The most damaging lies are the ones we tell ourselves.
Jen Gunter
If we do not transform our pain, we will most assuredly transmit it.
Richard Rohr
When you find no love, put love, and you will find love.
St. John of the Cross
In confession, the hope is to hear that truth in one’s heart and embrace it.
Peter Fink, S.J.
Dear Friend,
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 do my best 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 these newsletters, I will share some of the knowledge I’ve learned from the 50+ spiritual teachers, philosophers, and psychologists I’ve been lucky enough to work for, study with, and read. Additionally, the best teachers taught me to look at my own mind, “for that is the greatest of teachers,” in our personal journey; thus, these newsletters include a lot of my mental/spiritual self-examination. By writing it out, I learn to look more deeply and, hopefully, share a few pieces of knowledge you find useful in your journey.
I have a glossary of many of the words and concepts related to self-compassion that I discuss in this newsletter, in my classes, and in my one-to-one coaching. You can find that glossary here: https://blairashby.com/glossary.html
Last month, I said that I’d probably write about attachments and expectations this month, and …I won’t (I’m sorry). I realized I still had at least one more newsletter in this series to explore awareness and energy. Ironically, on this focus, I’ve discovered several more threads of thought in the tapestry of awareness I want to mention; however, they will wait for future newsletters. I say this because you may have noticed I’ve mentioned several times over the past several months that I've been exploring self-compassion and energy in my mind and life. I feel I’m at a place where writing some of my thoughts out will help me investigate the threads in my life more deeply. Thus, I’ll lightly mention some preliminary thoughts this month, and see what grows from those seeds in future writings.
First: Self-Compassion and Energy
I’ve noticed in my own life that on days when my body is physically tired, I don’t “feel” like putting in the effort to take care of myself mentally, emotionally, or physically (maybe you can relate?). This insight first became clear to me one early spring day, when I felt extremely grumpy and didn’t feel like going for my afternoon walk. My afternoon walk is a self-compassionate activity for me; walks clear my mind and exercise my body; I feel better after my walks, and I walk 5-7 days a week. Strangely, though, on that day, as grumpy as I felt, I didn’t want to walk.
As I said, walking is a self-compassionate activity for me; it’s a discipline I do to care for myself whether I want to or not. Thus, I walked that day. Interestingly, it took some mental effort to get my brain to focus on walking, and then, fortunately, within minutes of starting, I began to feel better.
That “better” feeling got my attention. I started looking at it and, more importantly, where it was coming from inside of me. Most of my body felt tired and didn’t want to walk; it wanted to sit and zone out. Yet parts of my mind and body felt better and wanted to keep going, and this dichotomy perked my awareness up. I started looking at the feeling of wanting to zone out; that was the clue for me, and that’s one area where awareness and energy are tied together.
Zoning out is a Form of Fight, Flight, or Freeze.
At the beginning of my journey, one of the most difficult ideas for me to understand was that everything starts with a thought. You can probably imagine that most of my clients and students struggle to grasp this idea at the beginning of their journeys. Unless there are chemicals involved, thoughts always come first—before feelings and before actions. Everything begins with a thought. Thus, if I felt like zoning out, which felt positive to my brain/body, that also meant the opposite survival modes were engaged. Part of my brain/body system was grabbing onto the positive-feeling thoughts to distract my mind from the negative thoughts in other parts of my brain/body system (Survival Modes: Fight, Flight, Freeze, Grab & Hold are two sides of the same coin). Therefore, there must have been some negative thought/feeling inside of me that I was trying to avoid. (The irony is, the negative thought/feeling doesn't mean it’s bad; it just feels bad to my body. When practicing self-compassion, understanding this paradigm is critical. I’ll explore this further in future newsletters.) So, wanting to zone out is a symptom of avoidance! What if that avoidance is costing me new experiences that bring greater life to me, though? This awareness exploration turned into a discernment-and-self-compassion question!
We’ve been given this gift we call life, and it has several built-in dynamics that often cause us unnecessary suffering, especially when we’re not aware. Survival designed us to react automatically and usually negatively to most thoughts that we experience (philosophy calls this dynamic negativity bias). Yet what if we look beyond our automatic reactions? I’m not saying you must look beyond autopilot; I’m simply saying being self-compassionate asks you to look beyond the instant automatic reactions your Survival Mind initiates and then logically evaluate the situation based on this question: “What do I really, Really, REALLY want for this moment?” You may still want to avoid the situation, or you may discover that new opportunities exist beyond the automatic predictions of your Survival Mind. The self-compassionate part is that you made the decision, not your reactionary Survival Mind drawing from similar memories you learned via past experiences. (Religion and philosophy call decisions made from conscious awareness “having agency.” I’ll talk about agency in future newsletters.)
Egoic Rationalism and Self-Compassion
Egoic Rationalism is our Survival Mind thinking of itself first and then inventing excuses to justify its decision. We can notice it whenever we find an excuse for a thought or action we experience. For example: if our Survival Mind feels negative from a thought (its first reaction), it reacts with fight, flight, and freeze Survival Modes to avoid the feelings from that first reaction. Ironically, it then feels bad about the reaction it generated. So, to avoid the negative feelings from its Survival Mode reaction, it hijacks some logical processing power from our frontal cortex to justify the first reaction in a way that makes itself feel better …about itself. This whole process takes place in our mind before we open our mouth to speak or take any physical action. (Survival prefers this reactionary process to be subconscious; it uses autopilot reactions to save calories; more about calories and self-compassion in future newsletters.)
When our Survival Mind experiences negative thoughts and feelings, it turns on defensive Survival Modes: Fight, Flight, and Freeze to avoid those initial negative feelings. Ironically, it doesn’t want to feel negative, so it then defends itself against the very negative thoughts and feelings it generated milliseconds earlier; it defends itself from itself. Interestingly, that defense briefly makes our body feel better because it's expending some of the emotional energy it generated. Let’s continue the irony, though, because it quickly turns on more Survival Modes: Grab & Hold to try and make the positive feelings of energy expenditure last as long as possible. Then, to add more irony, our Survival Mind tries to Grab & Hold onto the momentary positive feeling it’s generating to avoid the negative feelings it created initially.
As you can already see, our Survival Mind doesn’t have the capacity for logical thinking. Unfortunately, it often judges the excuses it generated to make itself feel better as arrogance, and it frequently doesn’t want to think that it is arrogantly praising itself for making itself feel better. In other words, perceived arrogance often raises objections to self-praise (it probably learned not to praise itself). So then it uses an internal self-critic to punish itself for its self-praise by generating guilt, regret, and anger. Unfortunately, we experience these negative feelings in our body as suffering. And the ultimate irony is that this energy expenditure is an attempt to protect itself …from itself. Remember, the Survival Mind has no capacity for logical thinking, so it can’t see it’s punishing itself.
Interestingly, and usually unfortunately, this thought process finishes in less than one second. The only thing the Survival Mind accomplished was making us feel terrible by generating negative feelings to protect itself from its own thoughts. Survival hardly seems fair, does it?
Often egoic rationalism isn’t very self-compassionate.
What self-compassionate things can we do?
As discouraging as it may sound to our Survival Mind, all the teachers I’ve learned from say the best thing we can do is allow ourselves to experience this mental chaos while staying consciously aware that it is happening in us, not to us; this is a form of detachment. Basically, we are recognizing that how we feel in our bodies is not who we are, authentically.
If you can not separate yourself from the experiences you’re experiencing emotionally, please seek help from a professional. A good counselor, coach, or spiritual director (a good coach or spiritual director cannot ethically diagnose or offer advice; they can only ask questions and listen) can help you navigate thoughts and emotions with minimal discomfort.
Thus, watch dispassionately, if you can. Simply watch all the thoughts and feelings race through your brain/body and say to yourself, “Okay; there it is.” I call it the State of Okay. We simply accept that this mental-emotional confusion is happening to our brain/body system. It is not us; it is happening inside of us, and we notice it, like we notice an upset stomach.
If we expend energy trying to stop our brain from doing these mental gymnastics, we usually only add more fight, flight, or freeze (which usually feel negative) to the negative feelings we’re already experiencing. Conversely, if we accept that this is what we are experiencing right now, that emotional energy will eventually burn itself out. After a period of time, the suffering will end, and then we can examine our thoughts to determine which ones initially caused more harm than good and started the suffering.
Then, by building on that familiarity with our brain process, we can train our brain on how we want to think the next time a similar trigger occurs. By formulating the thoughts we want and then reinforcing them by repeatedly thinking the response we want, we create and practice self-compassion. With this repetition and practice, the desired response will slowly become the new normal we want to use in our daily life.
A final inspiration… I hope.
Becoming familiar with and then cultivating our mind is a form of managing our mind, and with it, we can minimize our suffering; it’s a form of self-compassion. Please note: mental discipline is like going to a gym to strengthen our muscles; the difference is that we’re strengthening our mind to become the person we want to be. The gym that I use, and that the spiritual teachers ask you to use, is your stillness practice, your centering prayer, your meditation. Going to the gym of stillness every day is a discipline; a discipline of self-compassion.
Next Month
I suspect I will write about Attachments and Expectations next month only because I mentioned detachment earlier… I also want to incorporate two separate ideas that I got from two different people in the last Self-Compassion and Discussion Group: our brain is like a pond, and rocks thrown into it are triggers, with cascading ripples; and in an answer I gave to one question, I used watching a movie and the emotions we experience while watching it as a good way to practice awareness of reality. I got this idea from a Hindu teacher; I may unpack it in the next newsletter.
If you have a particular topic you’d like to see discussed, please reply and suggest it.
The Weekly Announcement for Discussion & Inspiration and Refresher Events
2 or 3 days before each Self-Compassion Discussion & Inspiration Group and before the Self-Compassionate Living Refresher Class, I send an announcement email for the upcoming event. I want to respect your privacy, so I won’t send announcements about upcoming events unless you ask to be notified. If you would like a weekly event announcement about the upcoming Self-Compassion Discussion & Inspiration Group or the Self-Compassionate Living Refresher, please go here to sign up for the next event and check the box for the weekly announcement (there is no cost to sign up and not attend). I send only one announcement per week for that week’s event.
The Self-Compassionate Living Refresher Class
I’ve now done three Self-Compassion Refresher classes, and I’ve received exceptional feedback! Thus, I am going to try another month of them in September 2026. I’m still building a sign-up webpage HYPERLINK "https://self-compassionateliving.com/self-compassionate-living-refresher.php"here (it works). Please visit the page and sign up for the next class on September 12. I will be doing classes on September 12th and the 26th. These classes are not part of a series; these are one-off classes focused on specific topics in the self-compassion journey. The next class is on September 12th at 10 AM MST.
In each class, we’ll do a ten-minute stillness practice, and then I’ll teach for an hour on one aspect of the self-compassion journey. During the teaching, the floor is open to discussion, questions, and responses.
Like the Discussion & Inspiration Group, these Refreshers are free; I ask for a donation because I am trying to make this vocation part of my monthly living contributors. To that end, the website will ask for donations after registering for the class, and I’ll share a link during each class so you can easily access my donation page. If you feel moved, please offer support HYPERLINK "https://self-compassionateliving.com/support-self-compassionate-living.html"here; thank you!
Self-Compassion Discussion & Inspiration Group
The Self-Compassion Discussion & Inspiration Group has been deeply impactful for so many. Please join us for the next one on Saturday, September 19th, from 10 to 11:30 AM MST.
The next two Self-Compassion Discussion & Inspiration Group meetings are scheduled for Saturday, September 19th, from 10:00 AM to 11:30 AM MST, and Saturday, October 3rd, from 10:00 AM to 11:30 AM MDT. Please join us. Click this HYPERLINK "https://donate.stripe.com/8x2cMU60meyX4MYdUW3Nm06"link or visit the Self-CompassionateLiving.com website to register.
These discussion groups are free! I don’t want financial reasons to prevent anyone from attending!
In each meeting, after a brief introduction, we’ll 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.
On a Personal Note: Donations for the Newsletters.
If you find value in these newsletters, will you please make a small monthly donation to help me afford life as I write these? I spend between 15–20 hours per month writing the newsletters to explain often difficult concepts and remedies that minimize suffering and increase joy, peace, contentment—self-compassion, in other words. I will not hide these newsletters behind a paywall, because I believe everyone can benefit from being more self-compassionate. However, I do have bills to pay, and I promised my wife I wouldn't sacrifice my half of the family budget for Self-Compassionate Living. If you share this dream of being and sharing more self-compassion, will you help me share this information? If yes, please click this link to go to my donation page: HYPERLINK "https://self-compassionateliving.com/support-self-compassionate-living.html"Support Self-Compassionate Living.
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 what I share in these newsletters from spiritual teachers, philosophers, and psychologists over 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.
Let’s learn and grow together!
Your encouraging, supportive, and loving notes mean a tremendous amount to me; please keep sending them. Thank you! I thank God for this community. Each of you has inspired 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!
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
Blair@Self-CompassionateLiving.com
Self-CompassionateLiving.com
PS: If you have any thoughts, comments, or questions, please reply to this email. Additionally, please share this email with those you care about. If you were forwarded this email and you want to receive it directly, please subscribe here: Subscribe to the Self-Compassionate Living Newsletter
Self-CompassionateLiving.com is committed to offering anyone, in any belief system, tools to help them reduce the suffering they experience and increase the Joy, Peace, and Contentment they feel. It’s about creating meaning for each moment by managing your mind, so you treat yourself with love and kindness.
All writing, videos, and photographs by Blair Ashby unless otherwise noted.
©2026 Blair Ashby. All rights reserved.
On a Personal Note:
On a Personal Note:
