so much of our lives, because we’re unaware of them. Hopefully, I haven't lost your attention, because this month I’m going to continue the same thread, sorta. I’m also going to introduce understanding our inherent value in the universe while using the subtle-little-bugger-generator in our brains to our advantage.
First: ask yourself What do I really, Really REALLY want?
In 2009 and the first two months of 2010, I experienced serious depression. Depression for me was dark black; even the brightest sunny day was dark black. In June of 2009, my business client, Tony D’Souza, a Jesuit Priest from Mumbai, India, came to town to teach some classes on Awareness. I had been recording Tony’s meditations and talks since 1996, and we were business friends. That June, our relationship changed, and he became my mentor.
During my 14 months of depression, only two things gave me any relief from the depression: mowing my field with my tractor and walking. Because the economy was so bad, and tractor gas was expensive, I walked a lot, which was cheaper. One sunny June day (that seemed very dark), I was walking my usual four-mile loop, and I received a call from Tony. We small-talked for a bit, and then he asked me what I wanted. I said I wanted to do whatever God wanted me to do (I was raised in a very Christian family). Tony was a priest, and he said,
“Blair, stop worrying about what God wants and figure out what you want. God made you, and whatever God wants for your life is built into you; it is part of your DNA. If you do what you want, you’ll be doing what God wants because God made you.”
I froze!
I still remember my exact location on the path when he said those words. In a single short paragraph, Tony had completely rearranged my thoughts about the world, my place in it, and my inherent value. If I do what it is that I authentically want, I will be doing that which God, the universe, survival, etc., made me to do. I was not lost; I just didn’t know what I wanted!
Whether you believe in God or not doesn’t matter for this paradigm. If you follow your authentic dreams, your highest ideal, your True Self, you will be doing that which brings Joy, Peace, and Contentment into your life. You will be living that which fulfills you.
Thus, what do you really, Really, REALLY want? I believe that if you do it, you’ll be doing what gives you fulfillment, and you will probably do it to the best of your ability. Therefore, caring for yourself will bless the world with the fruits of your focus, and we will all benefit from your gift.
Thank you for discovering and doing what you love and giving the world the benefits of your True Self!
We improve by repeating a task.
In your stillness, you’ve probably noticed your brain has the same reactions to specific triggers. You’re becoming familiar with your brain's default programming, habits, conditioning, etc. In your daily life, you may notice some of those same patterns of thinking or behaviors. They are exactly like your time in stillness, and your brain reacts the exact same way!
This knowledge gives you power! Use this as an opportunity to begin practicing new ways of thinking about your habitual reactions and your desired responses. Begin paying attention to your True Self and those automatic reactions. What behaviors and patterns are congruent with your authenticity, and what aren’t as close? Use this opportunity as a thought experiment, and modify your thoughts until you have a response that meets your ideal. Then, continually repeat that new thought pattern until the new response becomes yours; you are now thinking and behaving in the way you want because you practiced it mentally until it’s your default behavior.
You’ve created a new automatic behavior!
By mentally repeating a task or thought pattern until it fits naturally into your automatic thoughts, you’ll likely begin to see that new thought response seep into your daily life. In other words, by doing this thought exercise, you’ll be creating your life instead of living by the habitual reactions you learned via experiences.
Autopilot or automatic reactions are your brain’s way to save calories by repeating something that worked in the past, even if it may not fit who you are today. In other words, reactions are past programs that have never been updated to represent the person you want to be now. Another name for these habitual reactions is subtle little buggers.
Notice the minor subtle buggers and watch them change.
The survival mind has no capacity for logical thought; it cannot distinguish between a memory from the past and a present-moment experience that is similar; Instead, it scans your memories for any experience that is slightly similar and brings that memory into your subconscious; this means it can only repeat memories it learned from past experiences that helped you survive mentally, emotionally, or physically. Thus, in your past, if you learned that thinking and feeling negatively helped you mentally, emotionally, or physically survive a specific situation, your survival brain will automatically repeat that memory reaction. That repetition will further punish you with new negative thoughts and feelings in the present. All these negative feelings will be stacked on top of each other.
Yet there is a way out of this emotional stacking.
An irony of the survival mind is that if you notice these automatic reactions and acknowledge them while letting the instant reactions exist in your body and brain, your frontal cortex (the part where logic can happen) learns to discern your true desires for the present from your emotional reactions from the past. When you simply watch the thoughts and their corresponding emotional reactions float through your mind, the past-based pressure loses its power to control you. This pressure release usually isn’t quick and generally requires constant practice, though, so be warned; it’s a wonderful, generally slow, and strange fact about the human mind.
The secret is to see reality as it is and accept it. If we let our instant survival mind reactions automatically avoid the uncomfortable thoughts and feelings by using fight, flight, or freeze (that it generates, BTW), we are doomed to repeat the same mistakes. If we allow the discomfort to exist, we can learn from it. The torturer becomes the teacher.
Self-compassion often asks us to feel uncomfortable so our mind can free itself of the distortions that caused the discomfort in the first place. It’s a counterintuitive irony.
The torturer becomes the teacher.
Our survival brain is built to avoid negativity, so it uses fight, flight, and freeze reactions (which generally feel negative) against the very thoughts and feelings that it created. Then, because of its lack of logical processing, it repeats the same reaction the next time a similar trigger brings that past reaction to mind. When we are unaware, our survival brain repeatedly punishes us with the same negative feelings.
In contrast, we can practice self-compassion through awareness. When we sit with mental and emotional discomfort, we can learn from it; that means watching negative thoughts and feelings float through our brains and bodies without resisting them. The negative thoughts and feelings become a microscope in which we can see the subtle little buggers (the thoughts and corresponding feelings) and their distortions of our perception of reality. Once we see reality as it is, we can learn from it, move beyond the reactive patterns of our survival mind, and create new possibilities for our lives.
What is the positive motivation for your action?
The last of the subtle little bugger thread I’ll address (in this newsletter at least) has to do with using them to your advantage. By this point, you know self-compassion is a mental space we create, usually beginning with paying attention to the subtle little buggers and learning from them. Another possibility is to formulate how you want to think and feel, then focus on creating the triggers you’ve learned that continually create those thoughts and feelings.
Many of us prefer learning with positive-feeling rewards rather than negative-feeling punishments. Learning gently from positive feeling rewards usually leads us to create mentally, emotionally, and physically healthy, subtle little buggers. Thus, watch your brain, identify the feelings you want to experience, and begin creating the mindsets that enhance them. This takes time to become familiar with your brain's default programming and then to cultivate new baselines. If you do, though, you create your life rather than react to life, and it’s extremely self-compassionate.
Mind cultivation takes practice and patience with your default programming. Ironically, your default programming will try to keep you doing the same old patterns because those habits didn’t kill you last time. Instead, practice the ways you want to think while also noticing and welcoming the old patterns so you can learn from them and be compassionate toward them. This is frequently a slow, gentle reprogramming of your mind to live the life with the compassion you want, rather than the survival reactions you learned.
Obviously, this cultivating attitude could be a whole series of newsletters or classes, so if you’re interested in this concept, please reply to let me know.
My personal experience.
I have experienced many times that when I am on my chosen path, the universe seems to throw opportunities and obstacles at me simultaneously. It’s almost as if the universe is asking me, “Are you sure you want this? Will you really put in the effort it’s going to take?” I recently had an opportunity present itself that will take much of the time I’m planning to spend on Self-Compassionate Living material, and unsurprisingly, there are many advantages to taking it.
I’ve now sat with the discomfort of not knowing what I’ll do for two weeks, and there is a minimum of two more weeks of unknowing in front of me. I have very disparate feelings about this opportunity; parts of my mind are powerfully in favor of it, and parts of my mind are massively against it. I vowed to myself that I would sit in the unknowing until the right path becomes clear. That means I’m spending considerable time and energy watching my mind react and letting the feelings from those reactions go. That way, I allow my mind to have all the information available, no matter which part of my brain it favors.
This is a hard part of self-compassion for me: not acting even when I feel certain a particular action is “right”. It’s hard because I know from experience that those immediate thoughts and corresponding feelings are reactions that will drift, change, and gently morph into something else.
In that line of thought, my two favorite wisdom sayings are:
"I believe that I shall see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living! Wait for the Lord; be strong, and let your heart take courage; yea, wait for the Lord!"
Psalm 27:13-14, RSVCE/NRSVCE
"Do you have the patience to wait till your mud settles and the water is clear? Can you remain unmoving till the right action arises by itself?"
Lao Tzu. Tao Te Ching. Translated by Stephen Mitchell, HarperCollins,1988. Verse 15.
I feel amazed that these two wisdom sayings from Israel and China express remarkably similar ideas. The key point for me is waiting. I have found that the essence I’m waiting for is my subconscious brain. I have also learned that when I give it as much undistorted information as possible, I feel much more confident in the decisions that arise from it. Waiting is hard though!
In those two wisdom sayings, I see that waiting is addressed in two ways: patience with my mind as it sifts through the material and courage in the discomfort of the waiting.
Self-compassion takes faith in my mind’s ability to filter out the noise and find the right solution for me and my situation! It also feels uncomfortable; I’d much rather have an answer now.
However, I will wait and gather more information about the opportunity. I trust the right answer will make itself known.
Next Month
In next month’s newsletter, I’ll probably discuss how the torturer becomes the teacher and what the positive motivations for our actions are.
If you have a particular topic you’d like to see discussed, please reply and suggest it to me.
On a Personal Note: Self-compassion seems to be about energy.
I’ve been watching my brain and body, and it seems that the energy they expend (calories burned) dictates many of my autopilot reactions. It’s not that the reactions cost less energy overall; the reactions tend to cost a lot of energy; it’s just that it takes more energy to reprogram my brain/body for new self-compassionate responses. I’m starting to believe that the energy consumed by my brain/body while on autopilot is a much better predictor of the suffering I’ll experience than anything else.
It seems that the suffering I experience is an illogical result of my survival mind’s distorted belief that the energy expended to generate bursts of negative emotions is less than the energy expended to reprogram itself now, even though reprogramming has the payoff of ending that suffering for the rest of my life. Suffering immediately, habitually, and continually causes me to feel discomfort. Illogically, my autopilot survival brain/body believes it is better to suffer now, habitually, than it is to suffer now by learning new self-compassionate habits that end the discomfort I experience forever.
I’ve been working on this theory for a very long time; over the last six months, it’s been taking up more of my brainpower. As I discover more, I’ll probably begin exploring it in future newsletters.
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 notifies you of the next biweekly meeting.
The Self-Compassion Discussion & Inspiration Group has been enormously inspiring for so many. Please join us for the next one on Saturday, March 7th, from 10 to 11:30 AM MST.
The next two Self-Compassion Discussion & Inspiration Group meetings are scheduled for Saturday, March 7th, from 10:00 AM to 11:30 AM MST, and Saturday, March 21st, from 10:00 AM to 11:30 AM MDT. 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. No one will be turned 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 in the hope 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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